The only thing missing from this weekend’s intriguing reports of secret discussions to address the failures of Brexit, is a heavily modified plutonium powered DeLorean. Like Marty McFly in the 1985 Sci-fi movie, Back to the Future, it seems we are now going back in time perhaps as far as 1955 when politicians in Westminster began agonising over whether or not Britain should become a founding member of the fledgling European Economic Community (EEC).
What we are seeing is the first glimmers of a new and more pragmatic approach to Brexit and eventually a much closer relationship with the EU. The old arguments about sovereignty and trade are playing out exactly as they did 70 years ago, with trade once again winning out.
The first indication something was afoot came from Alex Wickham at Bloomberg on Saturday, as he reported that: Rishi Sunak is privately drafting plans to rebuild Britain’s ties with the EU.
The Ditchley summit
Later, details of the cross-party meeting held at Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire on Thursday and Friday last week, variously described as a summit and a conference, emerged in The Guardian – Revealed: secret cross-party summit held to confront failings of Brexit. It was quickly picked up by other newspapers, including The Independent – Tories and Labour ‘meet for secret talks on Brexit failures’.
Attendees included a mix of Leavers and Remainers, politicians and industrialists. Michael Gove was there with shadow foreign secretary David Lammy; Lord Mandelson, a former EU trade commissioner, David Lidington (a Remainer who served in Theresa May’s cabinet as Minister for the Cabinet Office) and Gisela Stuart of Vote Leave, now Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston.
Also present were Lords Howard and Lamont; Ollie Robbins, May’s original Brexit negotiator and now MD of Goldman Sachs; Tom Scholar, former Treasury permanent secretary sacked by Kwasi Kwarteng; John Symonds, chair of GlaxoSmithKline; and Angus Lapsley, NATO assistant secretary general for defence policy and planning.
Brexit a drag on UK growth
Documents from the meeting, seen by The Observer, describe it as a “private discussion” with a euphemistic opening statement that there was a view among “some at least, that so far the UK has not yet found its way forward outside the EU” with Brexit “acting as a drag on our growth and inhibiting the UK’s potential”.
The ‘conference’ was titled: ‘How can we make Brexit work better with our neighbours in Europe?’
The very fact that such a meeting was held, away from Whitehall, over two days and with some big hitters in attendance from both main parties, is significant in itself. Gove, is said to have made “regular contributions” including opening an informal conversation on Thursday night, with a source saying he was very “honest” about the shortcomings of Brexit, while still believing it would prove the right decision in the long run.
It’s as close as we have yet come to senior ministers admitting Brexit has gone badly.
The Times report another source ‘close to Gove’ (i.e. Gove himself?) playing down his own involvement. The source claimed that the secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities and minister for intergovernmental relations had attended the talks in a personal capacity as one of the 53 governors of The Ditchley Foundation.
One of those attending described it as a “constructive meeting” that dwelt heavily on the economic downside to the UK economy at a time of global instability and rising energy prices. One document is said to have admitted that on the European side, there was “little interest in further wrangling over Brexit and little time being devoted to the relationship with the UK”.
The news brought predictable fury from Brexiters. Lord Frost told the Daily Mail that the “secret conference is a further piece of evidence that many in our political and business establishment want to unravel the deals we did to exit the EU in 2020 and to stay shadowing the EU instead”.
Nigel Farage tweeted:
Back to the future
The Guardian‘s source said, “The main thrust of it was that Britain is losing out, that Brexit it not delivering, our economy is in a weak position. It was about moving on from leave and remain, and what are the issues we now have to face, and how can we get into the best position in order to have a conversation with the EU about changes to the UK-EU trade and cooperation agreement when that happens?”
Britain has indeed ‘moved on’ but has certainly not ‘found its way forward’ as the reports seem to suggest.
We are in fact on our way back to the late 1950s when all the original arguments about trade and sovereignty were first being aired. A temporary stopover will be in 2018 as we ponder climbing back up Michel Barnier’s stairway to Brexit, which set out in graphic form the options available with all the UK’s red lines intact.
Will the EU27 help to ‘make Brexit work better’?
What possible incentive does the EU or any member state have in finding ways to ‘make Brexit work better’ for Britain? Does Gove or any of the attendees think Brussels will be happy to help a competitor over the next few difficult years so that Britain can emerge as a low-tax, low-regulation threat to them afterward? This looks naïve.
The EU has not changed its position on access to the single market or on cherry picking. So, what is the UK willing to offer now that it wouldn’t accept in 2019 or 2020? More importantly, what will the EU27 demand in return? To make any significant improvements towards frictionless trade, some red lines will need to be erased or revised and governments led by Sunak or Keir Starmer will find themselves making the same calculations that Harold Macmillan was faced with when he was prime minister from 1957 to 1963.
In 1962, Macmillan said that a divided Europe would stand no chance of competing with the great concentrations of power in the USA, the Soviet Union or what Napoleon once called the “sleeping giant” of China, now fully woken. Almost ten years later in 1971, Edward Heath conceded that membership of the EEC “involves our sovereignty” but added that “we are gaining an opportunity to influence its decisions in the future”.
Trade and prosperity triumphed then and sooner or later, after all the upheaval of the last seven years, Britain will come to exactly the same conclusion – the one that every prime minister from Macmillan to David Cameron has reached before. Imperfect though it is, the EU is Britain and Europe’s best hope for the future.
Fire up the DeLorean, Marty.
