The English Channel is growing wider by the day.
Even if Prime Minister Theresa May surrenders to reality this week and agrees to the European Union’s terms for the first phase of a divorce, the hardest part is still to come.
The gulf in outlook between Britain’s feuding, Brexit-obsessed political and business leaders and their continental counterparts could hardly be starker. As tense divorce negotiations teeter between breakdown and breakthrough, Britannia has — in Winston Churchill’s words — chosen the open sea over the Continent and is adrift without a compass, buffeted by waves she no longer rules.
Less than 500 days before Britain lifts anchor and leaves the EU, the country’s establishment seems more deeply divided than ever over future relations with Europe and unable to formulate a coherent strategy for withdrawal. That’s confusing enough for many Brits. For those across the Channel, it’s baffling.
I got a first-hand picture of high-level mutual incomprehension last month when I attended a meeting of political, business and opinion leaders from both sides of the narrow, 32km waterway that separates Britain from the rest of Europe.
The gathering was strictly “on background,” meaning I can’t disclose the names of the participants. But I can report the tenor of the conversation. And, if I had to describe it in a single word, I would choose “worrying.”
Europe’s grandees came away shaking their heads in dismay at the confusion, contradictions, delusions and flashes of hubris among senior British government and opposition politicians, financiers, captains of industry and intellectuals.
Lessons from Lilliput
As a longstanding European insider of British origins, I kept asking myself whether our hosts really believed much of what they were telling us. At times, the furious debate between hard and soft Brexiteers resembled Jonathan Swift’s 18th-century satire “Gulliver’s Travels” in which “High-Heels” and “Low-Heels” Lilliputian politicians jostle for partisan advantage over whether to open the big end or the little end of an egg.
Slogans about building a “global Britain” could not mask the dearth of practical answers as to how the country would trade, cooperate, manage common borders, or treat the citizens of Europe after it severs ties with its biggest market while seeking to retain privileged access.
It didn’t help that the meeting took place during a week in which Prime Minister Theresa May’s minority Conservative government appeared to be hanging by a thread. Most senior ministers went to ground rather than meet with the distinguished visitors, who included former prime ministers and European commissioners, lawmakers, central bankers, diplomats and executives of some of Europe’s biggest banks and corporations.
An opportunity went begging to project a clear vision of Britain after Brexit to eminent Europeans, who have long looked up to the United Kingdom as an ally in war and peace, a pillar of market economics and a model of parliamentary democracy, fair play and individual rights. Instead, they were treated to a bewildering menu of varieties of Brexit from senior Conservatives and no coherent alternative from the left-wing Labour opposition.
Eyes rolled in disbelief when one senior Tory hardliner asserted that Europe should arguably have to pay for access to the British market, given its trade surplus with the U.K. Rejecting forecasts of job losses and a brain drain, he suggested that talented people fleeing EU “elitism and arrogance” might choose on the contrary to move to the U.K. after Brexit.
To listen to another Conservative grandee, who declined to disclose how he had voted in last year’s referendum, you would think it was Europe that was leaving Britain rather than the other way around. “Brussels dogma” (aka the EU treaty) enshrining freedom of movement for citizens as well as goods, capital and services had made it impossible for Britain to stay in the single market, the right honorable fence-sitter said.
And now, in the grandee’s view, the EU was set to ransom the U.K.’s departure by insisting on agreement on the exit bill before it would discuss a future trade relationship. May had exposed the government to this blackmail by prematurely giving two years’ notice of intention to withdraw under the Article 50 exit clause, he lamented.
An unrepentantly anti-Brexit Tory completed the confusion by predicting the U.K. would blink before the Europeans did in the divorce bill negotiations because the bloc had more at stake, and that within 10 to 15 years, Britain will have found its way back into “the EU fraternity” with a status that would look similar to membership. The first part of his prophecy has just come true.
It remains unclear whether Labour’s “damage limitation” policy involves staying in the EU’s single market and customs union — and if so, at what price. Perhaps party leaders cannot yet adopt such a risky stance, given that Britons voted only 17 months ago to “take back control” of lawmaking and immigration, and public opinion has not shifted much since.
Scotland’s pro-independence leadership, meanwhile, still wants to stay in the EU but admits it has yet to identify a convincing economic and monetary way to get there once Britain leaves.
Geopolitically, while all British participants proclaimed an enduring commitment to European defense through its membership of NATO, there was little clarity about how security cooperation with the EU might work in practice. Two former European prime ministers remarked pointedly that Britain would no longer be at the table when EU foreign and security policy decisions are taken, and that Brexit was much less of a focus for the other 27 countries than for the U.K.
Under normal circumstances, breaking up with its main European partners would prompt London to turn towards the United States and seek succor in a relationship that always seems more “special” to the British than it does to most Americans. But these are not normal times.
President Donald Trump’s views on free trade, climate change, NATO, the Iran nuclear deal and multilateral governance in general are anathema to the British establishment, except for the far-right fringe and a dwindling U.K. Independence Party. His Twitter duel with May last week after he endorsed anti-Muslim videos posted by an ultra-right British group showed just how toxic Trump is in Britain.
No British leader wants to choose between Europe and America. But if one is no longer available due to the Brexit vote and the other is led by a pariah, whom nearly two million petitioners sought to prevent making an official visit to the U.K., what strategic options does that leave?
Europe’s elites may still respect Britain as a sanctuary of representative democracy, the rule of law and the market economy, but the more they hear the U.K. debate, the more grounds they have for pessimism about where the country is going.
Paul Taylor, contributing editor at POLITICO, writes the Europe At Large column.