The way forward from Brexit: Protect and Rejoin
The Brexit deal threatens to punch dangerous holes into the European economy and become a lasting victory for authoritarians the world over. Pro-Europeans in the UK and EU need to begin a push for a pro-European UK to rejoin. In the meantime the EU must be willing to enforce the agreement to protect its future.
So much time invested, and some much ink already spilt on Brexit, and now it has actually happened, and a deal was struck nanoseconds from the deadline. For all the technocratic language around regulations and fishing quotas, the issues at stake at the heart of the Brexit deal are existential to the lives of people across Europe. Critical decisions are often cloaked in incomprehensible language that feels a million miles away. However, the very real impact will be felt for decades to come on our daily lives.
Brexit is and always has been a populist, nativist, xenophobic, and authoritarian project which aims to dismantle the European Union. Many different people voted for it for many different reasons, but for those who “got it done”, Brexit is fundamentally nationalist. It advocated a return to a fictionalised idealised “sovereign” British past, based on delusion and disinformation, with no bearing or connection to the reality of the world today.
And yet, Brexit has been a first successful negation of the liberal democratic post-war order, a first sweeping victory for the far-right in Western Europe since way back when. As such, it has been eagerly supported and promoted by nationalist authoritarians around the world from Trump to Putin and the far right leaders across Europe.
In the face of all of this, despite all of the pressures, the complexity and human tragedy, the geo-political lay of the land for the European Union was very simple. The EU held the advantage in power, size, timing, resources and personnel. Its one objective was to stick together and defend the single market in the face of Brexiteers who are trying to break it up.
On the face of it, from a geo-political perspective, almost any outcome would have been an EU ‘mission accomplished’. If the EU managed to get a “soft” Brexit, with the UK in the Single Market and/or Customs Union, the economic benefits would have made self-evident the necessity of European integration. If there was a no deal, the tragic consequences of leaving, obviously painful as they would have been, would have shown, in in the end, very much the same thing. In both cases, there would be human pain and economic damage which make Brexit the historic disaster it is, but both outcomes would have strengthened the European integration in the long run, and the protection of the well-being of European citizens. All EU negotiators had to do was to stick together, not to blink, and not to sell out. That was their only job.
And what did they do? They blinked. The extent of the damage remains to be seen, depending in how the agreement is actually enforced.
The Single Market is like a balloon, or a tire — it only works if you don’t poke holes in it. One of the stated overarching goals of EU negotiators was to avoid a “race to the bottom”, where the UK becomes an offshore deregulated rogue entity, undermining the European economy. This is why UK standards have to keep up with European standards if it is to maintain free access to the European market.
The UK-EU deal mentions common environmental and social norms, with agreed “minimums”. But crucially, the EU gave up on common “evolution” and “equivalence”. As recently as early December Angela Merkel was quoted as saying that surrendering these common standards on labour, environmental and labour regulations would undermine the integrity of the EU economy. Add that to the lack of alignment on state aid, and the slow and opaque bureaucratic processes by which the agreement will be enforced, throw in the blatant disregard the Johnson government has shown so far to facts, you get a dangerous mix.
There are strong brakes and “nuclear options” built into the deal, whereby the EU will potentially be able to actually enforce equivalent high standards and prevent deregulation on the part of the UK. However, the question remains to be seen whether there will be the political or administrative will to do so, and what happens if they don’t.
We live in an age of accelerating change and disruption. Tackling climate change requires drastic rapid action. The future of work is being shaped and reshaped from year to year, and emerging technologies reshape our economy and society with accelerated unpredictability. Consider, for example, the impact Uber has had on our view of work from its launch in Europe in 2011 until a European Court of Justice decision on banning UberPop in 2017. What might be considered a reasonable minimum now, might be seen as a dangerous rock bottom in a few years’ time.
The presence of a large deregulated economy where everything goes right off the shores of Europe would certainly make it harder for European decision-makers to take meaningful steps towards a truly sustainable and inclusive European economy. This oversight by European leaders is yet another example of the EU lacking a geo-political view, unable to generate fully integrated politics and accountability.
From a geo-political perspective, the implications of this deal are potentially that much more dire. Authoritarians around the world have marked the disintegration of the EU as a headline goal, replacing it with a sphere of fragmented small and powerless undemocratic states. Putin’s government has made this an express aim, and you would have to go back 70 or 100 years to find a victory for Russian foreign policy as colossal as this Brexit agreement. The holes this agreement may puncture in the European fabric would leave ample room for both the EU and UK to be destablised further. The authoritarian post-truth nationalist politics of Brexit are still as much of a threat to EU and UK democracies.
The overwhelming necessity now is for pro-Europeans in the UK to ramp up their efforts and push ahead to create a generational shift of opinions. Just as Brexiteers took from 1974 to 2020 to take Britain out of Europe, pro-Europeans now need to push with equal determination to bring the UK back in, no matter how difficult and how long it takes. In the meantime, pro-Europeans inside the EU need to push with ever more urgency for reforms that increase the democratic accountability of European leaders and institutions.
The UK that re-enters the EU must not be the awkward partner it has been, half-in-half-out, hungover on delusions of former imperial power. It must rejoin as a fully European power. The EU that the UK rejoin must not look like an intergovernmental bureaucracy, but a fully-fledged inclusive citizen-led community. A democratic future for the EU and UK together can still be made, and the alternative is painful, dangerous and damaging. This historical moment is the beginning of a new push towards a brighter common future.
