‘Change at home and change abroad?’ Visualising the (im)possibilities of British foreign policy in the aftermath of Corbyn’s response to the Manchester Arena bombing

The Manchester Arena bombing occurred at a moment of heightened anxiety and uncertainty in the United Kingdom. One of several attacks over a matter of months in 2017, it was the deadliest and most politically affronting. The bombing brought the consequences of liberal interventionism into focus and triggered a contest to define the moment, producing competing visions of Britishness. Drawing on insights from Lacanian international relations and visual politics, the article analyses responses to the bombing through a multimodal discourse analysis of national newspaper coverage and political speeches. It shows that Jeremy Corbyn challenged the elite liberal-interventionist consensus by linking foreign intervention to terrorism at home and advocating policies of restraint, sovereign equality and democratic multilateralism. Resonating with sections of the public, Corbyn’s response generated acute anxiety among elites and elicited an affectively charged defence of the status quo. In response, politicians and legacy media sought to construct ideological equivalences between Corbyn and hostile Others, mobilising multimodal presentations which recast him as anti-British and a threat to national security. This article contributes to debates on continuity and change in British foreign policy and the role of images in managing dissent.