Will this do?
I’ve been spending the week at the UACES conference in Prague, talking about lots of things to do with European Studies. However, one the things that didn’t come up very much was UK-EU relations. It’s almost as if most people don’t have it on their minds.
The moment it did come up was during the panel I took part in on the post-Brexit UK, where I talked about the instability of the relationship with the EU, something I’ll be returning to presently. My basic argument was that whatever happens, there isn’t a resilient foundation on which to rest and from which to act.
One question that did come up was whether the current relationship – low-key and benign, if unexciting – wasn’t in fact serviceable enough for our needs. After all, neither side seem that bothered about either a return to the fun times of the Brexit years or starting up a journey to re-accession. London and Brussels have got back in the habit of talking to, and listening to, each other, so can we not just assume that we can work it out as we go? Indeed, in a purely practical sense, if the relationship is as it is, does it not just to suffice, since we’ve not got another one to use instead?
My response to this fits my usual diagnosis of the failings of UK-EU relations, namely that an absence of clear strategic objectives on either side of the relationship mean that the dominant mode is a mix of neglect and bursts of crisis management. Put differently, the absence of obvious problems doesn’t mean that everything’s fine.
For a recent example, consider the mini-fuss over marmalade labelling earlier this year.
As part of the (generally pretty smooth) negotiations on an SPS agreement, DEFRA released a list of EU legislation that UK businesses would have to comply with once the deal is done; a rare example of useful forward planning.
That list got almost no media interest at the time, but some weeks later a story dropped on GB News about how the deal would mean that henceforth marmalade would have to be labelled with which fruit it was made of, and this would be a terrible imposition on already hard-done-by companies.
That almost all marmalade currently on sale in the UK already has such labelling was no barrier to a little (but still much larger than the previous) pile of media pieces appearing. Bendy bananas redux, if you will.
In short, the level of public, media and political interest is low, leaving everyone exposed to silly season pieces (and ill-intentioned actors, should they feel so inclined).
A more serious version of this appeared just as I was putting this piece together.
Politico reported that November’s summit won’t see agreement on ‘Burnham’s big new Brexit deal’, which as readers of this blog will know shouldn’t be news, since Burnham has no deal, big, new or otherwise.
That anyone, including the reporter who definitely knows better, should think that this was the case points to the non-management of expectations by either side and the substantial risk of relations entering into vicious circles of briefings and counter-briefings.
In short, the absence of strategic visions for the relationship in either London or Brussels means that there is no master narrative for politicians to cleave to and to smooth out the small bumps in the road.
As much as technical relations seem to be pretty functional, even these evidently rely on a cadre of people who have built up enough experience of working together out through the original Brexit negotiations, but who are liable to be churned by their respective employers with no robust mechanisms for preserving institutional memory.
None of these issues should be a surprise to anyone, since they have been evident for a long time, and indeed much flagged by the small number of people still focused on the matter. But the concern has to be that the current model of getting by will not have the resilience to cope with the next crisis, whatever that might be.
