Victory of the swashbucklers

On 14 June, a short email popped up in the inboxes of all Financial Times editorial staff. It came from the paper’s style guru and announced tersely: ‘The out campaigners should be Brexiters, not Brexiteers.’ As usual for the FT’s style pronouncements, the memo did not lay out the reasoning behind the decision, but it followed a discussion among editors over whether the word ‘Brexiteer’ had connotations of swashbuckling adventure.

Much has been said and written about the power of the Leave campaign’s simple and disciplined messaging. Both sides agree that the Remain camp never found a slogan with the clarity and muscular appeal of ‘Take Back Control’ — a potent and proven phrase adapted by Vote Leave campaign director Dominic Cummings from the successful campaign against Britain joining the euro. (A 2001 contribution by Cummings to the BBC website ended: ‘Keep your job, keep control, keep the pound.’)

But the FT style note was evidence of a little remarked on and perhaps quietly significant victory in another corner of the linguistic battlefield. Long before June’s seismic result, the Out camp had comprehensively won the battle of collective nouns.

‘Brexiteer brings to mind buccaneer, pioneer, musketeer,’ says Michael Gove. ‘It lends a sense of panache and romance to the argument.’ For fellow Leave campaigner Daniel Hannan it had connotations of ‘dashing condottieri’. On the other side of the trenches Remain strategist Lord Cooper feared the word crystallised a feeling about the Out campaign. ‘It helped draw it out. It was exciting, invigorating, boundary-pushing, taking on the world… a positive frame that was taking on our negative frame.’