Never Mind the Brexit: Poverty in the UK : A Comparative Qualitative Content Analysis of the Conservative Party’s Poverty and Welfare Discourses, 2015 - 2019

In a 2018 United Nations (UN) report on extreme poverty and human rights in the United Kingdom, the British government was condemned for their implementation of austerity measures. The Conservative Party, who had instigated and overseen the austerity measures, were accused of dismantling the welfare state and forcing millions of people into poverty. In 2016, two years prior to the UN report, there was a seismic juncture in British society: the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. This resulted in years of social division and political turmoil. This thesis analyses the discourses of poverty and welfare employed by the Conservative Party in the backdrop of Britain leaving the European Union. It applies a combination of a Critical Discourse Analysis and Qualitative Content Analysis to the 2015, 2017 and 2019 Conservative Party manifestos. In applying this methodological framework, it aims to scrutinise how the discourse attributed to poverty and welfare contrasted before and after the decision was made to leave the European Union and contemplates the societal implications of this. The paper finds that the main connection presented in the manifestos between poverty, welfare and EU membership is EU migration and that the Conservatives’ discourse employed in attribution to this changed significantly after the referendum result of 2016