British Exceptionalism and the EU

David Cameron’s recent speech on Europe continues to reverberate not just in UK politics but also in the rest of the EU.  But it is important to note that it has not started the debate on the future shape of the Union – the British are far from alone in discussing the future direction of Europe, and many others share the UK’s concerns and have been debating them vigorously for some time.  The UK does not have a monopoly of seeing the EU’s faults, nor is it a case that the other 26 members have a united view.

If, then, the UK is not alone in wanting to build a better and more democratic Europe, but others more typically seek to improve and advance Europe from within, then the British uniqueness is not in realising that there is something wrong with Europe, but in thinking it can be mended in a bilateral manner, in discussions between the UK and the EU.

Why is this?  Why does the UK believe in adversarial and confrontational discussions (“us against them”) not collegiate discussions (“us with them”, or even “us as part of the whole”)?

The traditional answer to this is to look to the UK’s history and geography.  Britain has had no substantive possessions on the Continent for hundreds of years and has been able therefore to build a mental image of Us and Them which other nations do not share.  The old saying “Fog in Channel, Continent cut off” may or may not be apocryphal, but it is revealing of the islanders’ mind-set.  And it is perhaps also revealing that the one substantial territorial change the UK has experienced in the last 100 years – the creation of the Republic of Ireland – has left a much greater identification with and understanding of that foreign state and its concerns, and a greater willingness to co-operate with its neighbour and seek common solutions to common issues (Ulster being the most obvious example).

But there may be an alternative dynamic at work here.  For most of the post-War period, most of west and north Europe has enjoyed coalition governments and coalition politics.  The art of compromise, of creating friendships and mutual obligations across a political divide is essential for any continental politician who wants to succeed.  But in the UK, the norm has been majority governments.  A British prime minister is used to getting his way, whether it be with his cabinet, his party or Parliament.  It breeds a different approach – decide and implement, not discuss and compromise.

Importantly, this “decide and implement” approach requires careful thinking before adoption of a position.  Because a British government has usually been a majority government, it has a good chance of implementing its policies, and British political thought has worked on the basis of details – party manifestos at elections have traditionally be very granular.  This gives the British political class a good grip of practicalities but a correspondingly poor concept of “vision”:  the UK prefers to work out the next steps exactly rather than contemplate the far horizon.  The more common European approach of focusing on “le grand projet”, sometimes at the cost of letting the details sort themselves out as they happen, is the exact opposite to how the UK approaches things.

This creates a political class which is good at immediate problem solving and poor at vision and long-term planning.  It creates leaders who think deeply but too often in a vacuum, and having done so, convince themselves they are right and then simply do not know how to interact with people who do not agree.  It has created a succession of British prime ministers who are used at home to dictating events and when they get to Brussels and have to negotiate, are lost, with neither diplomatic skills nor pre-arranged alliances.

The irony is that Cameron is a different style of British PM – he does lead a coalition, he can be flexible in his views and he is more pragmatic and less dirigiste than some of his predecessors.  But it may have come too late for the UK’s relationship with its EU partners, many of whom are sadly exasperated and exhausted by “la question existentielle du Royaume-Uni”.

A version of this article also appeared as an OMFIF daily commentary