31st August 2021
When does the story of Brexit begin?
Some would say that the story of the departure of the United Kingdom begins with the founding of the European Economic Community itself, or even of the European Coal and Steel Community.
For even then the supranational approach that the United Kingdom was to find so repugnant was obvious (see here).
Others can point to the accession of the United Kingdom to the European communities in 1973 or (a view with which I have sympathy) the treaty of Maastricht of 1992.
More recent start dates would be the referendum of 2016 or the timing and circumstances of the Article 50 notification in 2017.
It depends on the nature of the story you want to tell.
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This post looks at another starting-point.
The ‘Bloomberg speech’ of then prime minister David Cameron in January 2013.
Cameron, of course, is now little more than a pantomime villain in the story of Brexit, reduced to texting ministers and officials for commercial favours while the audience groans and hisses.
And the prospect of reading – still less sitting through – an old Cameron speech may not be a welcome one.
But.
This 2013 speech, when taken together with the ‘renegotiation’ of 2015-16, shows fault lines that later shaped how Brexit evolved in practice, and it is worth looking back at.
An edited version of the speech is still on the government website (with some brief ‘political’ content removed) while the Downing Street YouTube channel has the speech in its entirety.
To the extent the speech is remembered now – if it is is remembered at all – it is because it contained the promise by the head of the then coalition government of an ‘in/out’ referendum, in the event that the conservatives won outright the next general election.
And that announcement is of significance as, unlike many political promises, it was carried out.
But also of significance is the framing of the announcement – what the speech did and did not say.
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One premise of the speech is that the referendum would be tied to a ‘renegotiation’ which, in turn, envisaged treaty changes for the benefit of all member states.
It would be this new ‘settlement’ that would then be promoted as part of the referendum campaign.
To the extent that there is a fundamental critique of the European Union it is in terms of ‘sovereignty’ and the ‘gap between the EU and its citizens’.
And to the extent that there is a detailed practical critique it is about the ‘unfair’ relationship between Eurozone members and member states such as the United Kingdom that were not part of the Eurozone.
The speech has structure and coherence – and, after the experience of Theresa May and then Boris Johnson, it is a strange feeling to read a prime ministerial speech that has structure and coherence.
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But.
There is a lot missing.
There is not a single mention of immigration – even though by the ‘renegotiation’ of 2015-16 this had become a perceived political priority.
This is because although the Eurozone crisis had begun, the perceived migration crisis (and the rapidly increasing domestic political support for UKIP) was in the future and as yet unknown.
Some now contend that Brexit was always about immigration and migration and ‘taking control’ of our borders – yet the issue is not mentioned once in the major speech that initiated the political process that led to the referendum.
There is also not a mention of ‘freedom of movement’ or indeed any of the ‘four freedoms’ that the European Union aver are integral to the single market.
For Cameron and the United Kingdom, the single market could be discussed and extolled without any reference to the foundational principles of that market.
It was almost as if the same single market was different things to the United Kingdom and to the rest of the European Union, described in different ways, and with each side talking past the other.
Ireland gets one brief mention – and is bracketed with the United Kingdom for having border controls against the rest of the European Union.
But there is nothing at all about how the single market and shared membership of the single market and the customs union meant there was no need for a regulatory or customs border on the island of Ireland.
There is also nothing about how shared European Union membership provided a solution to the hard political problems of the Irish border (and similarly there is no mention of Gibraltar either).
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And there is a complacency about treaty changes – an assumption that the fundamental reforms to the European Union that could only come about by amending the treaty texts would be an easy task in a tight time frame.
The referendum was to be in the ‘first half’ of the next parliament – in effect the entire process of renegotiation and referendum would need to take place between 2015 and 2017.
Looking back from 2021, we now know that there has been no new European Union treaty at all – the last general treaty is still that of Lisbon in 2007 – and there is no appetite for a new treaty and the politics it would entail.
But without treaty changes there was a severe limit to what could be achieved in a negotiation, especially against a strict deadline.
And so – unsurprisingly – the ‘renegotiation’ was damp and squibby.
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The Bloomberg speech revealed a lack of realism about what could be achieved from the beginning of the ‘renegotiation’ process, with expectations raised that could not be fulfilled.
And this had a significant political consequence.
For, from the very beginning of the referendum process, the government made no positive case for the United Kingdom to be part of the European Union as a matter of principle.
The government’s case was instead to be for the United Kingdom to remain part of the European Union on renegotiated terms and as part of a new overall settlement.
But when those renegotiated terms fell flat, and the new overall settlement failed to come into existence, then the government had nothing positive to argue and campaign for.
Indeed, given the lacklustre government campaign – directionless after the failure of the ‘renegotiation’ – it is remarkable that the referendum was as close as it was.
The government’s own run-up to the referendum, from the announcement of the referendum onwards, had been misconceived.
And you can see why this was by reading what was in – and what was not in – the Bloomberg speech of January 2013.
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I think Cameron made that speech to appease the Euro sceptics in his party, but/and he never expected to win the election outright, and therefore never expected to have to enact any of the stuff he proposed. He thought he’d be in a coalition with the LibDems again, and that they would stop him. It was a cynical move by a lightweight PM, with devastating consequences for us all.
The speech was designed for placating idiot backbenchers on the Tory side, who were frothing at the mouth about the EU. Cameron wasn’t expecting to win a majority at a general election, so he could promise anything. As ever, he was winging it.
And if it really had to be put into effect then bit of a token renegotiation, chuck a minor alteration to the backbenchers, rely on the British fear of change, quick win in the referendum, glass of bubbly and a chillax.
He was the first of the dogs to catch the car, but not the last.
As for Ireland, and the issue of Brexit changing the status of the border, that was barely mentioned even after the referendum, let alone during the campaign. I recall JRM calling for Ireland to leave the EU, and Davis talking about the “internal border” in Ireland. Johnson said that as there was no border between Hammersmith and Kensington, so there need be no border between the two parts of Ireland. I genuinely don’t think it registered to many Brexiters that the Republic of Ireland was a sovereign state, let alone one that had the rest of the EU backing its case.
Sigh.
Spot on, your commment and the one above. George ‘Lucky’ Lucan would have been a better PM.
You are surprised at no mention of immigration in the speech. I clearly remember that while the coalition government banged on about limiting immigration in the early years they always left EU migration out of the statistics. That ended when the relaxation of restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians was about to happen. That relaxation took effect on 1 January 2014.
Certain sections of the press stirred up a storm as this date approached. The notion of “swamping” was aired, as is usual in those circumstances. The reports bordered on the farcical in the New Year, as the first Romanian to “swamp” us at Luton Airport was a worker returning to the job he already had in the UK.
But it had the effect desired by the stirrers. The government panicked and included EU migration numbers from then on. The rest is history and the abandonment of UK citizen’s rights that many of us are still quite bitter about
‘You are surprised at no mention of immigration in the speech.’
Nothing in my post expresses surprise, and I am not surprised. Noting something is not an expression of surprise.
“Indeed, given the lacklustre government campaign – directionless after he failure of the ‘renegotiation’ – it is remarkable that the referendum was as close as it was.”
yes I have often made that point
and I remember thinking in April 2016 that remain was probably going to lose
The entire Leave campaign consisted as treating the manifest benefits of EU membership as simply axiomatic
They are people who turn the tap on or flick a switch and out pops fresh water and electricity/light
or click on a “buy now” link on a website and a parcel turns up next day
And just assume that’s how the world works
All enabled by hidden fairies and pixies
Simple-ism
You seem to have adopted DAG’s style of paragraphing, but without the full stops!
In other words, the style of David’s twitter threads.
The Romans saying was “viperam sub ala nutricare”. That was the UK’s position in the EU. Charles De Gaulle knew that.
But we Europeans in the EU are fully aware that if the UK is the loser (and bad loser, at that), we are not the winners.
That’s a super comment, Claudio. Absolutely right.
Cameron’s ‘renegotiation’ was carried out in the most idiotic way, which showed that he did not actually know how it worked. Donald Tusk’s role – President of the European Council – is basically permanent meeting chairperson. The position has no vote and no authority. All Tusk could do was agree to put it on the agenda.
The people who needed to be convinced were the other heads of government of member states. Half of whom Cameron had offended by pulling the Tories out of the European People’s Party, which would have been a useful forum for discussing and agreeing treaty changes. Indeed, perhaps that 2009 manoeuvre is really where the root of the problem lies.
I see the question in the same way.
One related aspect is that Mr Cameron was quite frantically travelling to (some!) European capitals during the renegotiations, but prior 2015/6 he had actually not done many meetings or visits with other European leaders: It was all so obvious a case of ‘he’s only turning up in Berlin/Den Haag/… because he wants something from us’. Not conducive to creating good will.
Great question – did we leave at the fall of the not so Holy Roman Empire & The Reformation ( good King Hal):
https://www.theoxfordblue.co.uk/2021/01/31/brexit-and-the-reformation-fallout/
or, did we as Churchill is quoted, much later than his 1940s speech of the United States of Europe:
On 11 May 1953, it’s true that Churchill did say:
“Where do we stand? We are not members of the European Defence Community, nor do we intend to be merged in a Federal European system. We feel we have a special relation to both. This can be expressed by prepositions, by the preposition “with” but not “of”—we are with them, but not of them. We have our own Commonwealth and Empire.”
More recently, Maastricht – nailed Brexit.
I think a diplomatic history might take the late night finance treaty negotiations in 2011 as the definitive break.
Cameron misjudged our EU allies’ (Sweden, Poland, The Netherlands etc) willingness to support our objective of renegotiating finance rules. Trying to make this a condition of agreeing to changes that predominantly affected the eurozone during a crisis looked like brinksmanship at best, and chantage (as the French say) at worst. The optics mattered, particularly with swing members of the EU.
But the fast development of intra-EU trade and finance links since 2000 – particularly in the eurozone – meant that what we thought of as traditional allies in the east (Visegrad) and Italy were more closely wedded to Germany.
Cameron compounded the strategic error with a tactical one, when he allowed Sarkozy to bounce him into vetoing the treaty in the early hours – which was then passed by the remaining members.
We can argue about the consequences. Died in the wool eurosceptics will argue that we were always in that position. Their counterparts on the europhile side may think the referendum marked the break.
I personally think that British influence ebbed after the Iraq invasion while the 2004 veto of services liberalisation (Bolkestein) referendums in France and the Netherlands meant one of our EU goals was unattainable.
The 2013 speech was a move in the same vein, committing the government to a referendum unless the EU conceded to our demands.
It’s hard not to see this as another example of Cameron’s failure to achieve strategic goals via negotiation.
Although it is unlikely that anyone could have obtained the concessions without committing the UK to further integration – which was deeply unpopular with a hardcore of 15-20% of the electorate (the vast majority of whom were Conservative voters).
And so it goes.
‘Although it is unlikely that anyone could have obtained the concessions without committing the UK to further integration’
I don’t know whether you remember a quote from a French diplomat at the time, who said that David Cameron was acting as if he were at a wife-swapping party but had left his wife at home.
Also I seem to remember that he got about three-and-a-half of his four demands?
I think the end result of Cameron’s demands would have created a two-tier EU, ending requirements for ever-closer union.
The EU (unsurprisingly) took and takes the view that this would fundamentally change the EU’s direction. At the least, it would end moves towards greater integration of existing members – and at worst (from an EU perspective) a departure lounge for members before moving towards more detached relationships.
The fear is that this would in time lead to it collapsing back into a simple EEC/EC-style trade bloc under the weight of its own internal contradictions. (Not least because the EU’s 3-4 key net donors would be the first to move to a less engaged relationship).
Interestingly – you could argue that Ollie Robbins and Theresa May were trying to create just such a semi-detached relationship (EU sans free movement) during their negotiations. Which would indicate a degree of policy continuity.
Our departure may eventually lead to the same outcome – the collapse of the EU into a simple trading bloc – because all serious members will need to prepare for the possibility of further exits in future. It is a risk that will need to be mitigated.
Which is a very long way of saying – I’m not sure anyone could have convinced the other EU members to agree to that.
And so it goes.
I occasionally wonder what the outcome would have been if Cameron had come back from his renegotiation and said “I didn’t get what I want and we should leave the EU” rather than trying to dress up a defeat as a win.
Would the referendum result have been different because people voting to give Cameron a bloody nose would have voted yes? Would Corbyn and the Labour left have campaigned properly for remain to oppose Cameron and the Tories? Would Johnson have campaigned for remain as the best shot at the leadership?
Even if the referrendum result had remained the same, Cameron wouldn’t have felt obliged to resign and the frenzied ‘leave means leave’ red lines might never have been drawn.