Abstract
In 2019, when Boris Johnson became Conservative leader and triumphed in that year’s mid-December general election, the Party’s identity was wrapped in success stories of opportunity and aspiration. These stories, themed around entrepreneurialism, presented success as a result of learning to take chances and embrace risk. Even when communicated to a bourgeois audience, these stories had a social justice dimension: the idea of learning to be entrepreneurial was projected onto subordinated groups—women and girls, working-class people and ethnic minorities—and seen as liberating for them. Using a corpus mostly of Telegraph newspaper articles published in the summer and autumn of 2019, this article offers a constructionist discourse analysis of that depiction of reality. Via a process of ‘sceptical reading’, it explores ‘true blue’ Conservatism’s underpinning discourse about learning to be entrepreneurial: that Britain’s post-Brexit future, laden with opportunity but requiring calculated risk, was a liberatory moment for the nation.
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24 March 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-023-00231-4
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Maslen, J. Who Dares Wins: learning to be entrepreneurial as a conservative social justice discourse. Br Polit (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-023-00228-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-023-00228-z