Agree a fair Brexit deal and Britain and the EU will get along better
It was never likely that the UK’s negotiations with the EU would conclude in a dignified fashion. The present situation, with the deadline delayed again, is a cross between the muddle of a Tolstoyan battle, Boris Johnson’s hairstyle and the Mock Turtle in Alice in Wonderland trying to persuade the snail to join the dance, in language that would give a Brexiteer nightmares: “The further off from England, the nearer is to France.” The unpersuaded snail is a firm little Englander.
We must also remember that Boris was a journalist (some of his critics would query the use of the past tense). Journalists know that there are two types of deadline. Observance of the first saves editors and sub-editors from nervous breakdowns. Failure to observe the second threatens to leave a hole in the paper. Boris never took the slightest notice of the first. As for the second, his colleagues were regularly scrambling for a plan B. On Europe, it is not clear which plan we have now reached. As a result, in the case of most of those whom I talk to, suspense is losing ground to tedium. The phrase “get Brexit done” is back on many lips.
Perhaps it is time to stand above the fog of battle and examine the fundamentals. What follows is an Anglo-centric assessment, but that could be a necessary corrective. Even after years of debate, the English position, as distinct from the Scottish position, is insufficiently understood on the continent. A lot of them still cannot see why we want to leave. It might help if they grasped a basic point. We never really joined.
The UK signed up during a period of maximum economic weakness and minimum national self-confidence. There was little enthusiasm. Most of those who acquiesced in membership thought that we were joining to secure trading benefits in a common market. There was a small, sophisticated and usually deceitful minority who did believe in a European Union. But few of these federasts tried to share their vision with the British electorate. In the UK, Europhilia was a love that dare not speak its name – at least, not if you wanted votes.
The British Europeans knew that they were transplanting a large new organ into our body politic. In the first few years, immuno-suppressant drugs would be needed, in large doses. But that was merely in order to manage the transition, while the public gradually came to accept our common European home.
That simply did not happen, for two reasons. First, the British economy recovered. We did not need to depend on Europe. The second is even more important. Geography is the playing-field of history. The essential fact of English geography is the Channel, the basis for our exceptionalism. Anyone who wants to understand the last thousand years of British and European history should start by contrasting the Channel and the Rhine. For most of that period, the Channel was a moat, which protected us from invasion. Its one failure was in 1066 and that was a felix culpa. It ensured that we did not become part of south Scandinavia. As for the Rhine, it should have been the greatest conduit of commerce and civilisation in all history. Instead it became a contested frontier and a constant battleground.
By 1945, centuries of such battles appeared to have shattered Europe. As the Americans and the Russians confronted each other across the ruins, it seemed that Europe’s final destiny would also be as a playing field, for the final, terminal war.
Out of that imminent horror there came a moral imperative which underlay the new European order: that there must be a better way. History is lived forwards and written backwards. Because of that, it is easy to take developments for granted; to assume that what actually happened was always inevitable. That was not how most thoughtful European observers saw the future in 1945. They did not believe that their successes were inevitable. Their efforts should have earned them the gratitude of successor generations, and on the continent, that is often true.
In the UK, even the EU’s most determined critics should salute its historic achievements. But we could never have made more than a limited contribution to their rebuilding programme. We believed that we could rely on our moat. Sweden and Malta excepted, every other member or potential member of the EU had invaded its neighbours, or been invaded by its neighbours, or had seen its constitutional arrangements torn up by revolution and civil war: in some cases more than one such misfortune.
They had no reason to trust their frontiers or their institutions. In some cases, they also distrusted themselves. Our geopolitical experience was wholly different, as was our psycho-political one. In 1906, Sir Francis Bertie, the then Ambassador to France, wrote that the French had an instinctive dread of Germany and a hereditary distrust of Britain. Not far beneath the surface, that remains true. This explains a covert but continuous French ambivalence towards the British in Europe. Their European ideal is a French jockey on a German horse. The Germans pay the bills; the French take the decisions. The rest? As Jacques Chirac was once tactless enough to say, they should “se taire”: shut up. They are decreasingly inclined to take his advice. As for us Brits, we had no wish to ride. Still less, are we prepared to be ridden. So the logic of the French position is that they would be better off without us.
In this case, however, logic is not enough. There are two explanations as to why a nation which prides itself on applying logic to politics is restraining its Cartesianism . The first is resentment. They refuse to forgive us for D-Day and they want us to stoop under the yoke in order to apologise for liberating them. They cannot bear the thought of Britain succeeding outside the EU. The second is that we are a convenient distraction. As long as we are making trouble, they can claim that the Rosbifs are responsible for all the EU’s problems. Once we are gone, such an evasion might no longer be possible.
Beyond the current difficulties of the Brexit negotiations, the EU faces three crises. The first is the single currency. It was designed as the engine of political union. Thus far, it has proved much more durable than the many sceptics predicted. We insisted that it was merely kicking a can down the road. Sooner or later, there would be a cross-roads. Well, they have still not run out of road. But that must eventually happen. It is impossible to run the same monetary policy in Aachen and Athens, Amsterdam and Messina, without fiscal transfers. This must mean a much bigger EU budget, leading to pressure for much more democratic input, leading to a true European Union. So how would that go down in France? Are the French really prepared to be an equivalent of Texas of Western Australia in a European federation? Or are they hoping that “eventually” can be indefinitely postponed? There is no simple answer.
The other problems are related: the culture war pitting Brussels against Warsaw and Budapest, plus the growth of populism. The UK can do nothing to resolve any of that. What we could do post-Brexit is help the EU to prosper under free trade, which would almost certainly mean a large trade surplus with us. We could also help with cooperation on defence and security. All that is possible, even easy, as long as there is a fair deal this month. After one, who knows? The British might even be prepared to acknowledge that the EU is entitled to take pride in its history.