In EU eyes Brexit matches the Bolsheviks for self-harm
So it has come to this. Brexit is now linked to the worst episodes of totalitarian mass murder in the 20th century. “EU policymakers and officials are returning to their desks with a spring in their step,” writes the Brussels think-tank, Friends of Europe, the high priests of EU orthodoxy.
“This summer has seen the ‘Brexit effect’ quietly gathering momentum, so much so that it’s shaping into one of the most spectacular own-goals of European history, on a par with Germany’s Third Reich or the Russian Revolution.” All that is missing is Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
Such is the mood in Brussels. The note is illuminating on many levels, but the main thrust is a celebration of imperial might. “Negotiations with the UK are demonstrating the sheer power of the EU,” it says.
“For a decade it had appeared flabby, struggling ineffectually with the eurozone’s difficulties, and then with the migrant crisis. Now, the Brexit process is revealing the EU’S solidarity and its worth. It’s a lesson that isn’t wasted on the watching world.
“Thanks to Brexit, the value of the European project is coming into full view. For the average European, the technical details of economic integration have been invisible to the naked eye. The EU’S many virtues are being laid bare for all to see.”
It has been a mission impossible for Brussels to explain EU regulations or to sell its daily diet of technical standards. “Bizarrely, the UK government is performing exactly that feat. David Davis has had to backtrack on a lengthening list of issues. The most significant climbdown has been London’s grudging acceptance that EU law, and thus the rulings of the European Court, will continue to hold sway in Britain,” it said.
Actually London has agreed no such thing, beyond a transition phase over limited issues. But never mind.
“That concession looks set to be followed in many other areas. Theresa May’s government had previously been adamant about cutting connections and ‘taking back control’, yet on key questions the UK has advanced suggestions for maintaining links with Brussels.” So the desire for co-operative ties – stated long ago in May’s Lancaster House speech – is capitulation. But again, never mind.
The message is clear: Brexiteers betting that others would follow in a pan-eu domino effect have been confounded. The EU system has not been shaken to its foundations. Europe has regrouped. Its line is hardening. It is Britain that is now on its knees as the economy crumbles.
It so happens that the piece is written by an old friend of mine, the group’s chairman Giles Merritt. His 2016 book Slippery Slope: Europe’s Troubled Future is a fine exploration of the EU’S own deep malaise. That even this wise owl should be in thrall to such hubris tells us what is in the Brussels water these days.
Jeremy Browne, the City’s EU envoy, said that his conclusion after weeks of talks is that the EU is still treating Brexit as “primarily an internal disciplinary matter”.
As a Gedankenexperiment, imagine how we in Britain would have reacted if Scotland had voted to leave the UK. While saddened, I think my reaction of most Daily Telegraph readers would have been to respect the legitimate wish of the Scottish people to run their own affairs and to bid them well. Downing Street would have bent over backwards to help the Scottish state.
The EU sees Britain’s quest for independence through another prism. Browne says that beyond the crude reflex of punishment it is divided and has no vision for any sort of long-term relationship. Statecraft is sorely lacking.
Brussels faces an enveloping crisis, which Britain is leaving. Relations with Turkey have collapsed, enlargement has stopped, and Ukraine is in limbo. This cries out for a strategic review. What the EU should be doing is to work out how to deal with an outer ring of states that are not destined for “ever closer union”, yet wish to have close trading or military ties. So far we hear nothing beyond pedantic nitpicking.
But I digress. The Friends of Europe paper wilfully misreads this year’s
‘If there were a fiscal union, it would advance the EU project from authoritarian technocracy to tyranny’
political events in the EU, as does the Brussels elite in general. There was no validation of the EU project in the French elections. Some 49pc voted for extreme parties or protest movements with a Eurosceptic hue in the first round. The fact Emmanuel Macron ultimately won (against the Front National) does not conjure this away.
Yes, the cyclical recovery since early 2016 has lifted spirits. Low interest rates, $2 trillion (£1.5 trillion) of quantitative easing and a fiscal mini-blitz have rescued southern Europe from depression. But the European Central Bank will soon have to wind down QE. The 20pc gap in North-south competitiveness has not gone away.
There is still no fiscal union, no debt union and no shared banking liabilities. If there were a fiscal union – by some miracle – it would advance the EU project from its current state of authoritarian technocracy to outright tyranny. It would concentrate parliamentary powers to tax and spend in the hands of the Eurogroup, a body that answers only to itself.
Friends of Europe says that “once the British had embarked on the tortuous process of negotiating their departure, the disadvantages of leaving quickly became apparent”.
What this really means is that it is extremely hard for a country to extract itself from the EU after 40 years, “infantilised” to the point where it no longer has trade treaties or control of its own nuclear industry. On that we can agree. Brexit has demonstrated what has happened over three decades of treaty-creep: the Single European Act, Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and ultimately Lisbon. It has shown how close Britain has come to losing sovereignty altogether.
Merritt states that Brexit has made visible the once-hidden “virtues” of the EU. This is a twisted way of saying that what is visible is the alleged pain being suffered by Britain.
As a daily consumer of the European press I would agree that such a scarecrow effect is at work. Readers are subjected to a hostile barrage about what is happening in the UK. German newspapers love to link “katastrophe” and “kernschmelze” (meltdown) with Brexit.
If that is your only source of news you might indeed think that Britain is in the grip of rampant pauperisation, and that wolves are on the loose among the abandoned towers of Canary Wharf. For what it is worth, UK manufacturing growth in the third quarter is running slightly ahead of eurozone growth. Let’s keep it quiet.
The decline in Europe’s Eurosceptic parties has little to do with any re-found EU “virtues”: the operative word in this context is fear. I was recently reading the thoughts of Harvard anthropologist Michael Herzfeld, writing about Brexit from a mountain community in Crete. The villagers are flabbergasted that the British dared to take such a step.
The EU priesthood has certainly acquired a habit of overturning referenda by fair means or foul. “We have instruments of torture in the basement,” in the words of Jeanclaude Juncker, the grand inquisitor.
They reversed the Danish “no” to Maastricht, and the Irish “no” to Nice and Lisbon, and the Dutch and French “no” to the European Constitution (reinvented as Lisbon), and the Greek “oxi” in 2015. Now at last they face a referendum to be reckoned with. The old guard in Brussels is having great difficulty coming to terms with this novel experience. They will.