Brexit and the roads not taken

Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution, 1945-2016, Tom McTague, Picador, £11.99

The Long Disenchantment: Reassessing UK-EU Relations from Accession to Brexit, 1969-2016, Ilaria Poggiolini, Springer, £54.99

Far From EUtopia: How Europe is Failing – and Britain Could do Better, Ross Clark, Abacus, £8

Remarkably, it has been ten years since that seemingly defining moment in recent British history: the referendum on European Union (EU) membership in June 2016, which resulted in Britain eventually leaving the EU in January 2020. The embers are still burning, fuelled by passion, animosity, ignorance and confusion over the whole issue of Britain’s withdrawal. Three recent books on the lead-up to that epochal event shed revealing light on why Brexit occurred, but even here, as with most books on the topic, there are still important historical episodes which remain overlooked or insufficiently explored.

Tom McTague’s Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution, 1945-2016  has received the most attention – and praise – of the three. As editor of the New Statesman, it might have been thought that McTague’s contribution would have an anti-Brexit tone, but his book is generally balanced. (Some of the sharpest critiques of the EU come from the Left.) Rather, he is interested in how political ideas can win wars despite losing many battles on the way: a summation of how decades of closer European integration came to be challenged in 2016.

France has always been integral to the European project; President Macron ensures that it remains so to this day, as he pushes forward the European agenda at every opportunity, echoing the French Prime Minister René Pleven’s plan of 1950, which advocated a European army – an understandable reaction to three crushing German invasions of France in the previous seven decades. The real precursor of the current EU came that year with France’s Schuman Plan and the construction of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), embracing France and Germany as its leaders. If these raw instruments of war were under supranational control, it was thought that the two great protagonists would be incapable of going to war with each other again. Despite the ostensibly economic motivations of the Plan, it was in reality a cloak for closer political integration, as envisioned by such Euro-federalists as Jean Monnet, who, as McTague notes, wrote to Pleven openly about the need for ‘a political concept… federated around an expanded Schuman Plan’. (Monnet is often hailed as the visionary of the EU; little is mentioned of his shady business background.) For many, Britain’s refusal to join the ECSC was a lost opportunity to share in Europe’s growing prosperity over the next two decades. So why didn’t Britain join?

Within seven years, the Treaty of Rome had been signed between Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux countries, bringing into existence the European Economic Community on 1 January 1958. This evolved and abbreviated into the European Community and then the European Union (note the dropping of the economic adjective). For Attlee’s Labour government, this political trajectory was foreseen, accompanied by genuine reservations over the lack of democratic accountability of the endeavour. McTague shows how some Conservatives shared Harold Macmillan’s prescient fears of a federal Europe with a single currency and monetary policy dominated by Germany. He and Deputy Conservative Leader Anthony Eden, whom McTague recognises, contrary to some myths, as ‘a high-minded Tory internationalist… supportive of European unity’, devised ‘imaginative and ambitious attempts to avoid the choice Britain faced but could not make: to join Monnet’s new Europe and accept the loss of sovereignty, or to stay out and accept the loss of influence that entailed’. We are still arguing that point nearly 80 years on.

McTague sensibly places the Schuman Plan amid the postwar rise of the United States and the Cold War, but here he – as do so many others – misses the vital impact of the Korean War. While McTague praises Eden for seizing the occasion of the conflict to promote Britain drawing closer to Europe, the economic situation is not fully appreciated. As we all know, Britain was bust after fighting the war; however, its global Commonwealth ties ensured a flow of cheap imports and essential raw resources at a time of shortages and greatly inflated prices due to the massive absorptions of the Korean War. ECSC membership was not needed; indeed, it was likely detrimental. Besides, as Churchill remarked in the House of Commons on 27 June 1950:

If he [Stafford Cripps, Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer] asked me, ‘Would you agree to a supranational authority which has the power to tell Great Britain not to cut any more coal or make any more steel, but to grow tomatoes instead?’, I should say, without hesitation, the answer is ‘No.’

Britain’s postwar New Jerusalem would not look so shining if Europe demanded laying off ex-servicemen from their coal and steel jobs.

Furthermore, as the Korean war demonstrated, the world was still in flux. If we think the UK’s current carousel of leaders is remarkable, then look at the bewildering speed of changes in government in postwar Italy and France, both sporting very powerful Communist parties, which often seemed on the verge of power. McTague paraphrases the leading Tory Rab Butler’s notes to the cabinet in 1955: the six countries in the ECSC

wanted to establish a united Europe with shared institutions and a common European market with harmonised standards. None of these things were acceptable to the British government, which still had an international sterling zone, global trading commitments and nationalised industries paying workers more than those on the continent.

Thus, it made perfect sense at the time for Britain to stay out of the ECSC and the EEC. Hindsight and ensuing events may suggest the risk should have been taken, but that is a comfortably retrospective position.

McTague, like many other commentators, shows how the Suez Crisis of 1956 left Britain exposed as a second-tier world power. This was made more painful by Britain’s ongoing relative economic decline, thrown into sharp relief by comparison with the EEC’s Trente Glorieuses – the 30 glorious years of growing prosperity in Europe, especially in the majority of the EEC Six countries. Much of this growth was genuine, but it should be remembered that factors such as a low-base starting point after the destruction of the Second World War and demographic enlargement enhanced the economic figures. By the 1960s, Britain felt left behind and ready to sign up, on particular terms: ‘Europe had become a magic shield that could protect Britain from reality.’ Applications by the two Harolds – Macmillan and Wilson – in 1961 and 1967 were vetoed by French President Charles de Gaulle, who did not want another cock crowing in his farmyard. By the time Edward Heath’s Conservative government finally hooked up with the EEC in 1973, de Gaulle had exited the stage and the Trente Glorieuses were over. It is a very debatable matter whether the UK gained much economic benefit at all from subsequent membership – certainly the 1970s, with global oil shocks and disastrous domestic economic policies, proved that the instant, hoped-for panacea was unobliging – but had it joined up from the start, it may well have done so. McTague admires Heath’s bravery in making the case for enrolment, noting its huge significance: ‘Britain had accepted the Treaty of Rome in full, without exception: it had signed up to the goal of Europe’s ever closer union and the reality of its High Authority.’ The EEC referendum of 1975 confirmed Britain’s commitment. It also verifies McTague’s views on the longevity of ideas: in this case, of Euroscepticism in Britain up to the present day.

It is at this point that Ilaria Poggiolini joins in with The Long Disenchantment: Reassessing UK-EU Relations from Accession to Brexit, 1969-2016. Whereas McTague provides an accessible history, Poggiolini, Professor of International History at Padua University, serves up a dense academic account. Such academic tomes are vitally important to cut through many of the myths and polemics of the Brexit debate. Poggiolini thus complements McTague with added heft and affirms much of his analysis; even so, the very nature of academic specialisms can inadvertently lead to important omissions. She argues that Britain has made valuable contributions to the EU project in such areas as technology, defence, democratisation and, most notably, the formation of the Single Market. The last of these is undoubtedly true – it was a cherished goal of Margaret Thatcher (for a while at least); but the extent of the others and Britain’s overall influence is heatedly contested. Again, had Britain signed up in 1950, things may have been different.

An important approach of Poggiolini’s book is to argue, quite rightly, that Brexit was not pre-ordained – the teleological destiny of Europe’s ‘awkward partner’ is again a judgment of hindsight. Just as entry in the first place was largely determined by contemporary factors, so was the exit: as the EU expanded, so UK sovereignty was further, necessarily, diluted; a huge increase in immigration from Europe, especially from recent accession states such as Poland and Romania, caused deep concern among many, not least the working class who often felt that their wages were being undercut by the new influx to the labour force, with housing and public services also coming under pressure.

The book is a rewarding read but displays elements of academic removal from the reality on the ground. It raises questions that are really not too difficult to answer. Why did the EU tolerate for so lengthy a period Britain’s phases of agitated opposition on issues such as extended Qualified Majority Voting and the Single Currency? As always in politics, it’s a case of suivez l’argent: Britain was always only second, occasionally third, after Germany as the largest net contributor to the EU’s coffers. There was also the possibility – indeed, under Tony Blair, the likelihood – that Britain would move closer to Europe in often large steps. Other issues are more dubious, such as a perceived tipping point that Britain was deemed more of a liability than an asset to the EU. That point was never reached.

The Thatcher premiership was pivotal in UK-EU relations. Both McTague and Poggiolini are admirably clear on Thatcher’s ardent early Euro-enthusiasm, culminating in the Single European Market. In a chapter nicely titled ‘Thatcher’s European Thatcherism’, Poggiolini shows where that changed. While McTague entertainingly expands on the exciting drama of British domestic politics, she offers more of a European perspective. Unsurprisingly for the household economy priorities of Thatcher, we again must follow the money. Here we are fully into the alfresco-dining sounding BBQ – the British Budget Question.

Much has been made of the British rebate on the country’s EU contributions, and both McTague and Poggiolini cover these developments well. But even here further clarification is required. The rebate (technically an ‘abatement’) was a reflection of the huge amount of EU taxpayers’ money that went into supporting Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy. Britain’s much smaller agricultural sector meant that it was losing out on redistributive policy. But the rebate came at a cost: an increase in Britain’s VAT rate, a portion of which went to the EU. Nor was Thatcher too pleased when Jacques Delors, the socialist president of the European Commission, turned up at the Trades Union Congress in Bournemouth in 1988 espousing an interventionist ‘social Europe’ of enhanced workers’ rights and stronger unions, all of which prompted an a cappella sing-song of ‘Frère Jacques’ by the delegates. As McTague rightly claims of this antithesis of Thatcherism: ‘it is hard to overstate the importance of the moment’. Indeed so, but Poggiolini, focusing on Europe, misses it altogether. She is better on Thatcher’s defining Bruges speech soon after, setting out her vision of Europe. Tory David Willetts, former cabinet minister and now a peer, wrote in the Financial Times in 2018 in the aftermath of the second EU referendum (he called for a third) that ‘the Bruges speech put Britain on the road to Brexit’. But as McTague judiciously notes, ‘reading Thatcher’s speech today, what is most striking is just how pro-European it is’.

Perhaps understated in much of the analysis of Thatcher’s growing Euroscepticism is how crucial her personality and charisma were among both politicians and public. Even today she still has the power to vehemently divide opinion. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s after her defenestration, support for her – in both her policies and hand-bagging style of politics – was often fiercely loyal; where she led, others followed. Without her, it is unlikely there would have been anyone (before Farage, arguably) with the charisma to keep the Eurosceptic movement going as a viable force.

What transformed Thatcher from a Europhile into a Eurosceptic? The Delors moment above was one reason; another was the close engagement with EC leaders and the frustrations she encountered with them: her way of doing business was not their way of doing business. A particular episode during the Milan Council in June 1985 really shook Thatcher; it is a seriously neglected key moment. The EC had convened this European Council meeting in the northern Italian city to settle the Single European Act that would establish the Single Market that still resonates in the UK-EU debate today. The SEA that came into force the following year is widely regarded as Thatcher’s great contribution to the EU in her pursuit of economic liberalisation. So what happened in Milan? While McTague omits events entirely, Poggiolini offers some good, if incomplete, coverage.

While, for Thatcher, the council was a necessary step towards establishing the Single Market, for the EC other issues were also to the fore, not least of which were the new measures of majority voting in political cooperation (Qualified Majority Voting – QMV – was a huge political issue of the day) and the goal of a new Treaty on European Union. Thatcher’s anti-federalist instincts bridled at the prospect, not least because, she argued, the 1957 Treaty of Rome had yet to be fully implemented. An informal federalist triumvirate of France’s François Mitterrand, Germany’s Helmut Kohl and the hosting nation’s notoriously corrupt Bettino Craxi conspired against her to extend majority voting and establish an intergovernmental conference (IGC) for a new treaty: ‘Together they cornered Thatcher’ and laid ‘a diplomatic ambush’ for her, Poggiolini rightly observes.

But there is more to matters than this. Perry Anderson, ce grand homme de gauche, explains matters in his Ever Closer Union: Europe in the West, published in 2001 and one of the most important books written on the EU. While seven out of the ten countries at the meeting were in favour of the proposed IGC, three – Britain, Denmark and Greece – were opposed to it. Anderson writes: ‘By the convention established at Luxembourg… that was more than enough to block the move.’ However, Craxi, as chair of the meeting, cynically and unorthodoxly declared that ‘since convening an inter-conference was a procedural rather than a substantive issue, he was putting it to the vote’. The result was, inevitably, seven for and three against. Craxi’s bluff had worked. The political scientist and EU federalist Luuk van Middelaar welcomed the legerdemain as a secret ‘coup disguised as a procedural decision’; it presented ‘the Community with a robust supreme authority’.

Thatcher was furious. As Poggiolini notes, ‘outmanoeuvring her signalled that she could now be openly marginalised’. The British PM later rued not vetoing the whole process, but that would have meant forgoing her cherished Single Market proposals. That was the bait that ensnared her in the trap. Having experienced first hand the ruthlessly efficient execution of the EC’s integrationist movement, Thatcher was left bruised. ‘She held a grudge against her partners that became increasingly vocal in the following years,’ is Poggiolini’s restrained but correct verdict. Thatcher had been handbagged.

While McTague offers an excellent, highly readable account for the general reader, and Poggiolini offers her expertise in a rewardingly productive academic volume, Ross Clark, in Far From EUtopia: How Europe is Failing – and Britain Could do Better , provides a rambunctiously enjoyable slab of Euroscepticism since Brexit – written by someone who voted Remain in the referendum. It has long been a mystery to me, Europhile that I am (in the older, truer sense, not the political one), why so many in Britain see nothing but goodness and culture and light in Europe (which they consider in political rather than geographical terms) and nothing but backward, benighted blustering in Britain, as if there was a Manichaean divide. Politicians generally belong to the same global political class, wherever they may operate or be influential. European politicos bring their own failings and personality disorders to their domains every bit as much as British ones do to theirs. As such, European countries have their own share of problems to compare with Britain’s.

Clark homes in on this. He explains why so many of us in Britain have a rose-tinted view of all things European: ‘We idolise Europe because of holiday syndrome.’ We travel to Europe to explore the best of its countryside, cities, food, wine, culture, weather and change of lifestyle; we do not go there to visit its slums, derelict industrial estates, drug dens, crime zones or to participate in its many riots and become ensnared in its bureaucracy. (Not unless we have booked through a dodgy travel agent.) How many of us return from a continental holiday and think what a relief it is to be home in overcast Old Blighty? Clark is not making the case for a smugly proud Britain – far from it – he simply keeps things in perspective as he surveys a level playing field.

He has a particular interest in economics and statistics, arguing that while Britain’s economy is in dire straits, it has been for two decades, seriously weakened by the great financial crisis of 2008-9 and Covid. To the above disasters can be added the Russo-Ukraine war and some of the highest energy costs in the world affecting productivity. But Britain’s performance has not been noticeably worse than the EU’s since Brexit; the tide has been going out for nearly everyone: ‘Britain and the EU are both locked in the same cycle of decline.’

On some indices, Clark sees Britain doing better than her European ‘partners/competitors’, the relative reliability of our public transport being one, would you believe? (Clark’s list of European failings will evoke either sympathy or Schadenfreude as he exposes several golden myths of the EU.) More broadly, across industry, manufacturing, healthcare, racism, crime, the environment, living and housing costs, etc., Britain is performing overall neither fantastically better nor woefully worse than Europe. Clark does a good job in disproving the doom-laden forecasts of entrenched Remainers, and comes to the sensible conclusion: ‘We have simply become a different breed of European social democracy and trotted alongside the EU.’ This is all very convincing, but still: who of us wouldn’t want to live a while in Provence? To ‘holiday syndrome’ might be added another: ‘the grass is always greener syndrome’.

Clark is at his most excoriating when it comes to what is euphemistically known as the EU’s ‘democratic deficit.’ ‘The European model of democracy’, he writes, revolves ‘around a permanent infrastructure of rights laid down by lofty legal institutions. Consultation with the people is distinctly limited and constricted within strict boundaries.’ Whatever a human rights court rules ‘cannot be challenged by anyone’. Although he does not use the term, Clark basically describes a kritocracy. It is more nuanced than that, but his chapter on democracy is too short for these nuances to be explored further. Oddly, the Brexit debate in Britain – then and now – still tends to focus on economic factors rather than democratic ones.

So, where are we ten years on from the referendum and over six years on from Britain’s legal departure from the EU? Still in a bit of a muddle in many ways. Brexit regret, argues Clark, owes as much to successive British governments being reluctant to grasp the opportunities he sees offered by the withdrawal from the EU. The failings since Brexit have mainly been political ones; as such, anything that is going wrong with the country can be conveniently blamed on Brexit, a diverting scapegoat for the lack of political leadership. He is clear that Brexit is not some magical cure-all for the country’s many ills; nor is it a new source for them.

As ever, events will determine Britain’s future relationship with the EU. The present government, and potential parties in a future coalition administration, are advocating for the restoration of much closer ties, with the possible intention – stated or otherwise – of a form of rejoining the EU in a different guise. Antagonists of the EU – most importantly Trump and Putin – are maladroitly smoothing the way here through their trade barriers and military escapades. The EU will not miss such an opportunity to exhort its citizens to rally round the European flag. That the flag represents a political institution and not the European people will be deemed irrelevant.