Six Years of Brexit

A response to Dr Robert Saunders: Brexit in Historical Perspective

For nearly half a century – from 1973 to 2020 – perhaps the single most important fact about British history was its membership of the European Union (or ‘Community’, until 1993). Membership touched almost every area of national life. It transformed how Britain was governed, who it traded with and who had the right to live and work here. It rewired Britain’s manufacturing base, rewrote its constitution and transformed its judicial system. Its effects have been felt across the spectrum of public policy, from gay rights and environmental protection to regional policy, agriculture and the peace process in Northern Ireland.

Dr Robert Saunders, Brexit in Historical Perspective, 31 January 2020

Thus reads the opening paragraph of Dr Robert Saunders’s essay, posted the day, more than four and a half years after the fateful referendum, that we finally left the European Union - and reposted by him yesterday, to (almost) mark its sixth anniversary.¹

It’s an outstanding essay, and I recommend you read the whole piece. I hadn’t intended to write something for today - I wrote a piece in 2023 setting out my views, seven years on from the referendum, what had gone well and what less well - but reading Robert’s article, which so well set out the challenges and questions posed by Brexit, inspired me to write a more forward-looking piece.

Robert reminds us that joining the EU was a response to the perceived failure of Britain’s post-war strategy, in the wake of superior economic performance by France and Germany, tensions with the Commonwealth and the humiliation of Suez. It was seen as a way of maintaining Britain’s global influence in the post-Imperial world, ensuring that we could still be a country that could project power and sway world affairs.

From 1961 to 2016, every government (whether Conservative or Labour) started from three basic assumptions: that the best way to rebuild Britain’s economic strength was as the entry-point to an integrated, European market; that the surest route to influence in Washington or the Commonwealth was through a leadership role in Europe; and that the best way to maximise British sovereignty was to have a seat at the table where its destiny would be decided.

…

For a whole generation of politicians after 1945, the big challenge was to adapt to the contraction of British power: the fact that Britain was losing its global empire, its colonial markets and its control of the sea lanes. Joining the EEC was a way of responding to that challenge:

It is understandable that politicians in the ‘50s and ‘60s sought to preserve the influence of Empire, nostalgic for the days when a quarter of the world was coloured pink. It is perhaps no coincidence that some of the most ardent Europhiles of the modern era, such as Blair and Cameron, visibly yearned for Britain to ‘punch above its weight’ in the world and to exert influence on the global stage.

Understandable, I say, but fundamentally mistaken. We are a mid-sized power² and should tailor our aims and aspirations accordingly. As a mid-sized power adjacent to a culturally similar super-economy, it is not dreams of Empire but Canada that should be in our model. This is true most importantly, in the sometimes up, sometimes down, but always present relationship, deals and compromises that must be made with its neighbour - but one might also look to Mark Carney’s recent speech on mid-sized powers in a rapidly changing world as a guide to post-Brexit realism.

There will always have to be some form of relationship with EU: the neighbouring trading bloc cannot simply be ignored. This, just as Canada’s relationship with the US, will inevitably wax and wane over the decades - and reasonable people will disagree about what it should be, just as they do on tax policy, or the school curriculum.

Those who condemn every new deal as a ‘betrayal of Brexit’ are as foolish as those who mindlessly applaud such deals, whatever the terms.³ A sign of maturity in the post-Brexit debate will be when such deals are primarily assessed on their merits, rather than purely tribally, on whether they bring us closer or further away from the EU. As a thinking adult, I am free to welcome an agri-food deal that supports our farmers and food and drink exports, while simultaneously criticising spending £570m on free European jollies for university students as a profligate waste of taxpayers’ money.

As I demonstrated last year, there is no inevitability about whether a country will be better off inside or outside of a larger economic bloc. There are, indisputably, economic advantages from being part of large single market. There are also economic advantages from being a small nation able to flexibly determine regulation, tax policy and other decisions in a way that best suits its own economy. If we look at the global evidence, we can find examples of cases where each advantage predominates. Of course, if one leaves a large trading bloc while utterly failing to take advantage of those flexibilities - indeed, actually increasing the burden of corporate regulations, taxation and employment law - then one would predict that the country will suffer an economic penalty, which is indeed what has happened. But there was, and is, no inevitability about these decisions - or future ones.

So whether we end up richer or poorer, in the long-term, is not set in stone. But even in the latter case, Canada again is a good example. It would almost certainly be richer if it joined the US: it would not only gain access to a much larger market, but US laws, unlike the EU’s, are particularly benign for businesses and economic growth. And yet Canadians, overwhelmingly, do not want to do this - as can be seen by the outcry over Trump’s suggestion that they should become the 51st state.⁴,⁵.

Sovereignty and nationhood is, for most people, about more than money. It is always odd to see some progressives who have no trouble empathising with the Canadians as they reject Trump - or indeed with the Scots or the Welsh nationalists - appearing unable to see Brexit in anything other than purely economic terms.⁶

To return to Carney’s speech, no longer seeking to be a world power does not mean pure isolationism. It does suggest a more pragmatic outlook, one that is sceptical of ‘nationbuilding’ adventures in Iraq, or of lecturing other powers, over which we have no influence, on their human rights record. But defending Ukraine can be fully justified on ‘realist’ grounds: it is demonstrably in our national interest that Russia be stopped, rather than be victorious, and go on to menace other friendly democratic powers and trading powers on our doorstep. We can be proud to have worked effectively with European counterparts and others in this endeavour,⁷ and should continue to work to preserve the interests of friendly, liberal⁸ and democratic countries against those states that would do us harm.

Saunders goes on to say, rightly, that Brexit requires us to make new choices. As hesays, we should not pretent, “That a nation stripped of its colonies, its industrial power and its control over global finance has the same options today as in the age of its pre-eminence.”

We must instead be serious about the choices in front of us.

What is Britain’s economic future, as a medium-sized economy in a world dominated by China and the United States? What is Britain’s diplomatic role, in a world without an empire?… Brexit means we are going to have to find new answers, under perhaps less favourable conditions. If we pretend those dilemmas do not exist, or if we simply go back to old answers because we have forgotten why they were rejected in the first place, disaster lies ahead. Brexit requires a fundamental recasting of Britain’s national strategy.

They are the correct questions - and ones that are not answered by the old soldiers on either side, still devoted to fighting the Brexit wars. For my part, I stand with Benn and Powell⁹, those two iconoclastic giants of left and right, in rejecting the idea that we should seek to be a leading power in the world, and instead pursue the national interest as a mid-size power, in concert with our allies.

But even for those who aspire to maximise global influence and power, it had become apparent certainly by Lisbon¹⁰ - and arguably by Maastricht - that this was not something that could be achieved by Britain, qua Britain, within the EU.

‘Ever Closer Union’ is a reality, bedded deep into the very institutions, laws and courts of the EU, and it marches inexorably on, regardless of the views of transient national leaders.¹¹ One of the most consistent guides to EU history is that at every stage of integration, things have taken place - a flag, an anthem, an EU defence force, more spending, abolition of national vetos, influence over voting rights and elections, the list goes on - that sceptics were mocked for saying would ever happen. In what the EU will become, the best that could be hoped for is that England, Scotland and Wales might survive as some form of distinctive regional identity, similar to Texas or Yorkshire today. Perhaps not in 20 years, but in 50 years, or in 100 years - but it will happen.¹²

Britain has endured for 300 years, arguably 400;¹³ England has stood unconquered for almost a millennium. Is now the point at which it should end? That is the fundamental point about which Brexit turns.

Legend and literature contain countless examples of a person¹⁴ who seeks power, often for noble ends, and yet the price of that power is such that it transforms them into something that is no longer recognisable to the original person, with fundamentally different values and objectives.¹⁵ In seeking to preserve themselves, they instead lose all.

Pursuing British membership of the EU to pursue or maximise British power is a temptation of just this sort. And, as to all other such temptations of this sort, the correct response is thus:

“I pass the test. I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.”

1. Much as the best pure mathematicians struggle with arithmetic, it appears the best historians struggle with dates.

2. A pretty strong mid-sized power: top ten economy, nukes, seat at the UN Security Council and so on - but still well behind nothing like the US, China or the USSR back in its day.

3. A criticism I would have of Starmer’s approach is that he appears to see ‘doing a deal with the EU’ as a positive in his own right - and his interlocutors know this, and so take advantage. Sunak struck a better middle-ground, between the over-eagerness of Starmerism and the (perhaps inevitable) mutual distrust that marked the Boris years.

4. They would presumably become the 51st through 60th state, which would do interesting things to the Senate and the electoral college.

5. And no, this is not just about not liking Trump - though he has brought the issue to the fore. Canadians did not want to merge with the USA in 2012, under Obama, no more than they did in 1812.

6. There are, of course, some who voted Remain because they genuinely see themselves as European and actively support a United States of Europe. I have no criticism of them (though I disagree) - their beliefs and voting decisions are entirely coherent.

7. One of the arguments I weighed seriously when deciding to vote Leave was the extent to which it would harm our ability to stand up to Russia and China. I’m very pleased that the experience of Ukraine has shown that leaving has not significantly hindered our ability to stand together in this way.

8. By which I mean core rights of freedom of speech, assembly, association, religion and press, not ‘left-wing’.

9. This should not be taken to imply agreement with either of them on any other subject! Though I will actually be agreeing with Benn again in next week’s post, which I should probably ensure doesn’t become a habit or I will get my right-wing credentials taken away.

10. My own shift from Eurosceptic reformer to full on Leaver occurred at the time of the Lisbon treaty - I was working on trade policy at the time, and saw our influence as a Member State swept away in a whole host of areas, with the Commission dramatically powered. Concurrently, the way the French and Dutch referendum votes against the EU Constitution were ignored (by rebranding essentially the same document as the Lisbon Treaty), the Irish were made to vote again, and Cameron’s reneging on the pledge of a referendum on the treaty, made me realise we could not trust our leaders to give us a choice on further EU integration - and that any opportunity to leave, such as the 2016 Referendum, must be seized.

11. And obviously, while a Eurosceptic leader is more likely to make the news, many leaders of EU member states - and even more so of the Commissioners and senior figures in the European Parliament - actively support ever closer union.

12. OK, it won’t inevitably happen. The EU could collapse due to Russian aggression and Chinese subversion, or there could be a nuclear war, or an engineered bioplague catastrophe, or AI will turn us all into paperclips/upload us to the cloud. But in most futures where ‘staying in the EU’ means something, it will happen.

13. I know the Act of Union is the official start, but the Union of the Crowns also feels pretty significant for me.

14. Or, more rarely, a polity or other organisation.

15. A friend of mine maintains Bismarck unifying Germany is an example of this, but I think Bismarck would not be entirely unhappy with the modern united Germany, certainly if the alternative was a hodge-podge of smaller states dominated by non-Germans. It is, at least, a lot more powerful than Austria, a point from which he would no doubt take some satisfaction.