The witty Briton stands up to the European bully. How a populist myth helped the British Eurosceptics to win the 2016 EU referendum

The British press has been reporting a uniquely distorted image of European affairs and institutions for decades. This article argues that the twisted narrative some British media offered about the relationship between the United Kingdom and mainland Europe was as influential as were the discursive strategies which they employed. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to investigate three sample texts, and drawing on Jack Lule’s and Roland Barthes’ theories of myth, I find that two of these texts construct a populist myth of a witty British people eternally alien to the EU. This narrative ultimately contributed to the vote for Brexit.