The
Brexit fantasists may be beaten, but Brexit reality is a far tougher foe
Rafael Behr
Only when
the blinkers of Eurosceptic ideology are removed does the full scale of the
task of repairing EU relations become clear
Wed 17 Jul
2024 07.00 BST
Rishi Sunak
didn’t choose an early July election so that defeat might spare him the hassle
of hosting tomorrow’s summit of the European Political Community (EPC), but it
is a duty he was glad to forgo.
Protocols of
continental fellowship never came naturally to the Conservative leader and his
party would have despised him for faking them. By contrast, Keir Starmer is
grateful for the gathering in Blenheim as a chance to show how Britain under a
Labour government is released from Brexit neurosis.
The EPC is
not part of the EU. It was conceived by the French president, Emmanuel Macron,
in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as a way to include non-EU states
in a wider circle of European solidarity. It is a talking shop, not a treaty
organisation. The vague purpose and imprimatur of Macron’s vanity make it an
object of scepticism in some Brussels corridors. As a launchpad for Starmer’s
European policy “reset”, it is perfect.
The prime
minister wants to project maximum good neighbourliness without sounding
impatient to unpick the knotty details of Britain’s post-Brexit trade
settlement – a negotiation for which there is no appetite in European capitals
or EU institutions.
Starmer’s
opening bid is something more amenable and available – a new UK-EU defence and
security partnership, with security defined expansively to include energy
supplies, climate policy and migration. That has the merit of offering Europe
something it might actually want from Britain. It would restore the framework
for broad strategic alignment envisaged in the “political declaration” that
came attached to Theresa May’s Brexit deal and which was shredded by Boris
Johnson.
As the only
European country to rank alongside France as a serious military power, Britain
has hardware and expertise to offer continental democracies that feel
vulnerable to Russian aggression. That anxiety is soaring in proportion to
shortening odds on Donald Trump returning to the White House in November,
undermining Nato and appeasing the Kremlin.
Britain
offering to deploy its security capabilities under a European banner will buy a
lot of goodwill in Brussels. Whether that can be parlayed into favours on the
trade side of the ledger is a different question. The official answer is no.
The unofficial answer is not yet.
There was
enough backchannel communication when Labour was in opposition for Starmer to
know that his EU interlocutors will be grateful to no longer be dealing with
Tories, but also that gratitude and good vibes don’t alter the calculus of
economic interest. Johnson gave away so much commercial advantage in his haste
to show that Brexit was “done” that Brussels has little incentive to tinker
with the existing trade deal, even to satisfy Starmer’s relatively modest
ambitions for closer regulatory alignment.
There are
dozens of harder and more urgent problems consuming the technical and political
bandwidth of the European Commission. There is also still wariness of making
concessions that could be perceived as rewards for Britain’s decision to quit
the club.
But there
are things that the EU wants from the UK – fisheries access, a youth mobility
scheme. Some continental governments are open to persuasion that reconciliation
with London has benefits that should soften the usual Brussels allergy to
anything that might enable economic competition from a non-member state.
The safe
forecast is that relations will be better than they have been under the Tories
and harder than pro-Europeans might have hoped. Johnson’s Brexit was designed
to be irreversible. It is a ratchet of automatic divergence over time.
The eggs
cannot simply be unscrambled. Creating something more palatable is a project
requiring constant application of political capital, diplomatic energy and
leadership. It isn’t something that can be cooked on a back burner or delegated
too far down the ministerial chain. Yet Starmer’s priorities are elsewhere.
That could
change if the Treasury runs out of ways to stimulate the economy without
substantial easing of friction at the border with the single market. Business
leaders, previously cowed by Conservative dogma, are enjoying their newfound
liberty to lobby for closer EU ties.
Parliament
has no shortage of Labour MPs poised to ask the prime minister if he will
follow the economic facts when they point towards Europe. The Commons sect that
cries heresy when any shadow of rationality passes across the sacred altar of
Brexit is reduced in number and exiled to opposition.
To see the
election result as a rebuke to their creed would overinterpret a more general
rejection of incompetence and sleaze. Europe was absent from the campaign. But
there is a causal link between the ideological mania that gripped the Tories in
the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, the elevation of charlatans and
mediocrities to positions of power, and the subsequent failure to govern well.
With Nigel
Farage’s Reform party lurking in second place in dozens of Labour seats,
Starmer will still be wary of anything that points towards restitution of
open-border migration. But Reform voters are not all sovereignty cultists,
ready to take up arms against a veterinary standards agreement if it
acknowledges the jurisdiction of the European court.
Starmer can
start pushing the boundaries of European diplomacy deep into terrain that was
off limits for a Conservative prime minister, and still be confident of
occupying the mainstream centre-ground of British public opinion.
The era of
Brexit as a faith-based system of government, setting precise theological
parameters for acceptable policy, is over. But that means a new era of Brexit
as a different cluster of economic and diplomatic headaches is just beginning.
For years,
Britain’s European policy has been governed by a simple exercise in Eurosceptic
geometry. Each degree of separation was a step towards freedom and prosperity.
That made it easy to make terrible decisions.
Only once
the ideological blinkers are removed and a pragmatic lens is applied can the
full magnitude of harm done to Britain’s strategic, economic and political
relations with its neighbours come into view. Every subsequent step is now
harder. Success is far from guaranteed. But there is at least a chance, with a
prime minister facing the right direction, using reality as the starting point.
Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist
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