Paper short abstract:

The idiom 'left behind places' was frequently mobilised after the UK referendum on EU membership. Residents were said to have delivered the result and to have used the referendum as protest. The paper interrogates assumptions behind the notion of 'left behind' and asks who benefits from it.

Paper long abstract:

A powerful and dominant narrative after the referendum was that 'Left Behind Britain' had revolted - that the vote to leave the EU was an act of resistance by those who had not benefitted from the long-term effects of globalisation, and had suffered most from the policies of austerity . The spatial images that juxtaposed the results of the referendum with 'Left Behind Britain' were repeated over again and demarcated post-industrial towns and cities that had suffered, and not recovered, from the loss of manufacturing jobs, and a London, the South East and a few financial centres in larger cities that were flourishing. Such dominant images and narratives occluded massive differences within each of these 'camps' and did not go unchallenged. But the concept of 'left behind' has remained potent and, applied to both people and places, has gained traction in academic, media and political discourse since the referendum. What work is it doing?