Like a chronic ailment, strategic incoherence gnaws at everything Britain does in the world. Keir Starmer’s real achievement in resetting relations with mainland Europe – witness the recent visits of the French president Emmanuel Macron and the German chancellor Friedrich Merz – does not obscure, and in a way even highlights, this deeper confusion.
After 1945, Winston Churchill envisioned Britain’s global role at the intersection of three circles: the British Commonwealth and (then still) empire; the Europe whose postwar recovery and unification he strongly supported; and the United States. As Commonwealth countries have formed stronger ties elsewhere, the first circle is no longer of strategic significance. Having committed itself in the 1970s to the most developed political and economic form of the second circle, now the European Union, Britain has withdrawn from it. With the revolutionary nationalism of President Donald Trump, the third circle is also fading fast. So here’s an 80-year countdown of Britain’s strategic circles: three … two … one, going on none.
Instead of being at the intersection of three circles, Britain finds itself caught between three elephants. “There are three elephants in the room and we just have to be careful we don’t get trampled” is how one British official described to the Financial Times Starmer’s attempt to navigate between the global economic powers of the US, EU and China.
Just like Tony Blair a quarter-century ago, this government has talked of Britain being a “bridge” between Europe and the US. But what kind of a bridge can it be today, when the UK is outside the EU and Trump is putting in question the whole transatlantic relationship, with a special animus towards the EU?
There was only ever one way to take Brexit to its logical conclusion, and that was to become an offshore Greater Switzerland, a north European Singapore. To seek profit wherever you could find it, whatever those states were doing to their neighbours or their own citizens; to be a nation with the morals of a hedge fund. Ironically enough, the European country that comes closest to this cynical “multialigning” is Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, a full member state of the EU. But this was never a serious option even for the majority of Brexiters, who had five or six different (and generally vague) visions of what a post-Brexit Britain should be. For most Britons, it would be completely incompatible with our sense of what Britain should do and be in the world.
With Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Britain’s Churchillian instincts kicked in again and have brought us to a place where we are working shoulder to shoulder with countries such as France, Germany and Poland for the defence of Ukraine and Europe as a whole. Merz and Starmer have just signed a German-British treaty that gives a framework for enhanced cooperation in many areas. Faced with uncertainty about Trump’s commitment to nuclear deterrence on Nato’s eastern flank, Macron’s state visit to the UK produced the unprecedented announcement that Europe’s only two nuclear-weapon powers will “coordinate” their nuclear deterrents and “there is no extreme threat to Europe that would not prompt a response by both nations”.
This takes us back to the strategic question. If we are prepared to risk even our very national existence for the defence of Europe, wouldn’t it make sense to have some say in how that Europe develops? And if you’re a government that has staked everything domestically on economic growth, as Starmer’s has, wouldn’t it help to get closer to your largest single market?
The situation now is that Britain is fully committed to the defence of Europe but has none of the economic advantages of belonging to the EU. Indeed, it even has to pay a price – for example, in concessions to the French on fishing – for the privilege of contributing to the rest of Europe’s security. Addressing British parliamentarians, Macron said: “The European Union was stronger with you, and you were stronger with the European Union.” True on both counts. But of the two sides, Britain is definitely the more weakened. In the language of diplomacy, Britain is now the demandeur wherever it turns, wanting something from the other party. Indeed its diplomatic triumphs, be they in the “reset” with the EU or the trade deal with Trump, largely consist in the removal of obstacles that didn’t even exist before.
The only strategically coherent long-term answer to this conundrum would be for Britain to rejoin the EU, painfully swallowing its pride and accepting that the new membership terms would be less favourable than those it had before. Halfway houses, such as the UK-EU customs union proposed by Britain’s Liberal Democrats, would bring some modest economic advantage. Only full EU membership would give the large-scale economic benefits and the political influence in shaping the future of Europe – and, through Europe, the world. In a jungle full of elephants, you’d better be – or at least ride on – one yourself.
Any British government seriously committed to advancing the national interest should keep in mind that long-term strategic logic. But British politics is nowhere near this point. Not even the Liberal Democrats advocate Breturn and the political running is being made by the country’s most successful anti-European politician, Nigel Farage. People in the EU see this and are themselves in no mood to start thinking about remarriage. The wounds of Brexit are still sore and the disjuncture between security and economics works better for them than it does for Britain. Anyway, the EU has more than enough on its plate already.
So what’s left? Muddling through. Fortunately, muddling through is something of a British speciality. Some years ago I read an article about Britain in a German magazine which talked of die Philosophie des Durchmuddelns. (Only Germany could turn muddling-through into a philosophy.) Strangely maladroit in domestic politics, Starmer has been remarkably adept at forging good relationships with leaders such as Macron, Merz and Ursula von der Leyen, as well as Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He has shown real leadership on Ukraine and certainly delivered on his promise to Make Britain Serious Again.
His cabinet is full of individuals who, like him, seem well-intentioned, competent and decent. A little boring perhaps – but a glance at the Trump administration shows you there are worse things than that. The UK has a heap of problems, but so does every European country I know. British democracy has survived the stress test of Brexit better than US democracy is surviving that of Trump. Socially and culturally, there is still much to be said for Britain’s everyday tolerance, creativity and humour.
So if anyone can make a success of muddling-through, Britain can. But Britain would muddle through better if it had a clearer idea of where in the world it wants to be in 10 years’ time. As I believe it says in the Talmud: if you don’t know where you want to go, any road is good.