Boris Johnson’s resignation provides the perfect excuse to revisit a topic that has caused me considerable mental exertion over the last few years, exertion that never produced a conclusive opinion.
Boris Johnson was elected to deliver Brexit. He did. (He successfully completed the negotiations, anyway.) Now he has outlived his welcome. Johnson never quite figured out what to do beyond Brexit—or how to turn Brexit into a long-term win. Eventually he seized upon Ukraine as a means both to distract from scandal at home and direct his floundering government toward some clear end, and in fact he did very well: Britain’s support for Ukraine left other European powers in the dust. But even here we are left to wonder whether European support might have looked any different had Britain, a longtime advocate of better European military cooperation, remained in the EU. Brexit remains the most important part of Johnson’s legacy, and also one of the most interesting, because it is, thus far, inconclusive. Perhaps this is an opportune time to once again attempt a judgement.
Brexit was always going to be an initial economic negative. Perhaps there was some small hope of capitalizing through fast-paced deregulation and a favorable trade deal with the US, but it didn’t happen. The OECD predicts that Britain will have the lowest growth rate in the G7 next year. Britain’s long-term Covid recovery looks slow, and the UK no longer attracts as much foreign investment.
The real argument for Brexit was one of leverage and national sovereignty, two concepts that belong together, because infringements on the latter can affect the scope of the former. In the EU, Britain was forced to accept all kinds of European regulations, from rules on trade to agriculture to privacy to the environment. But of course Britain had a hand in shaping them, too, and was sometimes able to get its way (it also obtained frequent exemptions).
But the long-term issue for Britain was not the EU’s regulatory apparatus as it appeared in 2016: instead, it was the EU’s future. The Treaty on European Union calls for “ever-closer” union; but what does that mean? How close is it? It is not clear to me that Europhiles have a very good answer: some secretly or openly harbor hopes for a proper European state. (Others, of greater intelligence, prudence, or historical education, prefer a more flexible approach, in which smaller groups of nations are permitted to integrate more closely, within the EU’s framework, on issues of particular interest. Emmanuel Macron’s call for “tiers” came across as a tone-deaf dismissal of Ukrainian candidacy, but wasn’t a bad strategic proposal—something like that is probably necessary for any kind of continued integration.) Such a state was never going to include Britain. This is just a matter of history and national pride: various European countries, Britain especially, are never going to voluntarily accept the status of territory in something that amounts to a quasi-empire. If “ever-closer union” is a reality, rather than a mere statement of brotherhood, then Brexit was inevitable—eventually. At some point integration was going to cross a line that Britain couldn’t accept, or else Britain’s intransigence would become utterly intolerable to fervent integrationists.
Here we need to understand the apparent distinction between state interest and popular interest. A policy that produces the greatest good averaged per citizen does not necessarily produce the greatest good for a state, as an entity. A European super-state of some kind might improve the average well-being of a British citizen a great deal thanks to improved trade, more health and safety regulation, more globally regulatory leverage, and the like. But it is obviously bad for Britain as a state.
But the same is not true of mere membership in the EU, absent continued integration. Up to a point, membership in the EU might increase British power (British state power) by creating more leverage. For example, suppose the EU has some kind of integrated military force, and Britain has a lot of control over this force. Or, to take a more mundane example: Britain is going to be subject to lots of EU regulations anyway, unless it can reorient its entire economy to focus on non-EU trade partners. In order to trade with Europe, Britain will need to meet lots of EU standards. (This is a problem even for other countries: just look at how many American websites now require you to click some absurd cookie button. You can thank the EU for that.) But Britain has some influence over those standards while it remains an EU member. If it’s going to be subject to them anyway, it has more power inside the EU than outside it.
There is also the question of balancing within Europe. Right now, Britain’s best European allies lie to the East: Poland and Ukraine. These countries are not especially wealthy (despite Poland’s enviable growth rate). But they are among Europe’s leading military powers. Ukraine, of course, is holding off and even beating back Russia’s invasion. Poland, meanwhile, has been Ukraine’s principal weapons supplier alongside Britain and the US, repairs damaged equipment, and serves as one of the main training grounds for Ukrainian troops. Its ground forces are already among the best in Europe, and Poland plans a dramatic expansion, from 150,000 to 300,000 troops (250,000 active-duty). Apart from Ukraine, that’s Europe’s largest military. They will be backed by new American tanks, scheduled to start arriving later this year, as well as F-35s and (probably) AH-64s. Poland will manage this by boosting defense spending to 3% of GDP—it’s one of the few NATO members that already meet the 2% target. While it will take a while to integrate all the new American equipment, ensure those troops are well-trained, and the like, Poland will be Europe’s leading military land power within 10 years. Russia’s invasion has demonstrated the continued leverage of military power, and the growing UK-Eastern Europe coalition has much more of it than anyone else in Europe.
Here again, though, Britain might be better off wielding its military leverage within the EU. Suppose Ukraine joins: A UK-Ukraine-Poland coalition (I suspect these countries would frequently vote together even on non-military matters) would be insufficient for a qualified majority within the European Council. But a voting bloc composed of Europe’s security guarantors might attract additional support. It is not the sort of thing other nations would want to cross lightly. Of course the UK can still ally with Eastern Europe even now: it is doing so vigorously. And this alliance has some leverage over other European powers (and is in much better standing with the US). But it’s hard to see how this becomes easier for the UK outside the EU.
In sum, I think the leverage argument mostly opposes Brexit. It looks like this: the UK can’t stay in an EU that continues to integrate. But it gains a great deal from the 2016 status quo. Britain should have tried to maintain that status quo as long as possible from within Europe. An alliance with Poland and Ukraine—two countries that will also have concerns about integration—only makes that easier. And Britain doesn’t gain any notable leverage by leaving.
But if leverage, on balance, seems to oppose Brexit, sovereignty might support it—because sovereignty has benefits separate from leverage. To understand why, we need to return to the earlier distinction between state interest (the interests of the state as an entity) and popular interest (the interests of citizens). At first glance, a sovereign European state looks like the kind of thing that would hurt the former but might help the latter. But I’m not sure this is true, because state interest actually affects, and is part of, popular interest.
Notice that I haven’t talked about “national interest.” I think the term national interest, properly understood, takes into account the effects of state interest on popular wellbeing. There is great popular benefit from having a state that is strong, stable, and influential, because such a state induces patriotism. Citizens are generally better off, and their countries more stable, if they believe in their own governments—if they think of their countries as capable of doing good and even capable of doing great things. Otherwise they will never even think of doing good or great things. Of course you could take this to a nationalistic extreme, but it’s also hard to have a successful state, one that’s a force for good in the world, if citizens don’t believe in it or care for it. There is real advantage to having a positive national self-image or even national pride.
In Britain, this pride doesn’t have to be national—it could in theory flow toward the EU. But in point of fact it doesn’t: British attachment flows to Britain, not to Brussels. This is why Britain could never stomach complete integration, and also why it should not do so. Britain’s “go it alone” attitude is very valuable: it creates an energy and an ability lacking in a nation without this positive and confident identity. Indeed, this sense of identity and confidence helps explain why Britain has responded so well to Ukraine, but Germany so poorly. This is Britain’s particular strength, and taking that away surely disadvantages not merely the state’s power but also the lives of ordinary British citizens. Now, if it helps ordinary citizens, we might just call this a “popular” interest; in theory it’s the same thing. But the point I want to make is that a state interest is actually part of a popular interest, even if that isn’t immediately obvious. The term “national interest” helps remind us of this fact.
Granting all this, it’s quite clear that Britain couldn’t and shouldn’t have stomached further integration, except perhaps in defense. But the argument that leaving the EU somehow freed up Britain’s national spirit to do greater things, is, well, aspirational and intangible. I think this is the underlying reason why Brexit happened: a sense of pride, independence, even greatness. But Britain needs to work very hard to turn that stubborn confidence into a reality that can outweigh the immediate advantages of participation in Europe. We are seeing a little of how that should look in Ukraine, and perhaps a European Britain would have been more timid (certainly a Labour Britain would be!). But that’s guesswork. Boris Johnson ultimately wasn’t able to turn a vague memory of greatness into actual greatness, and it remains to be seen whether his successors can succeed where he failed.