With just over a week to the summit which will settle Britain’s future relationship with the European Union, it is now clear – to the surprise of Brexiteers, who had boasted during the referendum of making “the easiest trade deal in history” – that the British government is facing the most unpalatable trade-offs if it is to strike a deal.
By far the strongest argument advanced by Brexiteers in favour of leaving was that the European Union was an inherently unstable organisation and was liable to imminent collapse, so Britain’s interests lay in getting out while it could before it became engulfed in the rubble. Of course, this analysis was directly contradicted by the Brexiteers’ second-best argument. This was that the EU was on the point of becoming a super state so Britain had to leave before it lost its independence.
This inconsistency did not do the Brexit cause any harm. After all, in 2016, in the immediate wake of the eurozone upheavals and the migration crisis – both of which at times had put the EU under immense strain – it wasn’t hard to persuade people that the EU was a failing institution.
This narrative of the imploding EU was more than just a campaigning device. It was also the central unifying theme underpinning the Brexit project. For Brexit to make sense the EU needed to fall apart. Brexit was driven by the belief that a nation state is inherently superior to pooling sovereignty in multilateral and supranational institutions. But it required that a nation state such as Britain be free to negotiate bilaterally with other nation states.
This was implicit in many of the statements of leading Brexiteers. Whether it was one current UK minister’s suggestion during the referendum campaign that the day after Britain voted to leave the EU the prime minister would fly to Berlin to agree a trade deal with Germany. Or the now Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s repeated insistence (though no longer repeated today) that German car manufacturers and Italian prosecco-makers would guarantee a great trade deal. It was explicit in another current UK minister’s pre-referendum boast that Brexit would “trigger the democratic liberation of Europe”.
The idea of the EU being prone to imminent collapse has a long pedigree.
The core of the Brexit analysis was that the creation of the Union was a historic error. Indeed, British governments had resisted its creation in the 1950s and it had remained politically contentious even when Britain joined the Common Market (EEC), as it then was, nearly 20 years later.
This view resurfaced at the time of the Maastricht Treaty and the later debates over whether Britain should join the euro, when it became axiomatic among British Eurosceptics, as well as almost the entire British economic establishment, that the euro was doomed to failure. Inevitably, this view hardened during the euro crisis, which appeared to vindicate the Eurosceptic narrative.
Unless the United Kingdom breaks up first – the Brexiteers may one day be proved right
Indeed, British Eurosceptics went out of their way to give the Eurozone a nudge towards the abyss, none more so than the former Bank of England governor who, much to the irritation of Eurozone policymakers, rarely missed an opportunity to destabilise the single currency by questioning its viability.
The inconvenient truth for Brexiteers is that three years on from the referendum, the EU has not fallen apart. It has become stronger. For the first time since the Greek crisis exploded in 2009, there is no shadow of financial crisis hanging over the eurozone. In Greece and Italy, the two countries at the epicentre of recent financial stability concerns, populist governments have been replaced by mainstream pro-European ones.
In Brussels a new commission will take office on November 1 led by Germany’s Ursula von der Leyen with a mandate from national governments to extend the EU’s economic and strategic power and influence. That includes a new focus on areas that directly impinge on core British interests, including the development of new EU rules for the digital sector, new steps towards tackling climate change and the signing of new free trade deals.
The Brexiteers have misunderstood the historical and political forces that bind the other 27 EU countries to continue to seek common solutions to common problems through the institutions of the EU. They also failed to appreciate the resilience of the eurozone, which was quite different to the fixed exchange rate regimes (ERM) that failed in the past.
They failed to spot the significance of the creation of the common central bank (ECB), which meant that no country need ever be starved of liquidity, while at the same time raising the cost of an exit to a prohibitively high level for both the leaving country and the rest of the bloc.
Above all, they failed dismally to anticipate the changed geopolitical context, with Europe increasingly caught in the crossfire of rising tensions between an assertive China and protectionist Trumpian America. This has had the effect of encouraging EU member states to bind themselves even closer together. This European unity of purpose has had profound implications for Brexit. Not only have the May and Johnson governments found themselves confronted by an EU that has remained unexpectedly united, with all British diplomatic attempts to sow disunity failing. They have also been obliged to negotiate with an EU as it is, rather than as they would wish it to be, with profound consequences for the kind of deal available.
To the Brexiteers’ surprise, the EU insisted on giving overriding priority to its own sovereignty and the integrity of a rules-based single market, rather than trade with the United Kingdom.
Of course – unless the United Kingdom breaks up first – the Brexiteers may one day be proved right. Over the centuries, many European orders have come and gone. But equally many European political constructions have endured long past the point when they no longer appeared viable. The EU’s end now looks farther off than any thought likely.
That leaves Britain with an unpalatable choice between now and the EU summit on October 17. Either to accept the reality of its newly subservient position and take the deal on the table. Or quit with no deal (if Johnson flouts the will of parliament) – with all the disruptive and painful economic and logistic consequences – and work from the outside with other global powers frustrated with the EU’s resilience (such as Russia and the US), to hasten its death-knell.
Or, lastly, the Johnson government could admit that the central premise of Brexit – that Europe was falling apart – was wrong.