Navigating Brexit through fear

Abstract Addressing a highly intriguing question of the persistence of fear-based appeals in the Brexit context, the article provides the first comprehensive longitudinal analysis of such discourse in the British Prime Ministerial communication on Brexit across the post-referendum period (2016–2024). It draws on and adapts Lazarus’ appraisal theory of emotion and combines content analysis with the Discourse Historical Approach in Critical Discourse Analysis, applied to a large, multi-genre dataset. The study shows that fear did not dissipate after the referendum but evolved and was strategically redeployed across successive leaderships. While May and Johnson used a more confrontational and populist rhetoric, Sunak adopted a more technocratic and policy-oriented variant — yet fear remained a subtle but powerful element through the period. The analysis advances existing scholarship by demonstrating how emotional rhetoric adapts to changing political contexts and leadership styles and offering a broader perspective on the discursive instrumentalisation of fear.