Brexiteers fused insurance and speculation into a new nationalist collective imagination

Evidence

These tropes were repeated throughout the protracted debate over the terms of Brexit that followed the 2016 referendum—with the most vocal Brexiteers placing an even bolder wager on the extreme “no-deal” position. They represented the possible chaotic consequences of exiting the EU without a deal as an opportunity for markets and publics alike (no deal, they argued, was better than a bad deal). … However, the type of insurance that was being offered to Brexit constituencies (by these most extreme sides of the neopopulist current) evokes George Soros’s own bets on currency volatility, with which I opened this chapter. Such speculative hedging can be seen as a form of predatory insurance—but also as “virtuous speculation” that sanctions the nationalist narrative of “hard Brexit.” The power of this distinct speculative imagination wielded by nationalist-populists lies in its capacious integration of insurance and speculation to conjure a new political collectivity, where risks and responsibilities appear to be redistributed. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 289

Categorization

• DEFINE: “Predatory insurance” vs “virtuous speculation” as paired terms for how financial hedging tools get politically repurposed.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the phrase “appear to be redistributed” flags that redistribution here is symbolic/sanctioned, not material — is this the reader’s key concern that populists aren’t voting against interests but betting?
• XREF: Connects to the trading-floor logic of Soros’s currency bets the reader is tracking across this book, and to the migration of speculation into politics.