Sunday Scribblings

No Europe Please, We’re British!

Will the UK ever rejoin the EU? I’m not convinced it will. It never wanted to join in the first place, but economic circumstances forced its hand. It was always a reluctant European for all the years of its membership. A cuckoo in the nest. Do the others in the nest really want the cuckoo back? I am not convinced that they do.

My own view, as an Irish person, is that I would very much like to see the UK back in the EU as that would solve a great many problems for Ireland and Northern Ireland. But just because I would like something to happen does not mean it is going to happen.

Why? Because whatever might be the buzz on social media among Remainers/Rejoiners there is simply no desire on the part of elected politicians in the UK to reopen the European debate. I say the “European debate” rather than the “Brexit debate” because Brexit is done. The UK is no longer a member of the EU. What we are now talking about is how and on what terms the UK will engage with the EU in the years ahead. At best, they will be holding hands. Nothing beyond that, hors question. No Europe please, we’re British!

These thoughts were prompted by a paper by Andrew Duff. Duff is a former British MEP, President of the Union of European Federalists (UEF) and President of the Spinelli Group. He now works with the European Policy Centre for which he has just written a paper, Reversing Brexit: why, how and when here. A good guy, with the best interests of Europe and the UK at heart.

There is much to like in the paper, and it is well worth reading. But when I finished it was left thinking that Andrew in Wonderland might have been a better title.

His starting point is that, since the 1950s, the British have constantly changed their minds about Europe and that under Starmer they might just do it again. He does a very quick run through British European policy from the initial refusal to join the nascent Coal and Steel Community in the early 1950s, but he really picks up the story with MacMillian’s 1961 bid to join the then EEC.

What he leaves out is that the British in the 1950s did not just stand on the sidelines and watch moves towards European integration with upper-lip disdain. The British actively tried to strangle European integration initiatives at birth. The best-known example of this is the British creation of the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) as a direct competitor of the European Economic Community (EEC).

It was only when EFTA failed to deliver that MacMillian decided that there was no alternative for the UK than to apply to join the EEC. It was to take over ten years, from 1961 to 1973, at the third time of asking, for the UK to get in, with Ireland and Denmark also joining at the same time. But British applications to join the EEC were made faute de mieux, never with a heartfelt commitment to Europe. As Stephen Wall put it, the UK was always a “reluctant European”. Has anything really changed since then?

Duff’s paper is full of good stuff about how the UK rejoining the EU would be beneficial for all concerned across a range of policy areas. In this I think he is right.

However, there is a touch of what I call the “economist’s delusion” around his thinking. There is a story about an economist who was asked how he would cope if he found himself marooned on a desert island with just a crate of tinned beans to eat. Well, he replied, I would, of course, assume a can opener.

Duff’s “assumed can opener” is that there is a desire in the UK to rejoin the EU and he quotes some polling numbers to that effect. Maybe so, but what people tell pollsters what they might do and what they actually do can be two very different things. It is known as the “say-do” gap.

I see no evidence that the current Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is going to U-turn on his red lines of not rejoining the Single Market, the Customs Union, or a return to Freedom of Movement at any point during this Parliament. See here, for instance.

In his recent address at Mansion House Starmer made it clear that he saw himself in the tradition of Attlee and Churchill, wanting to triangulate between Europe and the United States. As Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer puts it:

In his telling, we can foster “renewed relations with our neighbours in Europe” while simultaneously investing “more deeply than ever in the transatlantic bond with our American friends”. You can see why he is cleaving to this Panglossian view as you can also understand why he insists that it is “plain wrong” to say that the UK has to choose between America and Europe.

Attlee and Churchill also wanted to bring the Empire into the picture, but the Empire is now long gone, save for a few islands here and there and some misappropriated Greek marbles in the British Museum.

Starmer stands in a long Labour tradition of suspicion of Europe. Denis Healy, then Labour’s International Secretary in the early 1950s said the party should have nothing to do with a united Europe because it would be “Capitalist, Conservative, and Catholic”.

Is Labour’s fear of upsetting Red Wall voters any different from Herbert Morrison’s remarks when he was told about an invitation for the UK to join the talks on setting up the Coal and Steel Community: “The Durham Miners would never stand for it.”

It needs to be remembered that while Labour has a majority of 156 seats in the Commons, it has this majority on 33% of the vote. British politics is no longer a two-party system though the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system is designed for that. In other words, it is a fragile majority that could disappear as easily as it appeared. Starmer and his team know this. They will take no risks and a push to rejoin the EU would be a major risk.

Today, even very minor openings towards the EU by the government are met with howls of “Brexit betrayed” headlines in the right-wing press, not to mention from the Tories and Farage’s Reform. Imagine the storm if a move to rejoin the EU was mooted. Which is why it will not happen.

Political structures and processes shape incentives and outcomes and today, the shape and structure of British politics simply provides no electoral incentive for Labour to pursue a “return to Europe” strategy. A return to Europe would be the smart economic thing to do, but then, economics and politics do not always rhyme.

Would the EU want a divided UK back? A UK that with a change of government might decide to walk out of the door again. Duff suggests a range of ideas that might tie the UK into the EU, but you can still never get away from one thing. The UK “constitution” is what a majority in the Commons decides on the day. If a majority in the Commons decided to leave the EU again, all the clever laws and stratagems could not prevent that.

Would the EU want a UK that was legally locked in but politically wanted out? It would be a very disruptive partner while it shouted “I want to break free”.

On the terms of a return, Duff does not see the UK having to join Schengen which begs the question: Why should it have an opt-out? Because it is obsessed with illegal immigration when illegal immigration is but a fraction of legal immigration?

As for the euro, he offers what might be described as the St. Augustine solution: “Oh Lord, make me join the euro, but not just yet”. In other words, never.

Nor am I convinced that all exiting 27 Member States would welcome the UK back with open arms, as Duff suggests. Some would, no doubt. But others might have reservations. Maybe Spain might want a permanent solution of the Gibraltar question, such as returning it to Spain. Every country has a veto on candidate countries. Who is to say that, at the time, Spanish politics might not push Spain to veto? Who can predict what other country might have a bone to pick at the time with the UK? The Article 49 joining process is a marathon, not a sprint.

I am not sure that the UK is as much loved as Duff thinks it is. Certainly, there are many in the “Brussels Bubble” who would welcome the UK back, but that may not be true in all 27 Member States and European politics today are a lot more volatile than when the UK first joined.

Duff suggests that the EU needs to call a “constitutional convention” to discuss new governance and membership structures, which could provide a landing zone for the UK in some outer ring. With all the problems the EU is facing, economic and political, not to mention geopolitical, I think the last thing the EU is going to do is expend political capital on calling a “constitutional convention”.

Duff’s paper is what might be called a “political and institutional” paper. It has little to say about economics. By economics, I do not mean membership of the euro, capital markets, banking union and all that stuff.

I mean the standard of living of ordinary people, the economics of everyday life, and how that develops over the coming years.

Ina recent paper for the Centre for European Reform, John Springford noted that “average wages in Britain are only slightly higher than they were in 2007”. No wonder people feel miserable. To put this another way, people are no better off than they were nearly twenty years ago. If that does not improve during the next five years, will Labour be re-elected? I doubt it.

As I write this, France is without a government and Germany has an election early in 2025 as a result of the collapse of the Scholz coalition. Together, these two are the economic heart of Europe. Who knows where they will be in five years time?

Janet Daley, not a commentator I would normally agree with, seems to me to describe it well when she writes in the Sunday Telegraph about the European post-WWII challenge to create a just society:

The response to this challenge was seen as ingenious and morally brave: free market economics tempered by democratic socialism. The rights of the individual would be maintained on the condition that no one would be consigned to hopeless poverty. The wealth created by those who were productive would be distributed to ensure that mass deprivation was prevented. There would be enough fiscal encouragement to ensure wealth creation and enough compassion to protect the underprivileged..

Much of the political turmoil in Europe can be put down to the fact that this model no longer seems to be working and, as Springford notes about the UK, incomes and living standards are stagnant. The UK is not alone in this.

It is the economics of the next five years that will dictate the relationship between the UK and the EU.

I will come back to the fracturing of the European post-WWII model in a future Scribbling.

A final point. As I was finishing this word came through about the seeming fall of Assad in Syria. Who knows what “rough beast” this will release?

We live in unpredictable times.