The 2024 election was a turning-point in the post-Brexit recuperation, but it has taken two years to properly understand its significance. Now it feels like we’ve finally got to a point where we can revisit 2024 with a clearer perspective, and nail down what changed as a result of the election. However, to do that we need to go back to the beginning; to 2016 and the Brexit referendum.
For remainers the referendum outcome was a shock. It was far worse than a disappointing election result, where we find that the ‘other lot’ have won, and we hope for a better result next time. The referendum was not like that. There would be no ‘next time’. The change was forever, and the winners- the ‘other lot’ – were a very different lot from those we had learned to live with. The referendum result triggered a slow coup d’etat, as the brexiteers took control of government and parliament. Theresa May wasn’t really one of them, she was ambivalent about Brexit, so she had to look fierce to ride the tiger. But when Johnson took over in 2019 he injected real poison into the process. He purged the conservative party of remainers, and picked fights with the EU whenever he could. His government was intentionally and performatively hostile to Europe; and by extension, hostile to anyone who saw themselves as European. It brought home to us that there would be no replay for this match. In retrospect the pre-Brexit years started to look (to quote A E Housman) like a ‘land of lost content’.
So how did remainers deal with this, out here in the provinces? We found small ways to push back, and we found other people who were pushing back also. But we felt very thin on the ground. Some of the big pre-referendum remainer voices went quiet after the referendum, maybe ‘respecting the decision’ in some cases, and in other cases maybe just giving up. Nonetheless others fought on, nationally and locally. We worked hard to keep our spirits up, to keep a sense of agency, to oppose the Brexit government, oppose hard Brexit, oppose the petty enmities that the brexiteers engineered; just keep opposing, and keep together. The pre-Brexit years were increasingly a distant memory.
The Labour victory in 2024 ended the hostility and relieved much of the pain. Suddenly there was hope; a change of direction, a movement back toward Europe, and a feeling that rejoin was again a rational goal, not just nostalgia. All kinds of reconnections and co-operations were on the table. We started to experience again the feeling of European-ness; of being part of a bigger society that is congenial and familiar. It was great, for a while. But Labour’s arrival in power also made the process of coping much more complicated. Our ‘land of lost content’, visible again from a distance, nonetheless retreated like a mirage as we tried to approach it. Instead we had the hard business of negotiation, by a government that was clearly pro-European, but clearly also terrified of angering the brexiteers. Starmer backed carefully toward Europe, to ‘make Brexit work’. It was a slow process.
Then, this summer, nearly 2 years on from the election, the 10th anniversary of the referendum arrived. And, as often with anniversaries, lots of buried memories started to surface; in particular, memories of our original joining of the EU in 1973. We were reminded that it had all been highly contingent. There was never anything natural, inevitable, predestined about coming into the EU. It might never have happened, just as the referendum and Brexit might never have happened.
For those of us who had lived decades in the EU, the first instinct was restoration; put history into reverse and go back to how things were. But if we look back dispassionately, its clear that restoration is impossible. The UK’s membership of the EU was built on an rickety edifice of concessions and exceptions; the Wilson renegotiation; the Thatcher rebate; the decision to stay outside the Euro; the decision to stay out of the Schengen zone; the decision to stay out of the Social Chapter. And for a while we got away with it. We were truly in a privileged position, enjoying a bespoke niche that was carved out of the EU’s rules with a combination of diplomatic finesse and bloody-minded obduracy. It reflected the UK’s clout and credibility, and it fed into Tony Blair’s confident (but perhaps vacuous) rhetoric about being at the heart of Europe. We were in a sweet spot.
But it has been increasingly clear since Labour came into power that the prospect of regaining that sweet spot is vanishingly small. With the best will in the world on the part of the Labour government, the specific circumstances that gave us those concessions are not going to happen again. In any case we are damaged goods, with a wobbling economy, hollowed out public finances, a run of weak, thwarted prime ministers; and, above all, Brexit. No more exceptions for us.
So what do we do? forget about exceptionalism and go back in without concessions? Go into the Eurozone, go into Schengen, and the rest of it? The UK could prosper in that. And it might be the only deal on offer from the EU.
But persuading the British people of that would be quite another matter. Public resistance to the prospect of losing the pound was very strong at the time the Euro was introduced, and that resistance was strengthened by the experience of watching the Eurozone struggle with the financial crisis of 2011. It looked very much then as if the Euro would fail. And that has not been forgotten. That same public resistance to entering the Eurozone is likely to be as strong as ever if we go back in.
But, unfortunately, Europeans don’t have much reason to empathise with our sensibilities about sterling. For many in Europe the historical experience of national currencies was very mixed. Germany’s collective memory of 1920s inflation is a nightmare. France also had to make a fresh start with the Franc in 1960; and for eastern European countries the experience of soviet control of their currencies was not a happy one. So the depth of attachment to national currencies is variable. In the end most Europeans were able to walk away from their own, and learn to live with the Euro. I think they will expect us to do the same.
Entering the Schengen zone will also stir the most atavistic terrors of foreign invasion, and they probably don’t need to be elaborated here. All in all attempting to re-enter the EU on those terms would be a gift to Reform and to the Tories, and would almost certainly bring electoral disaster for pro-European parties. So we seem to be out of options.
But there may be other ways of re-entering Europe. Looking at the bigger picture, the Russian threat has developed steadily throughout the past two decades, and the deterioration in the behaviour of the US has been a problem for the EU, the UK, Canada and some important Latin American and Asian countries. Mark Carney is working to build a network of middle-ranking powers to counterbalance the bullying of the US, Russia and China. That is bringing Canada closer to the EU. There is already a Canada/EU trade treaty, and the dynamic at present must be toward further convergence, both in trade and in security. Canada is in many ways more European than the US, with its dual British/French heritage and its parliamentary system. The fit would seem to be a good one.
And what about Turkey? That isn’t such an obvious friend. It has clearly turned eastward in geopolitical terms in recent years, but that could change. Turkey has its own distinctive western heritage, despite current politics. There has been talk for decades about a two-speed Europe, (or three-speed if we include the EEA) and it is perfectly imaginable that several countries, like Canada and Turkey, could move closer to the EU, making up a looser grouping with the EU as fulcrum. The EU would gain a good deal in security terms from a circle of allies. And it would provide a framework for the UK to move closer in to the EU.
That’s probably as near to a sweet spot as we can get. For the sake of our security we need reliable European allies, and that means serious investment in European security by the UK. For the sake of our economy we need to get better access to our nearest markets, and that means achieving closer links with the Single Market and/or the Customs Union. For the sake of forthcoming generations we need to have a closer cultural relationship with Europe, and that means going back into Erasmus plus. Under present circumstances much of that would involve us being a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker, as we are endlessly reminded. But if we go in as part of the larger alignment I’ve just outlined, maybe the process could be a little different. It might be easier for the core EU to compromise with the new ‘outer circle’ so that the rule-maker/rule-taker dichotomy is modified, and a new kind of relationship is forged. That won’t be the land of lost content, but it could be a sweet spot.
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