Was Brexit inevitable? Or is it primarily down to a failure of statecraft?
This article is a response to Paul Tyler’s article “De Gaulle and Brexit, was it all inevitable?”. I had originally planned just to comment, but unfortunately the comment started to stretch to a thousand words, so I thought I’d inflict a whole article on the internet instead.
Paul’s central point that Brexit was always on the cards. For reasons recognised by De Gaulle 50 years ago, Britain was always destined to crash out of the European integration project. I do think there is an argument to be made that Brexit was indeed inevitable, but unfortunately not for the reasons outlined in Paul’s article. Fundamentally I believe this saga has less to do with tensions within the EU and more to do with Britain’s creaking constitution and party political system. The UK’s voting system meant that the Conservatives had to absorb Ukip in order to survive as a governing party, giving a fringe group an outsized influence over policy. Also, the lack of a stable constitutional settlement in the UK since devolution meant that no-votes in two out of the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom were disregarded by what is, in effect, the English government.
Thousands of words could be dedicated to the UK’s constitutional mess, but let’s return to Paul’s arguments. Is it the case that Britain was never reconciled to being part of a closely integrated Europe and therefore had to fall out eventually? Paul states that the UK had “consistently been by some distance the most Eurosceptic member” of the EU. Certainly the UK was by 2016 on the outer ring of integration, having not joined the Euro and with opt-outs on various aspects of EU policy, but Britain was not alone in this position. Denmark has a similar policy on the Euro and security and justice. Whether or not there is an official opt-out in place, other non-Euro states know that there will never really be an obligation to join the single currency unless and until there is political will on their part. Other tensions exist between members, or groups of members, in many areas. For example, The Netherlands and Germany are known as the fiscally conservative nations, while France and Italy’s purse strings are more relaxed. Plus, Poland and Hungary can hardly be said to be slavish followers of the European ideal and indeed were and are the real ‘bad boys’ of the EU, rather than the UK.
The article doesn’t mention, but you could point to opinion polls that showed rampant Euroscepticism prior to 2016. Opinion polls change though — indeed the UK now has perhaps the largest and most active pro-European group of voters of any EU nation, so opinion polls themselves also cannot support a claim of Brexit inevitability.
Paul’s article goes on to assert that the direction of travel of the EU was something that the UK could never have been on board with and that the EU has already moved on far further than the UK would ever have countenanced since 2016. Some of the areas of integration cited are “rule of law provisions”, carbon emission cuts, sanctions for Turkey. Paul says, “none of this would have been possible with Britain as a member”. I’m not so sure. Yes, the UK would have fought its corner in the negotiations and the resulting deals may not have looked exactly the same. But there’s no reason to believe that the UK would have vetoed all or any of these measures. The UK has historically supported co-ordinated action on climate change and it was often a powerful voice in the EU calling for sanctions against countries who disregarded human rights or deviated from democratic norms. British negotiators were skilled at managing to achieve a workable compromise on most areas of policy and the UK, historically, was not known for wielding its veto excessively.
As a self-described “ex-Remainer” it is discouraging to see Leaver lines uncritically repeated in the article. Did Britain really “lose sovereignty”? Arguably EU membership increased Britain’s sovereignty and influence in the world. Surely the correct term is that the UK “pooled” sovereignty with other members?
Similarly, Paul states, “we must accept that Brexit does give Britain greater democratic control and yes, sovereignty, than otherwise would have been the case.” I’m afraid I don’t accept this. For starters, the UK Government has made a mockery of democratic control, leaving negotiations until the last minute so that they could not face proper scrutiny, ramming the legislation through parliament in one afternoon and dissolving the parliamentary committee that would hold the government to account on Brexit.
On the issue of sovereignty, one glaring example of the UK’s reduced sovereignty post-Brexit is the UK trade deal with Japan, in which the International Trade minister to some fanfare secured a deal for British cheese (which seems to be an obsession of hers) to be exported to the Far East. Only lately have exporters discovered that in the small print of this deal, British opportunities to export cheese only exist if European nations do not use all of the EU’s quota.
Fortunately, I think we both agree, if and when the heat goes out of this Brexit debate, Britain will likely once more pragmatically agree to pool sovereignty to gain influence, whether this be on trade or foreign affairs.
For me the most revealing line of the article was this; “Brexit, a tragedy, no doubt, in some form or other and sooner or later, was inevitable.” Surely this is the point of politics, to avoid tragedies, even if the way forward is difficult? Should we resign ourselves to a terrible outcome, or should we strive to create the change we want to see? After all, Nigel Farage never lost sight of his goal, despite the apparent inevitability of UK membership of the EU prior to 2016.
De Gaulle, Paul rightly says, was wary of Britain’s membership of the EEC and vetoed two applications. But it can’t be argued that this was necessarily due to Britain’s reluctance to integrate — indeed at that time the country was showing a great deal of willingness. It was France which vetoed the European Defence Community in 1954 and later it was De Gaulle who initiated the “Empty Chair Crisis” — refusing to participate in European institutions until its demands for a veto on certain issues were met. Certainly prior to the 1980s France was Europe’s awkward partner. More pertinent to his veto was De Gaulle’s distrust of the UK’s relationship with the US and what it perceived as the UK’s lack of commitment to containing the power of Germany, an obsession the country has thankfully moved on from.
