Professor Simon Usherwood, Professor in Politics & International Studies

17th January 2023

Professor Simon Usherwood’s discussion focused on the problems that shape the relationship between the UK and EU. Given Brexit, and the continuing issues over the withdrawal of this country from the European project, it was a timely examination of how we got here and the challenges faced in building a new relationship with the continent.

Simon prefaced his approach with what he called ‘Three Visions of Unhappiness’ that framed our time within the Common Market, and later European Union. The first came from the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, who saw joining with the other continental nations as the ending of a thousand years of history. While a historian might question the validity of that characterisation, it articulated a feeling, common at the time, that Britain was distinct; we were a global maritime power and not a parochial European state. The second was Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech, which is often taken as a leitmotif for Euroscepticism, but which Simon argues was a more ambiguous statement of British concerns. Ambiguous because the British demands for the enlargement of Europe – her call for the EU to include the countries in Eastern Europe, such as Poland and Hungary – the focus on NATO as the key structure for European defence, and flexibility of regulation were all met. Yet the demands for a single currency and Jacques Delors’ time at the European Commission saw growing opposition from parts of the Conservative Party. The final vision of unhappiness was David Cameron’s referendum, which Simon presented as the product of a crisis in domestic politics projected onto Europe. The UK lacked an agenda for Europe and did not really engage any longer with the project. Challenges to, and within, the Conservative party resulted in a gamble to force concessions out of the European Union and outflank Cameron’s rivals. In the end it went wrong, his administration collapsed and he resigned, resulting in the UK’s exit from Europe.

The discussion then moved on to consider the causes, or logics, of this unhappiness with Europe and how the crisis in relations came about. The first area of focus was economic, in terms of the shape of the UK’s economy. Britain, in terms of GDP, has a very large service sector and this did not always match up with mainland Europe. The cycles of expansion and contraction were not the same and what was good for continental markets was not always seen as good for the UK. The second was one of distance or perceived distance. We were distinct, not part of Europe but with it, in the words of Churchill. Governments might be about involved with regulation and integration at the European level, but national parliaments were outside that framework (something that is common across Europe but is heightened in Britain). The pathology of British politics had little to say about what Europe might be and there was no European identity, indeed any such affinities with a shared identity might be more a product of the breakup than the long-term relationship with the European Union. Finally, it was argued that the institutional logics of the UK fed the crisis in relations. The absence of Europe from UK politics resulted in it being scapegoated for failings at home. The structure of the UK media created stories of ‘straight bananas’ and European regulation being imposed on us. These logics reflect that unhappiness with membership and point to why it became such lightning rod for wider discontent.

Though we are now outside the European Union, the question remains as to what sort of relationship the UK will have in the future with Europe. Within this continuing discourse on what will be, Simon offered the following ‘barriers’, or challenges, to achieving a new stable relationship. One is that of knowledge of Europe, as manifest in Dominic Raab’s infamous statement that he was unaware of the amount of trade that went through the port of Dover. We know more of US politics than we do of that of France, Germany or Spain, especially given that they are our close neighbours. There is a far greater cultural distance between the UK and Europe than that between the UK and the US. There is little understanding about how integration works. The distancing from Europe points to a problem imagining the sort of relationship we might have with the continent, and this is becoming more difficult as time passes. This then forms a link to the last barrier to the future relationship as summed up in the slogan ‘get Brexit done’. The rhetoric was without content or ideas and it represented no plan, but more a desire to just stop talking about Europe and get it over with. The problem, however, remains, with issues like the Northern Ireland protocol continuing to disrupt UK politics. Without vision or clear strategy, the political process becomes one of crisis management and firefighting, insuring a continuing antagonism within the body politic over relations between the UK and EU.

The discussion of the presentation drew in a number of interesting questions relating to the impact of Brexit on the war in Ukraine and UK relations with the US. Simon agreed that disarray in Europe over the UK’s departure might have emboldened Putin in his strategy, though subsequent events have seen Europe pull together. On the issue of the US, it was pointed out how important the role of US policy, and in particular the CIA, in promoting the European Economic Community was, and that within the context of the Cold War it was a key part of Western strategy. While the UK might feel it enjoys a special relationship with the transatlantic superpower, this does not necessarily trump that of Europe and the United States.