Could the UK-EU Summit reset post-Brexit politics?

Not for the first time, Brexit is stuck in a doldrum period. There really isn’t that much going on, at least in public. Perhaps the most notable development since my previous post is the way that Canada’s newly elected leader Mark Carney compared the damage Trump is inflicting on the US with what Britain had done to itself with Brexit. It was notable not because it was contentious but, on the contrary, because it showed how Brexit has become the internationally-recognized standard measure of economic self-harm. The only real talking point is whether it is premature to apply it to Trump.  

Meanwhile, in the UK, political attention has been focused on yesterday’s various elections, whilst whatever form any ‘reset’ of UK-EU relations is going to take is shrouded in uncertainty, awaiting the Summit meeting later this month. However, with the results of those elections beginning to be known, there are good reasons to link them, at least in part, to precisely the uncertainty about the reset. In particular, the continuing Farage insurgency can be read as being in part a consequence of Labour’s attempts to de-politicise Brexit. This means that the Summit presents an opportunity not just to reset UK-EU relations, but to reset the way Brexit is, and is not, talked about within domestic politics. For until the failure of Brexit is as openly acknowledged in the UK as it is in the rest of the world, domestic politics remains stuck in its post-Brexit cul-de-sac.

The framing and scope of the Summit

The current uncertainty about the Summit is, perhaps inevitably, about the detailed provisions, about which there are many hints but, as yet, no clarity. It is also about the more symbolic issue of how its overall purpose is framed. On one account, what will be announced will be a “new strategic partnership”, encompassing trade and security, and more or less explicitly configured as a response to Donald Trump. On another account, the accent will be on defence and security, with something more like a roadmap for discussion of economic issues, although some reports suggest an extension to the existing fisheries agreement will be announced.

The first framing would suggest an explicit shift of geo-political strategy, the second a more ambiguous and less ambitious moment, defining future processes more than providing a statement of intent. Or, to put it another way, one would be a bold and dramatic event, the other a rather boring technocratic adjustment. The issue not just a matter of symbolism, however. The detailed provisions will matter, not so much in terms of immediate agreements but in terms of the scale and scope of what is identified to be within the ambit of mutually desired agreements. Thus there is a matrix of possibilities according to whether the framing is dramatic and strategic, or dull and technocratic; and whether the scope of possible agreements is extensive or limited.

In terms of the kinds of things likely to feature in the scope of possible agreements, it continues to seem likely that the government will manage to achieve what has always been its main reset ambition, a Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) agreement. What will be more interesting is what the Summit will have to say about other, perhaps less widely trailed, issues. If media reports are correct, we already know that the EU have refused a UK request to discuss mutual recognition of conformity assessment bodies [1], but the fact that the request was made, and discussed at high level, suggests that the government might have a more maximalist agenda than has been publicly articulated.

Might that include seeking to join the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean (PEM) Convention, something the EU has been reported as being willing to consider? Might it include linking REACH systems of chemicals regulation? An agreement on financial services? An agreement on irregular migration? An agreement to link carbon emissions trading systems? For that matter, there is a whole possible agenda of cooperation on energy and climate change, as set out in a new report last week by the Independent Commission on UK-EU relations.

What now seems highly likely to be within scope is some form of Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS), though probably not called by this name, and there have recently been strong hints that this will happen. It is not surprising, because some agreement on this was the main EU requirement. It was therefore a folly on the government’s part that it did not embrace it positively from the outset. Indeed even now, when it is being briefed that it will happen, it is also being denied by the government.

The folly lies in losing the opportunity to demonstrate to the EU that, under Labour, the Brexity mindset has changed and, equally, in failing to challenge that mindset at home. As a result, even the limited scheme which seems likely to emerge is being described in the Brexiter media as a “migration bombshell”, and will no doubt also be presented as having been inflicted upon the UK by the EU rather than being in the mutual interests of both. More generally, the reset as a whole is already being decried in the pro-Brexit media as carrying “the stench of betrayal”, as the “backlash” against it, which I discussed last December, gathers force.

The ‘make Brexit boring’ tactic

There’s little the government could do to prevent such attacks, but it could do far more to spike the batteries of their attackers by setting out its European policy in a more positive, inspiring, way. That is especially so in the run-up to the Summit, which is going to bring the Brexiters’ full guns out, but there is little sign of it happening.

For example, writing recently in the Guardian, Europe Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds seemed at pains to make the government’s plans sound as dull and uninspiring as they could possibly be, telling us, not for the first time, that they will be guided only by “ruthless pragmatism”. At one level, this is understandable, and it would be hypocritical of me to criticize it. In July 2022 I argued for the merits of Labour taking an approach of “making Brexit boring”, and in July 2021 for a “pragmatic ‘better deal for Britain’ policy”. (I’m not suggesting that Labour’s strategists based their thinking on my blog, but if they had done then it wouldn’t look much different to what they have done in government.)

Nevertheless, the world has changed very considerably since 2021 and 2022, and even since the election last year, and that mandates, if not demands, some recalibration on policy. I don’t mean revisiting the ‘red lines’ – there is no way that doing so would be politically viable for Labour in this parliament – but rather the provision of a more upbeat and less apologetic framing. This is obviously partly justified because of the new world created by Trump, and all that means, both economically and geo-politically. It is also justified by public support for closer relations with the EU being strong. And it is further justified because it is now abundantly clear, not least from the emerging results of yesterday’s elections, that new and better ways of countering Nigel Farage’s insurgency need to be found.

As regards the latter, Thomas-Symonds misses the point when he rehearses the government’s standard line that its European policy “isn’t about politics – it’s about pragmatism” and that Britain under Labour “won’t be defined by debates and arguments of the past”. The idea, obviously, is to present the reset as series of technical fixes, free of the toxicity of Brexit. But Farage and his admirers in the Tory Party and the pro-Brexit parts of the media are still engaged in those debates and arguments.

Thus, however much the government insists it is being ‘pragmatic’ about Brexit, the Brexiters still operate within the terrain of sabotage and betrayal. And that is open to them in part because the government treats it as too politically dangerous to say what is just common knowledge around the world: that Brexit was neither sabotaged nor betrayed, it was just a terrible idea, and that is why it went so horribly wrong. The very attempt to ‘leave behind’ the politics of Brexit has the consequence of leaving them in place.

Taking on Farage

The result, and this is the key point, is that Brexit going horribly wrong has not reduced the appeal of a politics which ignores what is pragmatically possible, and indeed trades on doing so. Brexit has not discredited Farage, despite its failure, a failure which he openly acknowledges but has been allowed to slough off as the fault and responsibility of others. This leaves him free to espouse, and to garner considerable electoral support for, policies which are equally unrealistic. There are several of these, but the most obvious is the policy to leave the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), which, as he recently repeated, is literally the first thing he would do if he became Prime Minister. It is also, of course, a policy with much appeal in the Tory Party, and it is not at all inconceivable that, whether led by Kemi Badenoch or someone else, this will also be their policy at the next election.

Obviously there are many arguments of principle against such a policy, but, equally importantly, there are many pragmatic reasons which would make it an unworkable one, the implications for Northern Ireland and the Good Friday Agreement being only the first of them. And there is clearly a direct parallel here with Brexit, because whereas its implications for Northern Ireland were either ignored or dismissed by the Brexiters in 2016, in practice they proved to be absolutely central to the practicalities of ‘getting Brexit done’ and, to the Brexiters’ chagrin, were a major reason why, in their terms, Brexit was not done properly. It is all too easy to imagine Farage in the future, with ECHR derogation achieved and wreaking havoc, blithely dismissing the consequences as someone else’s fault.

Thus, with Brexit having neither silenced nor sidelined Farage, one important way to challenge him now is to refuse to allow him to evade responsibility for the policy he spent most of his political life advocating, and to refuse to allow him, as with the ECHR, to continue to advocate flawed, impractical policies without being reminded of that history every single time he does so. The same applies to his anti-immigration policy, given that the levels of legal migration he now complains about are the result of the post-Brexit “Aussie-style points system” he once advocated, and that the levels of irregular migration are in part the result of his advocacy of the UK’s departure from EU agreements.

From this perspective, the government’s approach, as articulated by Thomas-Symonds, is counter-productive. The politics that brought us Brexit have not disappeared with Brexit. And whilst it is true that pragmatism is needed, that is not as an alternative to a political framing but ought to be the political framing: a politics which thrives on promising what cannot pragmatically be delivered as policy is the basis for a bad politics. Bad morally, because it is dishonest; but, because it is dishonest, also bad politically, as it corrodes trust and, ultimately, corrodes democratic politics itself.

Back to the reset

In terms of the reset, then, this would mean not so much a different policy but a very different, and much more honest, articulation of that policy (perhaps including dropping the rather dull terminology of ‘the reset’). It would acknowledge, in explicit terms, as it does implicitly already, that Brexit was a mistake. Most people think that anyway, and few can doubt that Starmer does. It would also acknowledge that it is a mistake that cannot simply be reversed, at least until there is a durable cross-party consensus sufficient to give the EU confidence in a joining process, and a genuine public enthusiasm for EU membership (which isn’t just a matter of thinking Brexit damaged the economy). And it would be unapologetic that a substantially improved and deepened UK-EU relationship is the best, and currently the only, position in the face of those two realities.

Articulated in this way, other things which are currently only implicit would also fall into place. Most obvious of these is the already fairly explicit fact that the UK’s primary defence and security theatre is European. The Global Britain of the 2021 Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy which, as I discussed at the time, sought to deny that, has already been substantially discarded by the 2023 Integrated Review Refresh, in large part because of the Ukraine War.

Now, the impact of Trump 2.0 has been to make even that largely obsolete, which will presumably be reflected in the Strategic Defence Review and the National Security Strategy, both to be published soon. Given the timing of the Summit, there is now a perfect opportunity to tie together European policy and defence policy. That is already the clear direction of travel, but the more overt it is the more strategic clarity there will be, whilst politically creating a challenge to Reform and the Tories to publicly prioritise their Brexit obsessions above the UK’s defence interests.

Less explicit, but increasingly obvious, is that the UK will prioritise its economic relationship with the EU above that with the US. That will be all the more obvious if there is a UK-EU SPS deal, which would all but certainly preclude a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement with the US. Making this more explicit need not mean abandoning any attempt at an ‘economic deal’ with the US to avoid some of Trump’s tariffs, but would show where the UK’s priorities lay.

Rachel Reeves came close to doing just this last week, saying “actually our trading relationship with Europe is arguably even more important, because they're our nearest neighbours and trading partners" but, apart from the fact that there is no ‘arguably’ about it, she was immediately undermined when “Downing Street” refused to endorse her comment (£). It’s ridiculous, but it is also politically maladroit, because it leaves the Brexiters free to present Reeves’ comments as ‘sparking outrage’, and of having led to her being “scolded” for making them, and thereby to continue to insist that a US trade deal is a great prize and should be the main priority.

Of course, they would do that anyway but (as with YMS) their attack lines land far more easily because of the government’s lack of consistency and clarity (although they are made all the more absurd by Trump’s own consistent inconsistency about doing a deal with the UK, displayed again this week). Again, this can’t be separated from Brexit, and the politics of impractical promises. A Free Trade Agreement with the US was never very likely, remains unlikely under Trump and, in any case, would be of very little economic value. If it ever did happen, it would also come with very unpopular consequences, including possibly for food standards and the NHS. It was, after all, the Brexiters who, in 2016, held up the then mooted US-EU TTIP deal as one of the reasons to leave the EU, albeit that their claims about it were largely fallacious.

So here again the refusal to ‘revisit the politics of the past’ now hamstrings Labour’s ability to engage in the politics of the present, a politics in which the present nonsense being talked about a US trade deal by Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage ought to be challenged in part by pointing to their past record of being utterly wrong about it.

The forthcoming Summit represents the perfect moment for the government to shift to this much more full-throated articulation of its post-Brexit strategy. Indeed, if this opportunity is not taken it is hard to see the shift ever happening. In the terms I put it earlier, that would mean framing the Summit as a moment of dramatic, strategic choice, accompanied by as extensive an agenda for new agreements as will be entertained by the EU.

The alternative would be to continue with the current approach, which in my previous post I compared with that of the spivish, dodgy businessman Arthur Daley. The unsurprising consequence of that approach is to give the impression that the government has something to hide, or to apologize for, or of which it is ashamed. That impression does not just damage the government’s credibility internationally, it also does so with voters. This necessarily assists the Brexiters, who want to make precisely the charge that the government is hiding its true agenda (i.e. rejoining by stealth). At the same time, it alienates the majority of Labour supporters (and other voters) who are all too well aware that there is no such agenda, but might find that easier to swallow if the government was less mealy-mouthed about the improvements it is pursuing.

The day before yesterday

The truism that generals always fight yesterday’s battles applies here. The decision to be fairly muted about Brexit, and to make it as dull and technocratic as possible, made tactical sense in the run-up to the 2024 election, and, at least arguably, was vindicated by the result. But it makes much less sense now, especially with the growing threat of Reform UK, as illustrated by the latest elections, because it entails silence about Farage’s ‘signature policy’. Or, more accurately, it entails silence about Farage’s political modus operandi of advocating superficially plausible and, to some, appealing policies without regard for the practicality of their implementation or the reality of their consequences.

Similarly, just as Labour are happy to keep reminding voters that the Truss mini-budget shattered the Tories’ claims to economic competence, it would be equally valid to keep alive the memory of how Brexit unmoored their claims to pragmatic government. Or, again to be more accurate, how ‘Brexitism’ did so. And, whether aimed at Reform or the Tories, the fundamental message that populist policies lead to chaos and failure is now all the easier to deliver given what is happening in Trump’s America. But it can’t be rammed home to British voters without talking about Brexit.

For Labour, now, continuing with their previous tactic amounts to fighting with one hand tied behind their back. Paradoxically, that is because whilst that tactic belongs to yesterday’s battle, its redundancy is because it ignores the past of the day before yesterday. Yet for decades Labour have been attacked for ‘having gone cap in hand to the IMF’ in 1976, and the spectre of ‘rubbish piling up in the streets’ during the Winter of Discontent is still being summoned up by their opponents. Less specifically, Labour are attacked for ‘always putting up taxes’ or ‘always borrowing too much’. They are even attacked for the policies they advocated in the ‘longest suicide note in history’ manifesto of 1983, despite not being elected. This vicious weaponization of past history has sometimes, perhaps mostly, been unjust. It has also been effective and, though without any need for injustice, Labour could learn from it by hanging Brexit around the necks of its advocates.

Once all the current election results are in there will be much analysis and agonizing about what they mean for the Labour government and for politics in general. At the same time, the coming UK-EU Summit will be a big moment in defining the nation’s post-Brexit strategy. It may, as Thomas-Symonds puts it, be guided by “ruthless pragmatism” but it could also be a ruthlessly political response to the legacy of the 2016 referendum. Being explicit about that response, including being honest about its limitations and the reasons for those limitations, might well be Labour’s best chance of seeing off Farage. It might even help to shore up Labour’s other flank, where they are vulnerable at least in part because of the constipated timidity with which the government presents its European policy.

 

Note

[1] This is not the mutual recognition of standards proposal I discussed in a recent post, but, as mentioned in passing there, the different issue of mutual recognition of conformity assessment. Sam Lowe’s Most Favoured Nation Substack newsletter provides an excellent account of this complex topic, and the reasons why the idea has been rejected by the EU. It also provides what I think is a well-founded criticism of the all-too-common tendency amongst some, usually anti-Brexit, social media commenters (including, occasionally, commenters on this blog) to automatically dismiss almost any ‘reset’ proposal as ‘cakeism’, ‘cherry-picking’, or ‘more British exceptionalism’.