One might be forgiven, in light of the public commentary swirling around the Brexit vote, for believing the UK is about to embark on a completely new relationship with continental Europe.
In fact, from 1475 when England’s Edward IV renounced his claim to the French throne until 1973 when the UK joined the European Economic Community, Great Britain had largely operated as an extra-European power.
For more than four centuries, the English focused their energies on building, sustaining and finally dismantling an overseas empire that, at its height, comprised nearly a quarter of the world’s surface and 20 percent of its population. During that time, England intervened intermittently in continental affairs, largely to maintain the balance of power and prevent any one nation from dominating Europe and threatening its global interests.
Using Great Britain’s vast industrial and commercial wealth, mercenaries, allies and its own military forces, successive British governments played a critical role in blocking the hegemonic ambitions of Habsburg Spain, Bourbon and Napoleonic France, Imperial and Nazi Germany, and finally the USSR. After the Second World War, however, the allied occupation of Germany, the rise of the Soviet threat, the formation of NATO, and the reluctant liberation of its colonial possessions drew Great Britain into an increasingly “permanent” continental presence. By the 1960s, Cold War realities forced the UK government to recognize that to optimize its international influence, maintain its commercial and financial power and punch above its diplomatic and military weight, Britain would have to tie its fortunes more closely to Europe.
England’s first attempt to join the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1961 was vetoed by French President Charles De Gaulle, who did not want an Anglo “Trojan horse” bringing American influence into a European institution. After Georges Pompidou succeeded De Gaulle, Edward Heath’s conservative government brought the UK into the EEC in 1973. From the beginning, there were concerns about the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Britain’s ties to the Commonwealth. To confirm the decision to enter the EEC, the next Labour government held Britain’s first national referendum in 1975, which won 67 percent of the vote with a 65 percent turnout.
Since then, Britain has never been comfortable in the EEC and less so in its successor, the European Union (EU). England has complained about its net contributor status, particularly with respect to the CAP, and increasing EU bureaucracy and regulations, especially those that impact its all-important financial industry, as well as political integration, taxation policies, immigration and the Euro. The UK refrained from joining the open-borders Schengen Area (although it still must accept EU citizens) and, perhaps most importantly, chose to opt out of the Eurozone when it was created in 1999.
Conversely, England has always been a strong proponent of widening the EU, supporting the rapid entrance of Eastern European states after the collapse of Communism in 1989. Many in Brussels claim this British policy was designed to forestall further integration or “deepening” within the EU.
With the intensification of globalization, growing competition from China for European and North American markets, and the catastrophe of the Great Recession, UK politicians (especially within the Conservative Party) felt increasingly hamstrung by the EU’s rules and consensus policy-making.
But underlying the growing popular disaffection with the EU was the immigration problem. In 1931, the foreign-born population of Great Britain was less than 2 percent of the entire population, by 2011 roughly 20 percent of the population of England and Wales was foreign-born or first generation1 (the comparable figure in the U.S. is about 26 percent).
Popular disaffection with the growing influx of immigrants and the Syrian refugee crisis led to the spectacular rise of the UK Independence Party. UKIP, founded in 1991, came into its own in the 2013 local elections, the 2014 EU Parliamentary elections (where it received the most votes), and the 2015 national elections, where it garnered the third-largest vote total. UKIP framed the EU debate in terms of sovereignty and regaining control of Great Britain’s borders. In part to blunt UKIP’s sudden surge in the national polls, Prime Minister David Cameron made his ill-fated promise to hold a referendum on EU membership if his party was returned to government.
It is apparent that the Leave campaign coalesced around these twin themes of regaining sovereignty and control of the borders. Fifty-six percent of those aged 50 to 64 voted to leave, as did 61 percent of those over 65. All of these voters were alive before Britain joined EEC, and can remember what national sovereignty felt like.
In a post Brexit world, can the UK restructure its global presence, retain its financial prowess and reengineer its commercial relationships so it no longer needs to be directly involved in the EU to assure its prosperity and international influence?
Myriad challenges confront those who would like to restore Great Britain to the status of extra-European independent power. First they must contend with two pressing problems: negotiating the UK exit from the EU under article 50, and addressing the prospect that Scotland and Northern Ireland may prefer independence (or in the latter case, unification with the Republic of Ireland) to ending their economically beneficial relationship with the EU. These two are obviously linked.
There is a range of models available to the UK with respect to restructuring trade and commercial relations with the EU, running from membership in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the so-called Swiss model, to negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU like Canada, to trading under WTO rules.
There are problems with each of these: the closely affiliated agreements such as the EEA would still entail many of the same problems that the UK currently has with full membership, e.g. labor mobility, while the looser agreements, e.g. an FTA or WTO rules, generally have not been adequate with respect to services trade, the UK’s fastest-growing sector (41 percent of UK exports in 2012).
In all cases, Britain would have virtually no say regarding new EU regulations or non-tariff barriers, which it does as a member. There are other problems in adopting some of these paradigms, e.g. trading under the WTO rules would require that the UK gain accession to the WTO, a process that can take years.
Even if these immediate challenges can be navigated successfully, UK influence on continental Europe would be greatly diminished by its exit from the EU. Pompidou recognized that inside the EU, Britain and France would be an effective check on German domination of the Community. After German unification, Britain’s balancing role became all the more important. But it is hard to see how the UK can effectively counter increasing German influence within the EU from outside..
Finally, Great Britain’s ability to project power after the mid-twentieth century was predicated to a large degree on its special relationship with the U.S. Given the immediate negative economic impact Brexit will have on Britain’s productivity and GDP growth, the possible loss of Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the increasingly isolationist proclivities of the voting public, it is unlikely the UK will be able or willing to sustain its commitment to that relationship, further diminishing its international influence.
So, while the Leave campaign spoke of regaining the sovereign glory of old, in truth Great Britain will be hard-pressed to maintain its status as a middling power or preserve even a fraction of its influence on continental Europe once it leaves the European Union.
1 Ben Judah, “England’s Last Gasp of Empire”, NYT, July 12, 2016.