Brexit won’t be done until it’s undone
A long rambling walk along the highways and byways of politics today.
byMartin Roche, Bylines Scotland
Keir Starmer has eased open the door to the possibility of the UK rejoining the EU. However, hold hard and don’t get too excited. Crack open a bottle of Pinot Greenock if you like, but keep the Champagne in the fridge. We are in for years of two steps forward and one step back, or vice versa. How the future of UK/EU relations stacks up depends on many elements. Among them: Trump, Farage, the Scottish independence movement, the performance of the UK economy, wee Vlad Putin and the result of the French presidential election in May 2027 − and on yet unknown events. Never underestimate unknown events.
But let’s start with known events, in the shape of Donald Trump. Of course, with Donny there are no known events. He is the most unpredictable leader in history. More helpful to our analysis is to look at what’s happening inside his administration. “Government of the people, by the people for the people” is being dismantled at speed.
The secular state, where the rule of law is held to be the Holy Grail of public administration, is being chopped up. On one side of the Oval Office are the tech bro billionaires creating ultra-capitalism of the reddest teeth and the most vividly vermillion claw. Why bother with the state when the private sector is ready and willing to relieve it of the burden of running public services?
On the other side are the Christian nationalism fundamentalists. They exist to remove from the US any trace of Enlightenment thought, and to make their form of Christianity not only the core religion of the US, but the core fuel that powers how Americans think. It preaches individualism, while practising outlawing the right of women to control their own bodies, wants to stop LBGTQ+ people being happy, and bans schools from teaching anything as scientific as evolution.
Foreign policy made by Trump is now mainly dictated by what is in the financial interests of the US and not by what is best for the stability of the planet. The US has walked away from its 20th century role of being the world’s policeman and from being democracy’s “shining city on a hill.”
The question is, will Europe, including the UK and Scotland, follow the US or take a different path?
“Midwife of failure”
Nigel Farage, who SNP MP, Stephen Gethins, recently called “a midwife of failure” in an interview with Bylines Scotland Radio, may be on the verge of putting Scotland front and centre of the debate about how the world is run. Farage’s Reform Party is said to be bullish about its prospects for the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse Scottish Parliament by-election, being held on 5 June.
A win for Reform will see Farage claim a right to speak for Scotland. His success would also see the final nail in the coffin of the Conservative and Unionist Party north of the border. The word Unionist is important. Protestant working class support for the Tories in Scotland has been historically rooted in an unshakable belief in the Union. Places like Larkhall are bastions of Unionism, characterised by support for the Crown, the Orange Lodge and Rangers FC. Nigel Farage’s union jack socks, his disapproval of all things EU (thought by some in Scotland to be a Popish plot) and his opposition to Irish reunification, all make him a well-qualified champion of Unionism. Tories are not needed on the voyage.
Be assured that the BBC in Scotland will provide Farage with a regular platform, just as it has on Question Time over many years. The current head of BBC Scotland is a former senior editorial executive on Question Time.
Farage will use his usual Rottweiler tactics of rubbishing all that his opponents have done, while refusing to answer any details about his own policies. In TV debates he will shout over people and try to bully and dominate. It is always somebody else to blame. This former English public-school boy and City trader, who dresses like a village squire, and loves all the trappings of wealth and power, will align himself with the white Scottish Protestant working class.
Unlike Farage, none of them will have more than one home, and 99% will never have travelled first class. Few will drive a recent model Range Rover. None will have earned £1mn in outside earnings in one year, as Farage has done since he became an MP. Farage, aged 61, says he will claim his pension for his years as a Member the European Parliament when he reaches the qualifying age of 63. It will pay him an estimated £73,000 annually. Many pensioners in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse survive on the UK state pension of less than £12,000 a year.
Farage may do the SNP a Holyrood favour
In the campaign for Holyrood 2026, the Tories, Labour and the LibDems don’t want to talk about Scottish independence. Farage on the other hand will actively challenge the very idea of an independent Scotland. Thus, he’ll make the 2026 Holyrood elections all about him and the SNP. He’ll tell Scotland that independence would lead to starvation and the collapse of society, calling out SNP failures, and quite a few invented ones, to boot.
There is a risk in all of this for Reform. That is, Scottish voters may reject Farage, and by default or design, strengthen the independence cause. The SNP could end up in complete control of Holyrood. It is more likely that Reform will be the third largest party and hard on the heels of Labour. Scottish politics will become far more unpleasant than most imagined possible. Keir Starmer will not be interested in deepening engagement with the EU if he sees Farage slicing up Labour in Scotland.
What Starmer should do is embrace the EU more fully and at high speed. Recent evidence is he won’t. He’s more likely to try to out-manoeuvre Farage by bending further to the right on public spending, welfare and immigration. Labour activists are being heard to ask why voters might opt for a right-wing Labour Party when they can get the real thing in Reform?
A win for Le Pen will fracture the Franco-German alliance
Emanuel Macron is in his last two years as French president. His decision to call a parliamentary election last year backfired. It empowered Marine le Pen and her National Rally Party (NRP) and made a ‘dead duck’ of Macron’s administration.
While Le Pen has stepped back from the idea of a referendum on EU membership, she is promoting an isolationist agenda, a “France first” position that has the potential to fracture the Franco-German alliance that is the bedrock of the EU. Le Pen in the Elyse Palace would surely stay Starmer’s hand on Europe.
Then there is the matter of Le Pen’s recent conviction for misusing European Parliament funds. That may stop her standing, though her party has other heavyweight contenders to be presidential candidate, most notably its party president, Jordan Bardella. Polling in April put Le Pen and Bardella well ahead of Edouard Philippe, a Macronist and former prime minister.
What posture does Keir Starmer adopt with a France gone hard right − a France that may see Nigel Farage as a true and faithful ally? The irony of the UK’s best known ‘Little Englander’ wallowing in the warm embrace of the French may be too much for my ageing heart. Starmer may opt for fortress Britain, doubling down on seeking trade deals worldwide and being nasty about immigrants. Almost certainly, the route he should take is to return the UK to its role of keeping any European power from becoming too strong, militarily, politically and economically.
A UK that provides a European balance
The UK maintaining an equitable balance of power in Europe means a UK back inside the EU. The EU is the only viable platform for maintaining economic stability for the continent and for deterring an expansionist Russia. Its financial, manufacturing and technological clout gives it a place at the top the table of global economies. The alternative is fracture, isolation, decline and increasing instability.
The brooding and malign presence of Putin
Now we come to ‘Vlad the Invader’. The prospect of a just peace in Ukraine is remote. Zelenskyy wants back what is Ukraine’s. He wants his country neighboured by allies he can trust and with whom Ukraine is recognised and treated as a formal partner. Putin is unwilling to cede much of the territory he has won and is determined to keep that which is resource rich and that which he sees as Russian. The war is likely to go on for years, exhausting both sides and testing the resolve of the allies of Ukraine and Russia. Even if Russia were to annexe all of Ukraine, a long, bloody and draining guerrilla war would ensue, as Ukrainian patriots fight for their land.
Putin’s failure to defeat Ukraine has not led him to curb his territorial sabre rattling. Poland has upped its defence spending to 4.7% of GDP. That’s more than twice what it spent in 2022. Finland shares a 1,400 km border with Russia. Recently, the Russians have increased troops and equipment numbers along the boundary between the two states.
In addition to joining NATO and boosting its military equipment and arms production, Finland has invested heavily in civil defence. It has built enough shelters to house all 600,000 people in its capital city, Helsinki. Sweden too has joined NATO. Norway has upped its defence preparedness and invested more in protecting its oil and gas assets. All the Nordic nations are more vigilantly defending the region’s undersea cables. They carry global digital traffic, making them of the highest importance, locally and internationally. Across the Balkan region, Russian aircraft regularly test the air defences and military readiness of the regional democratic powers.
‘Reset’ worth more than any of the Free Trade Agreements
The UK is both a North Atlantic and a European power. It has offshore islands and oil, gas, wind power and fishing grounds, that it needs to protect, and it must meet its NATO obligations. Creating a bigger army, navy and air force will have significant long-term implications for the public purse. It is also a nuclear power, a status that comes at huge financial cost and, with Trump in the White House, a new set of calculations about how the UK’s military alliances will evolve. The defence bill is going only one way – Up.
Public services in many parts of the UK are in dire straits. Public tolerance for more cuts is surely approaching the inelastic. If the rubber band of tolerance snaps the likely winner is Nigel Farage. Starmer simply must rapidly find ways to boost growth. His reset with the EU will see exports to the EU quickly rise over the next year. That will help maintain jobs and boost overall economic activity.
Dr Peter Holmes of the UK Trade Policy Observatory, told the UK’s Chartered Institute of Export and International Trade:
“While this deal (the ‘reset’) won’t transform our trade and growth, it could be an important first step. Even as it stands it’s worth more than any of the Free Trade Agreements (FTA) the UK has signed.”
Keir Starmer needs money. The next obvious step is to ease the UK back into the Customs Union. Thus, at a stroke removing all barriers for UK exporters, stimulating mutual trade across the EU and strengthening the pan-European economy. It will need great political courage. Farage and the right-wing press will think all their Christmases have come at once. Starmer will have to bet that the majority in the UK have had enough of the downsides of Brexit and risk that most voters are anti-Farage, even if they are not massive Euro-ultras.
Where now for the Remainers?
Remainers should be of good cheer. Their campaigning efforts since the night of 23 June 2016 are paying off.
Very sensible things have come out of the greatly improved UK/EU relationship. They are good for the economy, for young people and even for travelling pets. What is even more important, is that the long post-Brexit debate has moved from a 50/50 tussle between Leave and Remain, to a clear political and psychological victory for the pro-Europe forces. Ordinary citizens can see real, tangible, comprehensible benefits in closer European engagement. The mood music has changed.
The single most significant outcome of the years of campaigning by groups like the European Movement in Scotland and Yes for Europe, is that the argument for Europe has been kept alive. The groundwork for getting the public to accept a rapprochement with Europe was done for the Westminster government by the campaigners. Without that effort over nine years, Starmer’s government would have found it far harder to get the deal done. Indeed, it’s possible that it might not even have tried. The Leave side won the referendum in 2016, but almost immediately ran out of ideas, energy and unity. The army of Remainers took over the communication space vacated by Leave and has won its first great victory.
The polity that is the United Kingdom has been through nine years of enormous domestic turmoil. The outside world has been ever more tumultuous. Right now, in the UK, with stable governments in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, there is perhaps a unique moment of opportunity to press the Europe case.
A summer of action calls
The dial has shifted. The momentum is with the Europe crusaders. But the window will not stay open long. Brexit is not done until it is undone. Another big heave will help consolidate the victory and create a springboard for what is to come next.
Carpe diem!
