In 1979, Margaret Thatcher’s “Crisis? What Crisis?” campaign painted a grim picture of life under Labour’s leadership. Her advertising did more than simply criticise Labour’s policies; it re‑cast them as part of a crisis that only the Conservatives could resolve. Before this campaign, the term ‘crisis’ tended to refer to genuine, high‑stakes turning points, such as major health emergencies, intense economic shocks, or geopolitical conflicts, and was not used lightly in everyday political language. Thatcher’s campaign signalled a shift. Crisis became a tool of political persuasion, normalised as part of the rhetorical toolkit of parties seeking to frame their opponents as incapable or the system as broken. That change laid the groundwork for the modern politics of perpetual emergency.
Today the idea of “crisis” is everywhere. Nearly every major political or social issue is framed as an emergency, from the economy to healthcare, from immigration to climate change. The feeling that everything is in constant crisis has only grown over the last decade. That framing influences how the public perceives politics and how politicians act. It changes politics from a sphere of debate and reform into one of urgent rescue, imminent collapse, and dramatic turnaround. Understanding this trend requires examining how crisis narratives evolve, how the internet amplifies them, and how they operate across different issues and countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0TYvzAHzwo
Brexit offers a clear example of how crisis framing shapes public opinion and political outcomes. Long before the 2016 referendum, media narratives framed the UK’s relationship with the European Union as problematic, focusing on issues such as immigration, economic strain, and national sovereignty. Newspapers devoted significant coverage to immigration, often portraying it as a threat to jobs, housing, and public services rather than as an issue of integration or economic benefit. These narratives created the impression that the UK’s membership of the EU was itself a crisis, one that required urgent resolution and one that political actors could claim to fix.
During the referendum campaign, crisis narratives intensified. Each negotiation deadline and warning of economic fallout was presented as a potential disaster. The rhetoric of “no‑deal” Brexit was framed as a cliff‑edge scenario, with threats to trade, potential food shortages, chaos at the borders, and disruption to the NHS highlighted in the press. These constant framings created the perception of the UK being in a state of emergency even before the vote. After the referendum, the language of crisis did not disappear. Media coverage continued to present Brexit’s consequences as ongoing emergencies. Reports such as “Brexit crisis presents opportunity for Theresa May” and “Brexit, In Crisis without Fanfare” show how Brexit became embedded in public consciousness. Coverage of parliament’s long delays, prime-ministerial turnover, the rejection of Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement three times in 2019, and the eventual ratification of Boris Johnson’s deal at the end of 2019 contributed to the perception that Brexit was a continuous crisis. The refugee crisis of 2015-2016 also overlapped with Brexit narratives, reinforcing the idea of immigration as a national emergency. These examples illustrate that crisis language can extend the perception of emergency well beyond the initial event, turning the aftermath into the new normal.
The timeline of Brexit highlights how prolonged crisis framing shapes public perception. The referendum took place on 23 June 2016, with the result announced the following day. Article 50 was triggered on 29 March 2017, and the UK was scheduled to leave the EU on 29 March 2019, but delays and extensions meant the UK finally exited the EU on 31 January 2020 and left the single market and customs union on 31 December 2020. The drawn-out nature of the process reinforced the sense of a prolonged emergency, with negotiations, resignations, and parliamentary votes creating recurring moments of political tension and uncertainty. This extended timeline made it possible for crisis narratives to persist and intensify, rather than resolve quickly.
The internet has further transformed how we experience and internalise the narrative of crisis. In today’s connected world, we are bombarded with updates on crises worldwide, from armed conflicts to natural disasters, from pandemics to climate emergencies. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram expose us to a continuous stream of alarming events, often from halfway around the globe. Psychologists have coined the term “blue dot effect” to describe how negative events dominate perception even when they are statistically rare or distant. Constant exposure to the worst moments can make it feel as though everything is going wrong.
Social media platforms and digital journalism are designed to maximise engagement, and content that provokes strong emotions, such as fear or outrage, tends to perform best. This encourages the amplification of crisis narratives. Posts that trigger likes, shares, and comments gain visibility and algorithms promote them further. Journalism in this context is more likely to emphasise dramatic headlines and sensational frames than nuanced debate or policy deliberation. As a result, platforms amplify crisis narratives because emotional responses drive traffic and revenue. This shift changes our relationship with politics, making it not only about making decisions, but about managing perceptions of emergency.
This affects political perception in several ways. First, users may perceive political issues as more urgent or threatening than they would in an era of slower, more filtered media. Second, crisis narratives from one area, for example migration, can spill over into another area, such as climate change or pandemic preparedness, because the medium emphasises emotional coherence rather than policy nuance. Third, the speed of digital communication means that the feeling of emergency can be continuous. A new flashpoint, a trending hashtag, or a viral video can plunge the public into another crisis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social media reinforced feelings of crisis not just via reporting on the virus, but via user-generated posts about shortages, lockdowns, risk, anxiety, and isolation. Although this is a global example, it shows how modern media can accelerate crisis-framing across many issues simultaneously.
While Brexit is a prominent case, crisis framing is evident in many areas of public life. Climate change and environmental issues are often presented not simply as long-term challenges but as imminent catastrophe. Terms like “climate emergency,” “planetary crisis,” or “tipping point” abound in activism, government communications, and media reports. That framing has benefits because it can spur urgent action, but it also has costs. It can provoke anxiety, fatalism, or disengagement when the public perceives the scale of the problem as too enormous to handle. In the UK, the discourse around climate has shifted from “we need to act” to “we are in crisis” and even “we are past the point of no return.” This raises questions about the effect of continuous crisis language on agency, hope, and democratic engagement.
Immigration and refugee flows continue to be framed as security or border crises. In the UK, asylum seekers arriving in small boats across the English Channel have been portrayed in media as part of a “border crisis” or “migrant flood.” Images of dinghies crowded with faceless migrants reinforced the narrative of a flood heading for the UK coastline. The problem may in fact be complex and statistically modest, but crisis framing elevates it into a national emergency. Public opinion research shows that concern about immigration often exceeds the actual concern at a local level. A recent YouGov poll found that only 26 percent of people said immigration or asylum was one of the top three issues in their community, but more than half believed it was one of the biggest issues facing the country. The contrast between local experience and national crisis framing demonstrates the gap between perception and reality.
Economic policy is also framed in crisis terms. Governments frequently describe deficits, inflation, public debt, and GDP contraction as existential threats, often justifying urgent intervention, including cuts, austerity, or emergency budgets. The Windrush scandal, rooted in administrative failings, was represented through discourse emphasising crisis in immigration policy and the “hostile environment” established under the government. In this way, the narrative of crisis becomes a tool not simply of politics but of policy rationalisation.
Internationally, crisis framing is used differently depending on media, political culture, and historical context. In the United States, for example, “border crisis” and “immigration crisis” have been repeatedly used by political actors to invoke urgency. Climate change is often framed as a catastrophic emergency in the European Union, prompting ambitious policies such as the European Green Deal. In Brazil, forest fires in the Amazon have been framed as environmental crises threatening national and global stability. These examples show that crisis framing is both global and local, influencing domestic politics through international media coverage and digital networks. Continuous exposure to international emergencies feeds domestic narratives, reinforcing the perception that crisis is the natural state of the world.
The consequences of crisis framing for democracy and political culture are significant. When everything is framed as urgent, sudden action becomes the norm and deliberation suffers. Politics becomes about managing emergencies rather than envisioning futures. Policymakers may prioritise swift responses, sometimes superficial, instead of long-term structural reform. A continuous state of emergency can undermine public trust and resilience. If citizens feel that their country is constantly on the edge of collapse, apathy or fatalism can set in. Some may disengage from politics altogether, believing that nothing will change or that decisions are always reactive. Crisis framing can polarise discourse because emergencies invite binary thinking, dividing the world into insiders versus outsiders, saved versus doomed. Debate becomes sharper, more adversarial, and less open to complexity. The emotional toll is largely under-acknowledged. Living in a state of perceived crisis increases anxiety, stress, and a sense of instability, weakening the foundations of democratic citizenship.
To further these examples, a recent poll I conducted among my peers shows how entrenched the perception of crisis has become. Across the sample, 66.7 percent believed the UK is currently in a state of crisis. When asked when they last felt a major crisis had occurred, excluding the current assumption, 41.6 percent identified the last two years, with some specifically referencing the 2024 race riots. Many participants pointed to social media as having a negative impact on shaping perceptions of crisis, with several expressing feelings of being overwhelmed by global crisis-related news. This finding aligns with the concept of the blue dot effect and reinforces the argument that social media plays a major role in reinforcing perceptions of ongoing emergency. By perceiving everything as crisis, political choices and social experiences are filtered through that lens.
From Thatcher’s campaign in 1979 through to the digital age, the narrative of crisis has fundamentally reshaped how we perceive political and social issues. It has moved us from a paradigm of governance and reform to one of constant urgency and immediate rescue. The interconnectedness of global media, the internet, and national politics has accelerated this shift, allowing crisis language to proliferate, overlap across domains, and become part of everyday life. The narrative influences public perception and policy decisions, embedding a sense of instability and urgency in how we understand modern politics. The result is a public, rightly or wrongly, living in a continual state of emergency, a political culture that rewards drama over deliberation, reaction over reflection, and a democracy that risks becoming reactive rather than visionary.
If we are to reclaim a more sustainable political culture, the framing needs rethinking. Politics must once again become about shaping futures, not responding to perpetual doom, about deliberation, not just urgency, and about possibility, not just threat. Recognising how the narrative of crisis has shaped our expectations is the first step towards shifting the culture. By understanding the mechanics of that framing, how media, parties, and digital platforms deploy and amplify it, we can begin to ask different questions, not “how do we manage this crisis?” but “why do we think this is a crisis?” and “what alternatives are being excluded?” In so doing, we can move from living in a perpetual state of emergency to engaging in politics that anticipates change rather than simply reacts.