Brexit UFOs, Switzerland, Angela Merkel - and German windows
Notes to the Future 2 - week ending 26 November 2022
Notes to the Future 2 (week ending 26 November 2022). Usual warning: these are journal notes, not finished, polished text. TGA
Brexit remorse
Very striking this week is the extent to which Brexit remorse has finally set in among the British public. One wit noticed that five times more Brits think they have seen a UFO than believe Brexit is going 'very well' - the latter now down to just 2% according to YouGov. (Perhaps Jacob Rees-Mogg, formerly Minister for 'Government efficiency and Brexit opportunities', aka Minister for Oxymorons, has also spied an UFO – through his monocle.)
For close to 6 years, public opinion on the wisdom at Brexit held at roughly 50-50 – i.e. most people didn't change their minds. Now 56% say it was a mistake to leave the EU, and only 32% say that it was the right thing to do. More than two thirds of British voters say they want a closer relationship with the EU than we have today.
In another poll, 57% said they would like the UK to rejoin the EU. But that's a long, long way off. It's not just the government that is ruling out even a Swiss-style relationship with the EU. Keir Starmer of Labour is still talking about 'making Brexit work' (a truly terrible slogan) and ruling out membership of the single market or customs union, for fear of failing to win back the Labour voters in the Northern English ('red wall') seats who voted Conservative in 2019 so as to 'get Brexit done'.
For the next couple of years, until the next election, the most realistic strategy is an incremental, area by area reconvergence with the EU, starting with reaching an acceptable compromise on the Northern Ireland Protocol, then re-entering Horizon, Erasmus, better arrangements for artists and cultural exchanges, practical improvements to trading arrangements, financial services etc. etc.
After the next election, the question will increasingly be posed of rejoining the customs union or the single market. Although that would be beneficial economically, the fact is that it would then be largely a 'BRINO' – Brexit in Name Only. And Britain would come back in a worse position, being a rule-taker, not a rule-maker.
Further down the road, rejoining the EU would mean accepting much worse terms than we had before we left it. For the truth is that it was in our membership of the EU, without being committed to the Euro or joining Schengen, that Britain 'had its cake and ate it'. Now, thanks to Boris Johnson, that narcissistic Pied Piper of cakeism, we neither have our cake nor eat it.
What an unmitigated disaster Brexit has been.
But a note of caution from the Europa Forum in lovely Luzern, where I spoke on Wednesday night. A Swiss European expert told me afterwards that Swiss Eurosceptics are still looking with great interest to Britain. For them, since their priorities are sovereignty and democratic self-government, Britain does not have to do brilliantly after Brexit – outstripping France or Germany economically, for example. It just has to do okay for them to point to a decent future outside the EU.
From Luzern to Göttingen - by train...
Any academic worth their salt learns from their students. One thing I've learned from my students, with their great concern about climate change, is that there are many European trips that I would typically have done by plane which one can and should now do by train.
Impressively, Reja and Olivier, the two students who came to speak with me at the Europa Forum about our Young Europeans Speak to EU project and report, travelled by train all the way from Oxford to Luzern. It took a long day. I wasn't so eco-virtuous (or, dare I say, time-rich) on the way out. I flew, having the stimulating company of Yascha Mounk along the way.
But I took the train from Luzern to my next appointment in Göttingen, where I was to give an Adam von Trott memorial lecture for the second time (the first having been in Oxford in 2004).
The train journey took me about six hours in total, with just one change in Basel, and was an absolute delight. Five minutes walk from the hotel in Luzern, five minutes walk to the hotel in Göttingen. No airport security checks, queues or dead waiting time. Extremely comfortable trains, smoothly whizzing along at up to 250 kmph. Excellent Wi-Fi and working conditions. Stretch your legs and get a snack in the restaurant. Beautiful views out of the windows. And a mild, warm feeling (in my case very largely undeserved) of eco-virtue. Who could ask for more?
You can listen to my Göttingen lecture (warning: in German) here:
"Schöne dichte Fenster"
(forgive very amateur photo…)
I couldn't help thinking of Angela Merkel when I saw these formidable double-glazed windows in my pleasant small hotel in Göttingen. Famously, when surprised by a journalist with the question what she spontaneously (and positively) associated with Germany, she replied 'Schöne dichte Fenster' (beautiful, well-sealed windows).
German windows are indeed superb. Although my room looked directly onto a busy main road, there was no noise from the traffic passing. Watching the cars and lorries speed by was like watching a television on mute.
But it does feel like her (deliberately downbeat/ironic, claims her biographer Stefan Kornelius) comment says something about the character of the long epoch associated with her name. This is not looking so good in retrospect. Her slowness to act at the beginning of the Eurozone crisis, her panicky abandonment of nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster, and above all her failure to change Germany's Russia policy after Putin's aggressive, revanchist intentions became apparent in 2014 – these now look like three big strategic mistakes. (Notice I don't include her response to the refugee crisis among them.)
And she is clearly still struggling to acknowledge that, witness this revealing long portrait/interview in Der Spiegel (paywall, I'm afraid).
Pre-order my new book: Homelands: A Personal History of Europe: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Homelands-Personal-Timothy-Garton-Ash/dp/1847926614/tgabooks-21