Britain’s future after Brexit is bright
The first phase of Brexit is due to come to a close at the end of this month. With Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Withdrawal Agreement Bill set to pass the House of Commons, the United Kingdom and the European Union will now proceed to hammer out an agreement that will determine their future trading relationship. This process is likely to bring with it a new series of accusations and counter-accusations as the two sides seek to defend their interests in defining the terms of future trade.
The upcoming decade also presents opportunities – both for Britain and for the European project. Once the rhetoric, rancour and recriminations unleashed by the 2016 referendum have been resolved, there is every reason to believe that both Britain and the EU can proceed with renewed amity and goodwill.
Paradoxically perhaps, Britain’s exit from the EU could pave the way for a better rapport between Westminster and European leaders, one which will be less strained for not having Britain involved as the enfant terrible of the EU, constantly scuppering the European commission’s project for ever closer integration. Instead, Britain’s new position as a close ally and competitor may make her a more effective and positive influence upon EU’s economic policies than she would have been within Brussels’ political structures.
The British political tradition is anarchic when compared with much of Europe – it is defined by an adversarial common law system, and the locus of its uncodified political constitution is in the sovereign power of parliament, which has no power to bind its successors. This was never going to be a tradition which would be easily reconciled with the top-down technocratic and legalistic administration embodied by the European Commission. This is especially the case when this commission was responsible for creating or influencing as much as 55% of British national laws by 2016.
This is at the heart of what Brexit has been about, and why Britons made the right decision when they voted to leave the EU – even in a globalised age, power must remain grounded by the concerns of those whom it is supposed to serve. When too much power becomes centralised and when those who wield it become out of touch, as with the European Commission, it must be redistributed back to the localities, and to the people.
The EU’s politicians now need to understand that, in being so uncompromising on issues such as freedom of movement and in failing to tackle the democratic deficit in the EU’s institutions, they have fuelled anxieties across Europe surrounding the erosion of national sovereignty and cultural identity. Leading voices in Brussels such as Donald Tusk or Guy Verhofstadt often rail against “populism” as the cause of all opposition to the EU – but they ought to reflect more upon how the dogmatic pursuit of “ever closer union” since 1992 has also created much disenchantment with European institutions.
After decades in which supra-national organisations have been hailed as the engines of progress, it is now necessary to put power back into the hands of those who feel left behind and disempowered by globalisation. For both Britain and the EU, the next decade provides a chance to re-orientate their politics, institutions, and policies to give people more power over their own lives.
Not all of the circumstances leading to the result of the UK’s 2016 referendum were the fault of the European Union. Communities such as Blyth Valley, for instance, have not so much been the victims of EU freedom of movement laws as the neglect of two generations of governments in Westminster. The 2019 general election result was a wakeup call for Westminster as much as Brussels – disparities in power and economic inequalities between the south and the rest of England and Wales contributed to the discontent which was expressed at the ballot box. It was a call for Britain’s political class to tend more to the post-industrial challenges faced by many working class Britons.
So far, the signs are positive – Boris Johnson’s government has been promising a vast redistribution of funds and the devolution of power to the towns of Wales, the English midlands, and the North of England. Doing devolution properly, he says, will be a priority of his government. Devolution packages will be complete with free trading ports, increased powers for elected mayors, and localised control of railways.
By pursuing such policies, Britain now has the ability to strike a new balance between the demands of world markets and the needs of its citizens who are struggling to make their way. It has a chance to find a new harmony, with a better balance between free trade, state investment, and light-handed protection, and pave the way for a more humane management of globalisation.
In this way, the trade negotiations conducted between Britain and the EU over the coming eleven months after 31st January 2020 are a chance to forge a new relationship that can allow for convergent economic interests to be aligned, while allowing a Britain to diverge in her non-European trade. Trade with Europe will necessarily remain important to the British economy, but this should not prevent the government from exploiting a crucial payoff of withdrawal from the customs union: the ability to strike independent deals with countries beyond the protectionist bloc of the EU 27.
While Johnson’s government has the parliamentary majority to allow it to play a high stakes, hardball game with the EU in the upcoming negotiations, sometimes discretion is the better part of valour. A nuanced approach to the negotiations would be wise. A very minimal agreement on services, one which allows Britain’s services industries to diverge from EU regulations, is desirable. However, if possible, this should be combined with a closer alignment with the EU on goods, in order to protect manufacturing jobs linked to European markets.
There is every reason to believe that Britain will be able to make a success of Brexit over the coming decade. Britain is a globally gregarious, services-driven power with cutting-edge technological and scientific industries. It is the world’s fifth or sixth largest economy and a leading soft power, with cultural influences expressed in language, music, literature and film. The United Kingdom also possesses a geopolitical sphere of influence in the Commonwealth, while English common law is employed as far afield as the financial markets of the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, and Singapore. It is the choice of law for financial contracts even for many EU member states with civil law systems.
After the chaos of the previous three years, the government finally delivering upon the greatest democratic exercise in British history is a suitable conclusion. The next decade can now be dedicated to re-building confidence in our institutions and to national revival. There is every indication that Britain can and will, in the sonorous phrase of Lord Tennyson, remain determined “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Several challenges remain ahead – yet even now, in the bitter heart of a British winter, it is hard to shake a sense of spring being in the air.