Ten years after the Brexit referendum, Britain is weaker and less influential than it was in 2016. The world has moved on, but the UK’s leaders still tiptoe around Brexit damage limitation, fearful of provoking those who seem bent on inflicting more harm on the country. Even their ambitions for closer relations with Europe miss the point.
‘Closer relations’ is what the EU envisages for places such as Transnistria and Turkey. The UK should want more.
Europe has moved on
While the UK tinkers with such things as Erasmus+ and relaxing controls on cultural industries, others, from Norway, Canada and Switzerland to Iceland and Greenland, have their eyes on the geopolitical realities of Chinese power, Russian belligerence and capricious American unreliability. That means going beyond participation in a European defence and security union or a coalition of the willing. It means recognising strategic realities and what they mean for EU autonomy, democratic resilience and its current determination to admit more states, predominantly from the West Balkans but possibly Iceland too.
The UK’s introspective timid retrospection contrast sharply with the optimistic realism of EU governments as they consider the shape of Europe in five years’ time. Where will that leave the UK?
The EU’s vision for Europe in 2030 shows that it has moved on. Albania, Montenegro, Moldova and Ukraine will by then have far closer relations with the EU than the UK seems prepared to contemplate. Their accession negotiations are expected to be well advanced or over by then.
Ukraine and the new European security order
As Europe’s geographically largest country, with perhaps the continent’s most highly mobilised pro-EU civil society and military, Ukraine demonstrates both its strategic importance to the EU and the vital role the EU plays in European security. Ukraine has to be an integral part of any EU defence union.
That alone signals the EU’s determination to combat Russian aggression. Its proxies will not be tolerated. EU values – human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights – matter. That is why some Brexiteers still try to undermine them and get the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights and why they wallow in foreign interference designed to undermine the UK and wider Europe.
Defending democracy
The EU’s Democracy Shield, launched in 2025, will be strengthened over the next few years. The UK needs its protections as much as any European state and shares the EU’s commitment to combating foreign-funded disinformation and unrest perpetrated by anti-democratic forces operating inside EU member states and candidate countries, as well as those on the periphery including Iceland, Georgia, Armenia and Mercosur countries.
Perhaps the EU understands better than the UK the dangers posed to our values, the rule of law and our shared values by the hostility of MAGA and other actors keen to see the EU fail and disintegrate.
Did Brexit misjudge human resilience?
The EU’s strongest asset is its people. The resilience of Ukraine, political developments in Hungary, and the reunification of Germany after the Berlin wall came down all demonstrate this. It is therefore significant that the European Court of Justice has rebuked both the EU Commission and member governments for not acting against states that didn’t adhere to the rules (Hungary and Poland). Both new and old states will have to adhere to EU treaty rules on long-term commitment and loyalty to the EU’s values and the rule of law, entrenched in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union.
Enlargement is back
EU enlargement to the east is a priority for the Irish Presidency of the EU starting in July. This is significant because the EU’s last big bang enlargement, when ten new members were admitted in 2004, also occurred under an Irish Presidency.
Like its predecessor, the incoming Irish Presidency will likely bring fresh thinking and humour to impel reform and enlargement. It will also be able draw on Ireland’s own experience of how EU membership helped propel it from the EU’s poorest state on Europe’s periphery in 1973 to a prosperous, respected and influential member. Poland’s trajectory provides another, more recent, example of this.
Yet prosperity is not the main driver for enlargement. Mutual security, safety and democratic resilience are. It is ironic that it is the actions of the former superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union’s successor, Russia, that have driven the EU’s determination to do what it takes to make this a reality.
Get real to get what you want
Where does that leave the UK? Merely ‘getting real’ about Brexit by talking about how damaging it is and has been, is a feeble response to current domestic and international realities.
Public opinion polls across the EU show wide support for the UK’s return to the union. As the German government has hinted, the UK could become part of a historical process that reshapes Europe. It is disingenuous for UK politicians to suggest joining by 2045: Finland’s entry negotiations took two years.
Life could be so different for the UK. But only if current and future governments see and understand the UK as European. They must understand and adopt a European mindset, and a positive and bold approach to EU membership. By almost any metric, the UK cannot afford to remain outside indefinitely. That means accepting and resolving an understanding it once had: that being inside the room, shaping politico-economic priorities and getting two-thirds of what you want is the first step to eventually achieving the rest.
Bylines Network Gazette is out!
The latest Bylines Network Gazette is out now. Become a Friend of Bylines Network or upgrade to a paid Substack subscription, and you will get access to a vital collection of citizen articles and stories.
Journalism by the people, for the people.
