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EUROPE IN LATE 2023
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
Whenever the current Labour party opens its mouth on foreign policy we frankly cringe. Foreign governments can sense weakness a mile off.
We could never have negotiated the Windsor framework with a Labour government in power. Concessions in advance whilst getting nothing in return seems to be Labour's modus operandi for 'sitting round the table', whether it be with foreign governments or British business. Neither has yet demonstrated respect for Labour.
A little more say for civil servants, control of domestic populations and fixing markets (as in removing competition or 'favouring the preferred suppliers') is not an adequate return from negotiations.
In my experience, the EU does not like semi-detached or soft British representatives negotiating on the U.K.'s behalf.
Ted Heath's negotiations with the then EEC (a substantially different creature from the post-Maastricht union) were pretty even-handed in outcome between sides (except on fishing and budget contributions, which were probably the price) following on from the sound - but behind the scenes - negotiations between Harold Macmillan and the U.S. the decade before.
Harold Wilson tended to keep Britain out of foreign entanglements - good reflexes given 'liberal' governments are more prone to get into imperialism - but Jim Callaghan was perceived as soft. Young as I was, I used to cringe at the way Helmut Schmidt, a socialist like Callaghan, used to refer to Britain after bilateral or multilateral negotiations. Britain's reputation slid in Europe.
Callaghan's decision, in secret, to modernise Britain's nuclear deterrent deserves high marks.
Margaret Thatcher was having none of softness. She won a budgetary rebate and shaped the European community into a wider, more market oriented entity. Eyes of Caligula or no, Britain's contribution was appreciated and, in my experience, much respected.
From Tony Blair onwards, British prime ministers were semi-detached about the EU so getting less out of it than Thatcher - until Boris Johnson. He detached.
Amongst those who run the EU there are many who want their children to study at British universities, or language schools, or work in the City, or gain life experience in a secure Anglo-Saxon environment without leaving the continent.
Likewise, amongst the older ones, remembering the generosity of Britain to Belgian refugees at the outbreak of the first world war (and to escapees from the French Revolution, to the Huguenots etc) there is a wish to be able to live in Britain, should they ever choose, once retired.
They also wish these things for their citizens so that they are not the exceptions.
Visa free travel might be possible for the under-25s and the over-65s, say, but reciprocity is the usual byword.
There will be more people preferring to come to Britain than go the other way in most years so the price of this must be the EU takes back new asylum seekers whose first steps onshore were in the EU.
The EU wants something. So does the U.K. There is not a rationale to take a percentage of the EU's asylum seekers. We are no longer in the EU.
Nato is the keystone of its European members' defence. Britain has a strategic interest at the perimeter and within.
The EU is entitled to its independent foreign policy which may include trying to draw Britain into its non-Nato defence frameworks. France, the principal military power within the EU, is entitled to its independent foreign policy as well.
Britain will not undermine these powers and reciprocity is expected but one would need to ask what Britain would gain from any further substantial defence and security arrangement. Britain cannot currently significantly influence where the EU will expand or which regions it will become involved in and it cannot be expected to tag along.