3. Brexit

Anthony Luzzatto Gardner¹

(1)

London, UK

Anthony Luzzatto Gardner

“It will be bloody brilliant,” gushed Boris Johnson as we met again in the residence of the permanent representative (ambassador) of the UK to the European Union in mid-November 2016. When he noticed my quizzical look, he added: “Trump’s victory is a huge opportunity for Britain; like Brexit, it is all about taking back control.”

I thought the comment rather amusing in light of his earlier statement, well before Trump had emerged as a serious presidential candidate, that Trump displayed “stupefying ignorance” that made him “unfit” to be president.¹ His critics might observe that it was all rather normal behavior for a weathervane politician, adept at pointing in the direction of the prevailing wind. When Boris achieved his lifelong ambition to become Prime Minister in July 2019, President Trump paid Boris the ultimate accolade by calling him “Britain Trump.” He was not the only one who found the two of them strikingly similar: The Economist magazine featured them on its cover as “Twitterdum” and “Twaddledee” dressed as Lewis Carroll’s Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Soon after becoming foreign secretary in July 2016 Boris had sought to make light of his earlier descriptions of Hillary Clinton as Lady Macbeth and as a “sadistic nurse in a mental hospital.”² Boris had also ascribed President Obama’s warnings about Brexit to his “part-Kenyan heritage” and hence his “ancestral dislike of the British Empire.”³ Even this was rather tame stuff compared to his description of black people as “picaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”⁴ and a bawdy limerick he had penned for The Spectator suggesting that Turkish President Erdoğan enjoyed copulating with goats.⁵ These comments would have been more than enough to destroy any other mortal politician, but they appeared to enhance his appeal.

My friend and former colleague Sir Ivan Rogers, the UK’s highly capable ambassador to the EU (before resigning in early 2017 in exasperation at his government’s Brexit policy), had organized my reunion with Boris as part of a series of meetings in Brussels aimed at educating the newly minted foreign minister about the challenges of Brexit. A few days before our reunion, Boris had prophesied that Britain would make a “titanic success” out of Brexit. Perhaps he was unaware that the Titanic sank, with more than 1500 lives lost due to criminal irresponsibility⁶ (Fig. 3.1).

Fig. 3.1

Ambassador Gardner and Boris Johnson, then UK foreign secretary, at their reunion in November 2016

(Source From author’s own collection)

I explained to Boris why the Obama administration had serious concerns about the impact of Brexit on the United States and the European Union; why I thought Her Majesty’s Government appeared to be misreading the mood in the EU; and why the likely trajectory of the exit negotiations would be more challenging than he thought. He would have none of it. “We’ve broken free into a wide world of possibilities. If the EU thinks it can lock the UK in a dungeon and give us a good kicking on our way out, they are deeply misguided.”

I objected to that description, stating that the EU was not out to punish the UK. For nearly three decades, I have negotiated deals in the private and public sectors. I suggested to Boris that in any negotiation it is important to be aware of the red lines of the party sitting across the table and to have a realistic understanding of one’s own leverage. Ignoring these would be a pathway to disaster. Negotiating with the EU would require serious preparation and strategic thinking, not the improvisation and glib self-confidence that often sufficed in student debates at Oxford University. I could hear Sir Ivan chuckling in the background. He would later deplore the UK government’s “tutorial-level plausible bullshit” and “supreme self-confidence that we understand others’ real interests better than they do.”⁷

There was no way, I argued, that the EU would treat the UK better as a departing member than it would treat the remaining 27 members; even the smallest EU members, especially Ireland with the only land border of the EU with the UK, would matter more than the UK. The EU would always have a “hierarchy of interests” in which self-preservation and the continued existence and development of the union, anchored in the indivisibility of the rights and obligations of the single market, would always take precedence.

There was no way the UK could “cherry pick” its rights and obligations. Allowing the UK to get a custom-made deal, with all the benefits and few of the burdens of EU membership, was pure fantasy as this would encourage other EU member states to get their own custom-made deals. The UK could not transition from membership with significant opt-outs from EU obligations to non-membership with significant opt-ins to EU rights. Sir Ivan agreed:

Once you leave the EU, you cannot from just outside the fence achieve all the benefits you got just inside it…That is unavoidable. It is not vindictive…it is just ineluctable reality.⁸

Berlin and Rome would not ride to London’s rescue to protect their exports of motor vehicles and prosecco, as Boris had quipped. Believing that Germany and Italy consider the EU as merely a trading bloc and would let their industries set Brexit policy was a basic misreading of the facts. Moreover, the process of withdrawal set forth in the EU treaties had been purposefully slanted to favor the EU, and it would be wise to recall that the EU’s economic and political weight was vastly greater than that of the UK.

Boris Turns the Tide of the Brexit Referendum

Boris had recently penned a biography of Winston Churchill, presumably in the hope of inviting comparisons of himself with the great statesman.⁹ Some of his critics might argue that he is the most un-Churchillian character imaginable: self-serving, undisciplined, and with no discernible moral compass. These critics might point out that Churchill would not have misled the Queen and prorogued parliament on false pretenses, as the Supreme Court suggested he had done in a historic judgment in September 2019.

Several years ago, I attended a performance of Donizetti’s opera The Elixir of Love in which Dulcamara, a traveling quack doctor, convinces the hapless character Nemorino to withdraw his life’s savings to buy a bottle of a magical potion (in reality a bottle of cheap wine). My companion at the opera reminded me that during the Brexit referendum campaign Boris had traveled the length and breadth of the UK in a red bus to convince voters to leave the EU. Emblazoned on the sides of the bus was the claim that Brexit would save the UK £350 million per week (£18 billion per year), money that could be invested in the National Health Service (Fig. 3.2).

Fig. 3.2

Boris Johnson striking a dignified pose while stuck on a zip line

(© Kois Miah/Barcroft Media, 2012. Reprinted with Permission)

The claim was like cheap wine labeled as an elixir: The UK was sending £13 billion gross per year to the EU, but received £4.5 billion in regional and agricultural subsidies, and the private sector received a further £1.4 billion directly from the EU budget. The net £7 billion figure was not much more than what Norway, a non-EU member, was paying into the EU budget per year for the privilege of frictionless access to the single market. Membership of the European Union costs citizens, including British ones, less than a cup of coffee per day.¹⁰

I did not hide my disagreement with everything that Boris said. I subscribed entirely with the judgment of Martin Wolf, columnist for the Financial Times, that the Brexit referendum was “the most irresponsible act by a British government in my lifetime.”¹¹ Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, had gone much further, stating that there is a “special place in hell” for those who had pushed Brexit without a plan. I had been struck, both during and after the referendum, that a significant constituency in the UK—a country well-known for its cool pragmatism and rationality—was acting rather like the emotional Greeks had done earlier when the Syriza government had refused to cooperate with the EU on its proposed bailout.

Greece had shown nationalistic defiance of the EU’s demands, before ultimately accepting the bailout under far worse terms after the Greek economy had collapsed. The Syriza government had radically overestimated its negotiating leverage and underestimated the unity of the EU 27; it had wrongly assumed that it could gain more favorable bailout terms because a Greek exit from the euro would be more damaging for the EU 27 than for Greece. In a twist worthy of a Greek tragedy, Prime Minister Tsipras warned Brexiteers to learn from Greece’s mistakes and understand that chauvinist nationalism does not solve a country’s problems.¹²

Some Brexiteers overestimated the UK’s negotiating leverage and assumed that a divided EU would splinter and give the UK what it wanted in order to keep running a healthy trade surplus. Justice Minister Michael Gove chirpily predicted that the UK would “hold all the cards” the day after it voted to leave. David Davis, secretary in charge of Brexit at the time, declared that “There will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside.” Whatever one’s views of Brexit, those comments were manifestly false.

The Brexiteers were happy to stoke a national mood of defiance, talking up the attractions of “no deal.” But by making almost no concrete preparations for such an outcome they rendered the threat completely unconvincing. While EU unity held, the UK government was in an embarrassing state of internal division. As a result, they were ultimately doomed to accept harsh realities under far worse conditions for a divorce than those that could have prevailed earlier. Under both the Grexit and Brexit scenarios, it would inevitably be the more economically vulnerable members of society who would bear the greatest economic brunt of demagogic populism.

Boris was arguably one of the critical reasons why the Leave campaign had galvanized into an effective force. Although the US Embassy in London had consistently predicted that the UK would vote to remain, Sir Ivan had been right to warn me that Boris’s surprise decision to back Leave had seriously increased the risks of a different outcome. News in late May 2016 that net immigration in 2015 had hit 330,000, the second highest figure on record and far higher than the “tens of thousands” that Prime Minister Cameron had repeatedly promised, had also strengthened the hand of those who claimed (falsely) that EU membership was responsible for the EU’s inability to control its external borders and maintain sound health and social services. Sir Ivan reminded me that unlike the prior UK referendum on EU membership in 1975, when Britain’s economy was performing far worse than that of Europe, the situation had now reversed and Europe was therefore looking less attractive.

Many of us in the Obama administration were worried that a referendum had been called in the first place: History was full of examples of referenda being determined by factors totally unrelated to the question posed. It was completely predictable that the real question—are British citizens willing to pay an economic price of losing privileged access to the UK’s most valuable market in their desire to repatriate notional “sovereignty”?—would never be debated properly. Other issues, above all immigration and nationalist sentiment, would inevitably dominate. In the case of the In/Out referendum on Europe, not only was the UK’s membership in the EU at stake, but also potentially Scotland’s place in the UK. Scotland favored continued membership in the EU and had repeatedly threatened to hold another referendum on independence if the UK chose to leave. Why take that monumental risk?

We were also perplexed at the manner in which Cameron had called the referendum. Perhaps the decision was not just about uniting the Tory Party by throwing more red meat to the influential euro-skeptics; the Prime Minister clearly felt that the party had to protect itself against the risk that the UK Independence Party could win seats in conservative districts in the upcoming election. And he genuinely did seem to feel that the British people were owed a clear vote on the EU because it had evolved significantly since the last UK referendum 40 years ago.

But we were scratching our heads at why on earth he had agreed that the outcome of a referendum would be determined by a straight majority rather than a super-majority. Why decide that the referendum would be binding on the government when it was purely advisory? Why deprive 16- and 17-year olds the right to vote when they had been able to do so in the Scottish referendum on independence and when this age group had so much at stake in the outcome? Why deprive British expats the right to vote if they had lived more than 15 years outside the UK? And why on earth allow sitting cabinet members to openly oppose the government’s pro-Remain position without sanction? To top it all off, the Prime Minister was attempting a rather uncomfortable ideological conversion that the public greeted with predictable skepticism: While he had long sniped at the EU as an ineffective power-hungry bureaucratic machine run amok, he was suddenly professing his conclusion that membership provided important economic and security benefits. Turning lead into gold overnight would have been as likely as alchemy.

Briefing the Secretary

Boris was in a good mood that mid-November afternoon, despite our differences. I had introduced him a few months earlier to Secretary John Kerry when both had attended a breakfast meeting in Brussels for the foreign ministers of the EU 28. When he and Boris appeared before journalists in London later that day, the secretary stated that I had “regaled” him over dinner the night before with stories about my experiences with Boris at Oxford University and during our early careers in Brussels and later in London. “[Our ambassador to the EU] told me that this man is a very smart and capable man,” he said, pointing at Boris. “That’s the Boris Johnson I intend to work with…” That line provided Boris with some sorely needed air cover after some serious journalistic bombardment about his past. Johnson looked relieved: “Phew, I can live with that.” Kerry laughed, approached Boris and told him with a wry smile: “It’s called diplomacy.”¹³

I had indeed regaled the secretary with stories about Boris during our dinner the evening before the breakfast meeting in June. I had recounted how I had met Boris at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1986. Even in those early years, Boris had exhibited many of the traits that would define his behavior as foreign minister (and subsequently Prime Minister). I later sent my observations in a confidential cable to a restricted group at the White House and State Department. President Obama apparently enjoyed it.

I first met Boris soon after his appointment as president of the prestigious Oxford Union debating society, a traditional launchpad for aspiring British politicians. It was a few days after President Ronald Reagan had ordered missile strikes against Tripoli in April 1986. Boris appeared on my doorstep late one evening and asked whether I would consider opposing the motion in an upcoming Oxford Union debate: “This House Condemns American Imperialism and Aggression in Libya.” Although I disliked President Reagan’s politics, I agreed out of conviction that the strike was justified. At my maiden speech at the Oxford Union, I complimented Boris on his appointment as president. As I knew that Boris was studying classics, I teased him that his appointment was the finest since the Roman Emperor Caligula had named his horse a consul.

As Secretary Kerry and I enjoyed some of Belgium’s fabled cuisine, I described how Boris had pretended not to really want to be president of the Union, while desperately campaigning for it. Even in those early days, he was intensely competitive and clearly interested in politics. In order to be elected in the anti-elitist left-wing atmosphere of those years, he needed to gloss over his ambition, education at Eton, upper-class friendships and privileged upbringing. He clearly aimed for the highest office but couldn’t show it. In one of his typical, self-deprecating dissimulations, he said in a 2012 appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman: “My chances of being PM are about as good as finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.” It appears that one can indeed find Elvis on Mars or be reincarnated as an olive.

Boris was an accomplished performer in the Oxford Union where I thought that a premium was placed on rapier wit rather than any fidelity to the facts. It was a perfect training ground for those planning to be professional amateurs. I recall how many poor American students were skewered during debates when they rather ploddingly read out statistics; albeit accurate and often relevant in their argumentation, they would be jeered by the crowds with cries of “boring” or “facts”! This was the environment in which Boris thrived: The crowd yearned for politics as entertainment.

Boris and I overlapped in Brussels in the early 1990s when I was an intern in the antitrust division of the European Commission and then a lawyer with an international law firm, while he was a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph.¹⁴ According to multiple press reports, he had just been fired from his first reporting job at The Times of London for inventing a quote. A decade later he was removed from his posts as Conservative Party Vice-Chairman and shadow arts minister based on allegations that he had dismissed as “an inverted pyramid of piffle.” This Houdini-like escape from failure may have convinced him that the laws of gravity only apply to others and that he could charm his way to the top during his entire life. Boris’s father, Stanley Johnson, a former European Commission official, wrote a thinly fictionalized account of Brexit in which one of the characters, an “ebullient, blond-haired former Mayor of London,” could be serious “if it was absolutely necessary.”¹⁵ But was it ever really necessary?

In a lengthy article for the Daily Telegraph in mid-March 2016 announcing his decision to back the Leave campaign, he claimed to have “informed” his readers in the early 1990s about the dangers of one-size-fits-all “euro-condoms” and the “great war against the British prawn cocktail flavour crisp.” He had indeed reported on these stories, but they were almost entirely fictitious. I always suspected that he knew the truth: He had partly grown up in Brussels, had attended the European School, and was the son of an accomplished Eurocrat.

Old habits die hard. In the final weeks of Boris’s successful campaign to become Prime Minister in July 2019 he argued that if Britain were to leave the EU without a deal, it would be able to negotiate a free trade agreement with the EU during the “implementation period.” But there was a bit of a snag, as Deputy Prime Minister David Lidington pointed out: That period was part of the Withdrawal Agreement that Prime Minister May had negotiated with the EU. In the event of no deal, there would be no Withdrawal Agreement and hence no “implementation period.” Boris did not see any reason to retract the statement.

Boris later went on to claim that the UK could negotiate a standstill arrangement with the EU, continuing their zero tariff and zero quota arrangements, even after leaving the EU with no deal because of an obscure article of the World Trade Organization rules. But there was a bit of a snag, as anyone with a basic understanding of WTO rules realized: The article only applies to goods and not to services (40% of the UK’s exports to the EU) and only if there is an agreement between the parties to move toward a free trade agreement. The EU would have no incentive, quite obviously, to offer the UK frictionless access to its market if the UK left without a deal and without paying its bills. Boris saw no reason to retract the statement.

In a speech delivered in the Isle of Man shortly thereafter, he dramatically brandished a plastic-wrapped kipper and attacked outrageous EU red tape for regulating the smoking of kippers and requiring them to be transported in “ice pillows.” The crowd loved it. But there was a bit of a snag, as 60 seconds of fact-checking on the Internet would have revealed: The Isle of Man is not in the EU and the EU does not make rules on the packaging of smoked fish. The rules, it turns out, were made in the UK. Why bother with the facts when making stuff up is so much more fun?

Decades earlier his steady stream of euro-myths had launched an industry that continues to this day in the British tabloid press. In 1994, The Sun also reported that the EU was mandating smaller condom sizes, refusing to accommodate for what they believed were “larger British assets.”¹⁶ The EU helpfully explained that the standardization work on condoms carried about by the European Committee on Standardization (not an EU body) was voluntary and related to “quality and not to length.”

I told Secretary Kerry that I had a folder on my desk in Brussels that bulged with similarly amusing non-stories, including the purported efforts of the European Commission to ban barmaids’ cleavages¹⁷ (apparently more spectacular in Britain), prohibit the sale of traditional British sausages and the recycling of tea bags and prevent children under eight years old from blowing up balloons. My personal favorites, however, were the story in The Sun (under the headline “Hair Hitlers”) that devilish eurocrats were scheming to ban hairdressers from wearing high heels¹⁸ and the story in The Sunday Express that the same eurocrats were plotting to “carve up Britain” by merging southern England and northern France into a territory called “Arc Manche.”¹⁹

While it was tempting to laugh all of this off as merely good, harmless fun by tabloids hoping to boost sales, the steady drip-feeding of denigrating stories about the EU had seeped into the wider British consciousness. Boris had created the monster of euro-skepticism and many in the Conservative Party had caressed and fed the monster for years. It was possible to ignore it until it put on serious weight and started thrashing about.

When the Leave campaigners released a film featuring a standard “EU regulated man” waking up from sleeping on an “EU regulated pillow” (five EU laws about pillowcases, 109 about the pillow inside) to turn off his “EU regulated” alarm clock (11 laws) and enter his “EU regulated” bathroom (65 laws) to use his “EU regulated” toothbrush (31 laws), it was widely believed. Never mind that the references to EU laws were in fact simply the result of hits following a simple search on the EU’s legal database. Fiction had become fact.

While we were tucking into our dessert, I told Secretary Kerry that Boris’s experience in Brussels had been formative. He knew that his writing in Brussels was having an impact, even though he was only 26. In a later interview, he admitted:

I was just chucking those rocks over the garden wall and listening to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England…Everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing explosive effect on the Tory Party, and it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power.²⁰

In my opinion, he had understood that covering European Community affairs in a factual way was altogether too taxing and would be a career dead end; so he simply decided to make it entertaining, thereby gaining notoriety and a wide readership. Those early years as a correspondent shaped his subsequent relationship with the media and with the facts. He brilliantly sensed the power of “alternative facts” decades before the Trump administration did so. As he subsequently noted with candor:

It is possible to have a pretty good life and career being a leech and parasite in the media world, gadding about from TV studio to TV studio writing inconsequential pieces and having a good time.²¹

I told Secretary Kerry that, according to some critics, Boris believes in three main things. First, he believes in himself and his self-advancement. According to news reports, he had as foreign secretary penned a draft Remain-backing article for the Daily Telegraph before deciding to publish an article with exactly contrary views in favor of Brexit.²² In his memoirs released in September 2019, David Cameron claimed that Boris “didn’t believe in Brexit” but decided to back it in order to bolster his popularity among party activists. Perish the thought.

Second, I told the secretary that Boris believes that the normal rules don’t apply to him, meaning that he can have the best of any two worlds. He had himself said that “My policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it.”²³ Lesser mortals must choose. The UK will eventually discover the consequences of “cakeist” policies. Unfortunately for Marie-Antoinette, her quip about letting people eat cake didn’t work out too well for her.

Boris had succeeded brilliantly by creating an entertaining and instantly recognizable Brand as a disheveled and charming performer, with P. G. Wodehousian turns of phrase and self-deprecating humor. He understood earlier than most that in a world of sensory overload, Brands play a critical role in capturing attention. In some ways, I explained, he has tried to be the Oscar Wilde of his generation: outrageous, witty and always the subject of conversation. As Wilde had once remarked: “There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

When Secretary Kerry asked me how he should deal with his British counterpart, I advised that he could offer Boris guidance and international credibility in the hope of encouraging his statesmanship. Perhaps Boris would see his high-profile job as an opportunity to break free from the chains of his Brand to become what he may have been secretly craving to become for years: a respected figure on the world stage. Perhaps behind the Brand there lurks someone who desperately wants recognition as a serious intellectual. Perhaps the secretary could encourage the hidden Boris Johnson—the intelligent, creative, articulate one—to emerge. In Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part II, Prince Hal stops making merry in the pub with Falstaff to emerge as a leader to help his country in times of crisis. Optimists believe that Boris can do the same.

Dictatorship and Vassalage

I never expected Boris to change his tune on the EU, however. On the widely watched Andrew Marr television show, Boris had described the EU as a “jail where the jailor has accidentally left the door open.” This was tame compared to his statement that the EU’s ambitions were similar to those of Adolf Hitler. When facts prove stubbornly uncooperative, it is always useful to invoke World War II. Not to be outdone, Michael Gove had compared the economists who had warned against Brexit to Nazi propagandists against Albert Einstein. This was well-calibrated to appeal to the millions of Britons who consume an endless amount of television documentaries about the war.

World War II was not the only historical reference point in the Brexiteers’ arsenal. In the spring of 2016, I was called to testify before the UK House of Commons Select Committee on Brexit to give Obama’s administration view on how Brexit would impact UK–US and EU–US relations. After I had finished describing why the US considered the EU a significant and effective partner, and that Brexit would negatively impact both, one of the committee’s members, MP Andrew Rosindell, shook his head and said that I was woefully misinformed: “Mr. Ambassador, the EU is a totalitarian super state and it is time for the UK to break free, just as you Americans broke free from the British Empire.” All Britain needed was a Paul Revere to lead a British rebellion against the EU’s red coats and King Jean-Paul Juncker.

But Biblical references sound so much more authoritative than mere comparisons to the American Revolutionary War. In March 2019, Boris declared that it was time to “channel the spirit of Moses in Exodus and say to Pharaoh in Brussels – Let my people go.”²⁴ Presumably he didn’t mean to suggest that Brexiteers would spend forty years wandering in the desert before reaching the Promised Land of milk and honey—or perhaps, more appropriately, fish and chips.

One of my more deliciously bizarre moments occurred in 2015 when I was attending an oral hearing at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. A case had been lodged by two UK members of parliament against the UK’s surveillance law called the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act. I was astonished to see one of the complainants, none other than the arch-Brexiteer David Davis. He had railed against the outrage of the EU imposing its writ on the UK; and yet there he was, having brought a case that invoked the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights to strike down legislation of his own government. Like Alice in Wonderland, I muttered: “Curiouser and curiouser.”

I didn’t think things could get any more Monty Pythonesque until I saw Anne Widdecombe, newly elected MEP for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, compare Brexit in her maiden speech at the European Parliament in July 2019 to prior uprisings of “slaves against their owners, the peasantry against the feudal barons, colonies…against their empires…” She seemed unaware that in the hemicycle of the European Parliament there were many representatives of countries that considered the EU to be a liberator and a guarantor of democracy. The Brexit MEPs were, of course, perfectly free not to attend the European Parliament or pick up their generous pay-checks. The reason Britain was still a member of the EU more than two years after serving notice to leave was not because the EU had locked the doors but because the British political system had been hopelessly deadlocked.

The UK tabloids regularly railed against “dictatorial Brussels” and the “ever-expanding super-state” employing armies of bureaucrats at huge expense. The Open Europe think tank had continued to perpetrate the myth that 170,000 people work for the EU institutions, twice as many as for the British Army. In reality, 33,000 people are employed by the European Commission; in the European Parliament around 7500 people work in the general secretariat and in the political groups (on top of the 751 members elected officials and their small staffs); and about 3500 people work in the general secretariat of the Council. By contrast, the UK employs 409,000 civil servants (excluding security personnel), nearly ten times the number of civil servants employed by the EU.

While there was doubtless significant waste, this has been largely due to member states and not the EU itself. By a three to one majority, members of the European Parliament voted to establish a single seat in Brussels, thereby ending the monthly shuttling of people and documents between Brussels and Strasbourg that costs roughly £100 million per year. The vast European Parliament buildings in Strasbourg, which I visited seven times over my three years, lie vacant about 320 days per year when the four-day monthly sessions are not being held. But under pressure from Strasbourg, which gets a £20 million annual economic boost per year from the traveling circus, France has exercised its right under the EU treaties to veto plans for a single seat.

Member states, and not the EU, are also responsible for the stratospheric costs of translation. The right to speak in one’s own language generates 380 language permutations and an annual translation and interpretation bill of 1 billion euros; it has also resulted in Gaelic and Maltese being recognized, although no more than five MEPs have the fluency to speak in Gaelic and nearly every one of the 450,000 Maltese (0.07% of the EU total) speaks English.

The rabid Brexiteers often liked to pretend that their hero, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, would have similarly rebelled against a tyrannical union. But that was not at all clear. She had agreed to a vast increase in qualified majority voting and, with Lord Cockfield, played a role in the EU’s vast regulatory exercise of creating the single market. Her famous speech at the College of Europe in Bruges, often invoked as the first rallying cry of euro-skeptics, actually contained a rather interesting passage:

Britain does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence on the fringes of the European Community. Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the community.

When I heard the Brexiteers’ cartoon-strip caricatures of the EU, I was often reminded of a wonderful scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian in which the members of the Judean People’s Front are meeting secretly. The leader asks: “What have the Romans ever done for us? They’ve bled us white, the bastards. They’ve taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers’ fathers.” One activist tentatively suggests that the Romans did, after all, give them the aqueduct. A second adds: sanitation. A third adds: roads. Others chime in: irrigation, medicine, education, health, wine, and public baths. The EU can’t take credit for roads, sanitation and so on, of course. But it can certainly take credit for a great number of good things. The trouble was that successive Conservative governments never challenged the anti-EU caricatures in order to ensure that the wider public was aware of the benefits of EU membership.

Mark Twain once said that “It’s not what people don’t know that causes all the trouble; it’s what they know for sure that just ain’t so.” Nigel Farage, the head of the UK Independence Party, famously declared that “we are not governed from Westminster, we are governed from Brussels.” At the House of Commons Select Committee that I attended, MPs Andrew Rosindell and Daniel Kawczynski declared that over half of the UK’s laws were imposed on London by Brussels. With the same flair for factual accuracy, Kawczynski later tweeted that the UK never received any of the aid disbursed by the Marshall Plan as it all went to Germany. In fact, the UK was the primary beneficiary, receiving 26% of the funds while West Germany got 11%.

David Campbell Bannerman, British Member of the European Parliament, repeatedly claimed that between 50 and 80% of the UK’s laws come from the EU. These laws represent “bureaucratic diktats from Eurocrats” and “huge transfers of sovereignty to the EU” that sideline the “Mother of all Parliaments” at Westminster.²⁵ Campbell Bannerman later called for anyone guilty of “EU loyalty” to be tried under the Treason Act. I had images of myself being escorted by a Beefeater to the gallows at the Tower of London.

Boris himself had warned about the “slow and invisible process of legal colonisation.”²⁶ In his resignation letter in July 2018, he claimed that the Prime Minister’s Brexit plan of maintaining regulatory alignment with the EU in goods and agriculture (not services) in order to maintain some key advantages of the single market meant that Britain was “truly headed for the status of a colony.”

Charges of colonization succeeded in grabbing media attention. Alas, they were fiction. In 2010, a House of Commons Research Paper concluded that from 1997 to 2009 6.8% of primary legislation (statutes) and 14.1% of secondary legislation (statutory instruments) had a role in implementing EU obligations “although the degree of involvement varied from passing reference to explicit implementation.”²⁷ Even if one were to take into account EU obligations that are not usually transposed into legislation at national level, the percentage would probably fall well short of 50%.

Along with many others in the Obama administration, I simply could not understand the repeated argument that Britain had become a vassal state and that it was necessary to “take back control” over borders, money, and laws. Even Prime Minister May, who had backed Remain as a minister, apparently felt obliged to repeat the mantra that Britain needed to become a “fully independent, sovereign country” and that leaving the EU was the only way to achieve this.

One of the more bizarre aspects to this argument is that many of its proponents pointed to Norway as a model of how one could be a sovereign state and still benefit from the EU single market. One supposedly authoritative commentator, Roger Bootle, has claimed that Norway only adopts a small percentage of EU legislation.²⁸ The reality is that, according to an independent study commissioned by the Norwegian government, the country has had to incorporate approximately three-quarters of all EU laws into its domestic legislation (without having any vote in EU affairs) as a price of continued frictionless access to the EU single market. And that is on top of being a major contributor to the EU budget.

The “take back control” argument was part of an effort to sell the British public a halcyon past in which Britain stood tall, carried weight in the world, and had far fewer foreigners living within its borders. Unlike most politicians who win elections by selling visions of the future, the Brexit leaders were actually selling visions of the past—one seen through seriously rose-tinted glasses. The Brexiteers understood very well that, as Philip Stephens of the Financial Times put it, “People who have lost faith in the future are seeking solace in old, imagined, certainties.”²⁹ It is no wonder that the highest percentage of support for Brexit was to be found in the older generation, some of whom may have yearned for an imagined England—Anglo-Saxon and dotted with pristine cricket fields. When I heard the speeches of some Brexiteers, I was repeatedly reminded of Miss Havisham, the character in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, who tried to defy time by stopping the clocks and living alone in her dark crumbling mansion.

Taking Back Control

The “take back control” argument has suckered not only many voters in the UK, but apparently also key members of the Trump administration. The president himself has referred to the EU as an “anchor” around the UK’s ankle. National Security Adviser John Bolton argued that the EU elites treat citizens like “peasants” and that a post-Brexit “newly independent Britain” should be welcomed as if Britain had been anything other than independent as a member of the EU. It is rather unlikely, to say the least, that the other 27 EU member states consider the EU to be a millstone (otherwise they would have left) or are deluded in thinking that they are anything but independent.

Robin Niblett, director of Britain’s leading foreign policy think tank, the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House), demolished the “take back control” argument in a well-researched study:

Apart from EU immigration, the British government still determines the vast majority of policy over every issue of greatest concern to British voters – including health, education, pensions, welfare, monetary policy, defence and border security. The arguments for leaving also ignore the fact that the UK controls more than 98 per cent of its public expenditure.³⁰

Moreover, the overwhelming majority of the EU legislation “inflicted” on Britain has actually been passed frequently with the UK’s consent, if not with its encouragement.

The story of the European directive setting maximum noise levels for garden lawnmowers is instructive. When euro-skeptic Tory MPs learned about this piece of legislation, they were appalled and cited it as evidence of overreach by Brussels. How dare those nameless, faceless, and overpaid eurocrats interfere with the God-given rights of the British to mow their lawns noisily? The trouble with the story is that Her Majesty’s Government had not only opposed the legislation, it had voted in favor of it in order to protect a level playing field within the single market. The legislation prevented Germany from setting low maximum decibel limits that would have excluded noisier British imported lawnmowers. What the euro-skeptics failed to understand, moreover, is that the European Commission did not inflict the legislation on the hapless British; it had been approved by national governments. A paradox of the EU is that in order to liberalize the circulation of goods and services throughout the EU it is necessary to regulate and therefore interfere in the affairs of the member states.³¹

As I watched the campaigning leading up to the Brexit referendum, I thought that the “take back control” argument could be easily rebutted. I was puzzled why Cameron and the Remain campaign were not being more assertive on this point. After all, the government’s own “EU Balance of Competences” review concluded—in 32 voluminous and detailed reports published in 2013 and 2014—that nearly all the powers exercised by the EU were broadly beneficial to Britain. Rather wonkishly, I had read a fair number of the reports and asked our Mission to the EU to report to Washington on them. Even in the sacred area of financial services, the reports had concluded that the EU had not usurped powers that belonged by right to the UK. Instead of shouting the results of this monumental effort from the rooftops, the government bizarrely chose to bury it. One possible reason is that Cameron did not want to annoy the euro-skeptics in his party and cabinet.

The argument that the EU had undermined British parliamentary democracy was also bizarre because successive British governments had rightly decided to pool certain aspects of Britain’s sovereign powers in the EU in order to achieve national objectives that were not achievable when Britain acted alone. These objectives include fighting against climate change, constraining Iran’s nuclear program, combating terrorism, and promoting energy security, the single market, international free trade and an open digital economy. The UK has signed roughly 700 international treaties that could be (incorrectly) attacked as impinging on its sovereignty.

When the UK had joined NATO, the International Monetary Fund, and many other multilateral institutions, it had agreed to follow regulations jointly set by foreigners, in exchange for influence. In some instances, such as the International Criminal Court, it had agreed to subject itself to the judgments of a foreign court. Geoffrey Howe, Solicitor General under the Conservative government of Prime Minister Edward Heath, introduced the European Communities Bill in 1972 by stating that “the purpose of the application to join the Community is a fundamental and deliberate use of sovereignty to engage in sharing sovereignty to the greater advantage of us all.” The absolutism of the Brexiteers’ view of sovereignty made no sense. As The Economist noted: “Many talk of being sovereign as if it were like being pregnant: one either is or is not. The truth is more complex. A country can be wholly sovereign yet have little influence.”³² Absolute sovereignty would be worthless if it undermined the ability of British governments to ensure the security and prosperity of its citizens.

The Brexiteers’ vision of Britain swimming in the “global ocean” once it had unshackled itself from the EU corpse amounted to rhetorical flatulence. Brexiteers, like Roger Bootle, argue that “the only entity that it makes sense to belong to is the world” as if the UK would seriously consider giving up its other memberships in international organizations, such as the United Nations (including its place on the Security Council), and as if other EU countries are prevented from belonging to the world.

Exiting the EU in the belief that stronger relations with the Commonwealth, the United States, and China would strengthen Britain’s hand was misguided. Every study produced inside Whitehall suggested that leaving the single market would leave Britain poorer and less able to promote its interests overseas. Free trade agreements with the Commonwealth would be insignificant compared to the size and growth of the EU market; agreements with emerging economies like China, India or Brazil, or with the United States would be difficult to achieve. It was therefore in the UK’s interest to stay within both the EU single market and customs area.

Any attempt to regain sovereignty with regard to regulations would come at a cost in terms of accessing the single market. The Leavers seemed to be unaware that the vast majority of British businesses want the UK to remain aligned with EU regulations (with a few exceptions) and to avoid a “bonfire” of European regulations.

The UK’s Relationship with the EU

The supreme irony of the Brexit debate was that the UK had actually achieved most of its aims as a member of the EU. It had been, for example, the key proponent of enlargement of the EU to the East, including the entry of ten new members in 2004, a further two in 2007 and another one in 2013. It was this enlargement that had enabled a significant number of Poles and Romanians to enter the UK in order to work. I enjoyed reminding my colleagues in Washington of a seminal episode in the UK television series Yes Minister:

Minister:

Surely the Foreign Office is pro-Europe, isn’t it?

Permanent Secretary:

Yes and no, if you’ll forgive the expression. The Foreign Office is pro-Europe because it is really anti-Europe. The Civil Service was united in its desire to make sure the Common Market didn’t work. That’s why we went into it.

Minister:

What are you talking about?

Permanent Secretary:

Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years. To create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it’s worked so well?

Minister:

That’s all ancient history, surely.

Permanent Secretary:

Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn’t work. Now that we’re inside, we can make a complete pig’s breakfast of the whole thing. Set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch. The Foreign Office is terribly pleased. It’s just like old times.

Minister:

Surely we’re committed to the European ideal.

Permanent Secretary:

Really, Minister!

Minister:

We’re not? Then why are we pressing for an increase in the membership?

Permanent Secretary:

Well, for the same reason. It’s just like the United Nations in fact. The more members it has, the more arguments it can stir up. The more futile and impotent it becomes.

Minister:

What appalling cynicism.

Permanent Secretary:

Yes, we call it diplomacy, Minister.

At the heart of this amusing exaggeration lies a kernel of truth: The UK has seen enlargement as a means of preventing the deepening of European integration. Moreover, the UK succeeded in keeping the full benefits of the EU internal market, while securing more opt-outs than any other EU member state on major policies such as the euro, the Schengen area of free movement without border controls, and justice and home affairs. It naturally kept full control over foreign and defense policies.

Moreover, the UK had provided critical intellectual and diplomatic support to the European Commission in the promotion of an integrated single market. Lord Cockfield had been a key architect of the single market as Vice President and Commissioner responsible for the internal market during 1984–1988. The UK had also successfully promoted free markets and free trade, competition, better regulation and “subsidiarity” (the principle that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the citizen, rather than by the EU). It is rather odd it that so many Britons believe the EU reflects the French antipathy for liberal economic policies. The French often complain about the opposite: That the EU is too bloody British because ever since the 1980s the European Commission has been opening markets and deregulating, driven by a philosophy of economic liberalism.

Along with other European experts in the Obama administration I understood, of course, that Britain has had a uniquely transactional relationship with the EU; its membership was always rooted in an accountant’s analysis of costs and benefits, rather than in an emotional attachment or in geostrategic objectives. It was almost as if the UK had acted like a husband who marries for the tax benefits, before discovering that his spouse had actually expected a loving relationship. Many UK governments would claim over the years that the goalposts of the union it had joined had shifted—from the pure economic focus of a free trade area to an increasing political focus. But the reality is that the political focus had been there from the start; every other member that joined understood this.

The UK’s transactional approach was so different from that of the other EU members. Italy, the European country closest to my heart, saw membership as a way of trading incompetent national governance with cleaner and more effective governance imposed from the outside. Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Central and Eastern European states saw membership as a way to be anchored in a democratic and prosperous Europe. The Benelux saw it as a way to magnify their influence and hence to counterbalance the weight of the big European states. France saw it as a way to counterbalance Germany and ensure export markets for its agricultural products. Germany saw it as a way to re-emerge as a power by healing the wounds of the war and ensuring export markets for its industries, both within the EU and with the rest of the world through free trade agreements negotiated by the European Commission. The EU was born just as much with a political agenda as an economic one. The Brexiteers who suggested otherwise had missed the plot.

I was frustrated by the Brexiteers’ repeated assertions that the UK had been marginalized in EU decision-making and that it was shackled by a sea of red tape. This was not just tabloid mythology; it was presented as fact by supposedly authoritative commentators. Economist Roger Bootle, for example, stated that:

the UK’s share of the vote is now down to 8% and its ability to influence let alone block measures affecting its interests is decidedly limited…British people have to accept laws imposed on them as a result of byzantine intrigue between the unelected European Commission and the leaders of the other European member states.³³

The reality is different. The UK share of the vote in the EU Council (representing the member states) is actually 12%, down from 17% when the UK joined. More importantly, most Council decisions are made by consensus after negotiation; it is rare for votes to be taken and even rarer for member states’ objections on important issues to be overruled. In other words, the vote share doesn’t express the UK’s influence. According to the UK’s Independent Fact-Checking Charity, the UK has been on the “losing side” about 2% of the time since 1999, although that figure has risen slightly over recent years. Many studies have concluded that the UK government’s positions have been closer to final policy outcomes than in most other member states.³⁴ The “dilution” of the UK’s influence, if any, has been the result of the expansion of qualified majority voting (in the place of unanimity), accepted by none other than Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Many Brexiteers bang on about how the European Commission consists of unelected bureaucrats. That is a caricature. Although the European Commission is not directly elected, it is certainly democratically accountable. For example, the College of Commissioners must be approved by the European Parliament that is directly elected. The European Commission regularly reports on its activities to other EU institutions and very often takes their views into account. More fundamentally, however, the European Commission cannot be directly elected because it should be relatively immune from political influence. It is the guardian of the EU treaties and is tasked with having a pan-European perspective.

Many Brexiteers seemed blind to the basic fact that the European Commission is the executive branch that proposes legislation, but that passage into law requires the consent of representatives of directly elected governments and the European Parliament. More importantly, it was clear to any informed observer, especially during the Eurozone and migration crises, that power was being increasingly exercised by member states’ heads of government in the European Council and their representatives in the Council of Ministers, with the European Commission and the European Parliament playing subordinate roles.

While it is absurd to claim, as does Roger Bootle, that the EU has inflicted a “ludicrously intrusive flood of regulations”³⁵ on the UK, there have been instances in which the EU has passed legislation that the UK has found objectionable. Examples include the Working Time Directive (that lays down maximum daily and weekly working time, minimum daily rest, minimum breaks during the working day, minimum paid annual leave and extra protection for night workers), as well as the Agency Workers Directive (guaranteeing workers hired through employment agencies pay and conditions equal to employees in the same business who do the same work). Whenever I spoke to representatives of UK businesses about the impact of restrictive labor legislation, they would nearly always object to measures taken by their own government more than they would about those of the EU.³⁶ In fact, the UK is known for its habit of gold-plating EU regulations in many areas, including in financial services. On the whole, the UK remains one of the least regulated large high-income economies despite being a member of the EU.

Rather than being a “hostage, locked in the boot of a car…driven by others to a place and at a pace that we have no control over” in Michael Gove’s memorable phrase,³⁷ the reality is that the UK has been in the front seat of the EU car, often with its hand on the steering wheel. As I had reported from Brussels, it was nonsense to argue that the EU had perverted the original direction of the bloc by embracing “ever closer union” as a binding goal to compel a march to a United States of Europe.

The treaties actually refer to “ever closer union of the peoples” of Europe, not governments. The phrase is of long-standing origin: It featured in the 1957 Treaty of Rome that established the European Economic Communities, and the UK signed up to it without issue at least six times, first when signing up as a member and then through subsequent treaty changes. Moreover, as the heads of government have repeatedly stated, it is a symbolic phrase rather than a strict legal provision determining paths of integration. The treaties oblige the EU to respect the histories, cultures, traditions, and political structures of the people of Europe.

Cameron’s Opt-Outs

Despite these facts, appearances were more important than reality. It was clear that in order to defeat Brexit Prime Minister Cameron had to negotiate a clear opt-out from “ever closer union” in the New Settlement announced in February 2016. The text stated that Britain has a “specific situation” under the treaties and “is not committed to further political integration.” The statement was significant in that it made clear that EU members are now moving not just at different speeds, but toward different ultimate destinations.

Cameron had also won a significant concession from the EU 27 by agreeing to a mechanism to limit the access of EU workers newly entering the UK’s labor market to in-work benefits, such as tax credits and housing benefits. The benefits would be slowly phased in during a period of four years from the beginning of employment (rather than banned, as originally proposed by the UK) if EU migrants were “putting an excessive pressure on the proper functioning of its public services.” The final settlement with the EU included an acknowledgment that this was already in evidence in the UK and that the four-year break would be available to Britain for seven years.³⁸ Moreover, the UK won the point that it (and other EU member states) should be allowed to index child benefit payments to the standard of living in the member state where the child lives. Unfortunately, these points did not seem to sway the Brexiteers’ view that the EU had been responsible for substantial net immigration.

The view was contrary to the facts. Over the past twenty years, about two-thirds of the immigration into the UK was from outside the EU. For a few years around the referendum that figure shifted to just over half (today it is around 70%). Successive UK governments had been free to reduce non-EU immigration, unfettered by the EU, but had not done so.

I and many of my colleagues in the Obama administration were amazed at the sheer brazenness of the Brexiteers’ exploitation of fears about immigration. Many of the advertisements alleged (falsely) that the EU was intending to admit Turkey as a new member. Billboards masterminded by Nigel Farage showed hordes of Syrian refugees snaking across European roads. The Brexiteers conveniently forgot that the UK had repeatedly urged its fellow EU members to accelerate the pace of EU enlargement to new members. Becoming a member of the EU necessarily meant the right of free movement, thanks to the Schengen area, and the right to work in another EU state.

The UK had been a key proponent of the 2004 wave of accession, the single largest expansion in EU history, that brought in ten new members with standards of living below the EU median. (The UK had even been beating the drum about the need to accelerate Turkish membership, repeatedly ignoring the overwhelming consequences for employment and social stability of granting rights of free movement to 80 million people.) Whereas many EU countries chose to apply a lengthy transitional regime that imposed travel and work restrictions on citizens of the new EU members, the UK chose not to do so. And yet now the UK government seemed obsessed with EU immigrants, especially from Poland and Romania. Surely, it was foreseeable that workers from these and other new members of the EU would want to work in the UK.

Some of the Brexiteers oddly seemed to want to cut back on EU immigration in order to give preference to increased immigration from outside the EU. This was the view of Syed Kamall, for example, a member of the European Parliament of Indo-Guyanese descent from the European Conservatives and Reformists party. Over an Indian dinner in Brussels, he explained that the UK could finally stop discriminating against immigrants from the Indian subcontinent without pesky EU rules on free movement of labor. I found this view somewhat bizarre, as it suggested that net immigration into the UK post-Brexit would not in fact decline. Furthermore, I doubted very much that the average pro-Brexit elderly white voter would necessarily be pleased at swapping European (Christian) immigrants with non-European (Muslim and Hindu) immigrants.

Much of the EU immigration represented youth from Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic states who were eager to price themselves into work. A booming economy at full employment, as well as a comparatively high minimum wage and a strong currency, had ensured that immigrants would come. Every economic study showed that they are net contributors to the UK economy because they pay more in taxes than they take out in benefits (probably quite different from the aging British pensioners in Spain). During the two decades I have lived in the UK, I have repeatedly marveled at how often coffee bars, hotels, and restaurants are staffed by young and cheerful EU immigrants. Apparently, British young people don’t want these jobs.

President Obama Speaks Out

All of these reasons had colored my views as I reported back to Washington on Brexit and urged the White House to speak up. The president did so on several occasions; it was appropriate to do so in light of the significant equities the United States had at stake. Many of us believed, partly due to encouragement by Downing Street, that the president’s hugely positive image among British youth might help make the case. I helped develop the themes of his pronouncements on Brexit. For example, “Having the United Kingdom in the European Union gives us much greater confidence about the strength of the transatlantic union.” By being inside the EU, the UK had helped to make the world a safer and more prosperous place since World War II. “We want to make sure that the United Kingdom continues to have that influence. Because we believe that the values that we share are the right ones, not just for ourselves, but for Europe as a whole and the world as a whole.”³⁹ In an editorial for the Daily Telegraph, the president presented some of the key arguments we thought should be convincing:

As citizens of the United Kingdom take stock of their relationship with the EU, you should be proud that the EU has helped spread British values and practices – democracy, the rule of law, open markets – across the continent and to its periphery. The European Union doesn’t moderate British influence – it magnifies it. A strong Europe is not a threat to Britain’s global leadership; it enhances Britain’s global leadership…the US and the world need your outsized influence to continue, including within Europe…in today’s world, even as we all cherish our sovereignty, the nations who wield their influence most effectively are the nations that do it through the collective action that today’s challenges demand.⁴⁰

While it was perfectly appropriate to make these points, I was disappointed that the president chose to warn the UK that it would go “to the back of the queue” of countries with which the United States would seek to negotiate free trade agreements. As most Americans would never use the British word “queue,” some commentators immediately assumed that a speechwriter had inserted a talking point from Downing Street. Rather predictably, the comment was interpreted as a threat and it backfired badly. He should have said that, while the United States has concluded many bilateral agreements (including recently with Colombia and South Korea), it would naturally give preference to regional trade agreements like the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement with the EU because they would yield much greater economic impact. Our able chief trade negotiator, Mike Froman, also made the legitimate point that Britain has far greater leverage at the negotiating table when it is part of the EU.⁴¹

When President Trump visited the UK in July 2018, he also created a firestorm by stating that Prime Minister May’s handling of the Brexit talks was “unfortunate.” Some observers concluded that he was doing the reverse of what Obama had already done. But the two interventions were not remotely similar. Obama had made his statement to support a sitting Prime Minister at his request. Trump made his statement to undermine a sitting Prime Minister during a State visit; he disrespectfully stated that the Prime Minister was botching the Brexit negotiations and working against the will of the British people as expressed in the referendum and he had, to boot, endorsed her rival, Boris Johnson, who had resigned just a few days before.

Some reactions to President Obama’s statements were vitriolic. Boris Johnson accused the United States of “outrageous and exorbitant hypocrisy”:

To this day the Americans refuse to kneel to almost any kind of international jurisdiction…Would the Americans knuckle under to a NAFTA commission and parliament generating about half their domestic law? Would they submit to a NAFTA court of justice – supreme over all US institutions – and largely staffed by Mexicans and Canadians whom the people of the US could neither appoint nor remove? No way.⁴²

Conservative MP John Redwood responded to President Obama by saying that “If letting foreign countries impose laws on you, levy taxes on you, and spend your money is such a good idea why doesn’t he create an American Union so Mexico can have common borders with the US?”⁴³ I wish I had a euro for every time these arguments have been thrown at me. It is clear from this book that I believe that the EU has provided the UK important benefits, substantially exceeding the costs (even if one were to view the EU as merely a marriage of convenience). At a more fundamental level, moreover, the comparison with the United States is flawed because the UK is not a superpower. Unlike the US, the UK needs to belong to a regional organization like the EU to project influence.

While Brexiteers were unhappy with the Obama administration for its public statements on Brexit, they missed the fact that the concerns expressed represented settled wisdom among the vast majority of US foreign policy experts on both sides of the political aisle. For example, 13 former secretaries of defense and foreign affairs spanning four decades wrote letters in The Times to warn that Brexit would diminish Britain’s place and influence in the world.⁴⁴ Moreover, eight former US Secretaries of the Treasury described Brexit as a “risky bet” that would jeopardize the City’s role as a global financial center.⁴⁵

Moreover, many reputable national economic research bodies, such as the National Institute for Economic and Social Research and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, as well as the UK Treasury, the Bank of England and the Confederation of British Industry, agreed that Brexit would over time lead to lower trade flows, less investment and slower growth. 280 economists wrote an open letter agreeing with the Treasury’s analysis about the range of downside risks to the UK economy. The International Monetary Fund and the Organization for European Cooperation and Development also expressed concerns. The Commonwealth countries, Japan, India, and China did the same. Only Russia and Britain’s other enemies had reason to cheer Brexit. But none of this seemed to matter in the increasingly dysfunctional public debate. Michael Gove summed up the environment when he announced that “this country has had enough of experts.” Later, he cheerfully proclaimed that global warming isn’t so bad after all because it enables British producers of sparkling wine to surpass French champagne.⁴⁶

The Impact of Brexit on US–EU Relations

President Obama’s statements were rooted in considerable US government analysis on the impact of Brexit on US, European, and UK interests. The US Mission to the EU, including myself personally, participated during many months in an assessment of Brexit’s impact on every area of US foreign, economic, and security policy. The conclusion was that, except in a few and relatively minor areas, the impact would be substantially negative. While there were many detailed reasons for this conclusion, three stand out.

First, as suggested above, the United States has considered (at least until the arrival of President Trump) that the European Union is an effective partner, despite all of its defects. And given that the United States and the UK see eye to eye on nearly every foreign, economic, and security issue, it is natural that Washington would want the UK “inside the EU tent” influencing EU decision-making and making the EU more economically liberal, Atlanticist, and pro-NATO. There is no way, for example, that Washington could have implemented an effective sanctions regime against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine without the EU’s involvement. The UK was a key part of this success because it had exercised crucial diplomatic and moral leadership within the EU institutions and had supplied the bulk of evidence needed to support designations of individuals on sanctions lists that would hold up to scrutiny in EU courts. While the UK could of course participate in international sanctions as a non-EU member, the backbone of the EU 27 to pursue sanctions might soften and transatlantic coordination would become more complicated.

Without the EU, the United States could not have finalized the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action limiting Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The EU’s embargo on Iranian oil exports was critical in bringing Teheran to the negotiating table. Secretary Kerry had repeatedly expressed to me his admiration not only of UK, German, and French diplomatic involvement, but also that of Federica Mogherini, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Moreover, the EU had played the leading role in combating piracy off the Horn of Africa and in brokering settlements between Serbia and Kosovo and with the Burmese military junta that paved the way to free elections. Without the EU, the climate change negotiations in Paris would not have been successful. Europe’s development assistance and humanitarian aid programs would not be as effective and Washington would have a harder time coordinating its efforts with those of Europe.

While Washington enjoys strong bilateral law enforcement cooperation with many member state capitals, the United States has found Europol to be an effective partner in combating serious crime and terrorism. The EU’s European Arrest Warrant, allowing criminals and terrorists to be swiftly extradited across European frontiers, and the EU Passenger Name Record directive, requiring air carriers to transfer to member states key passenger data to assist in law enforcement, were among the EU’s important contributions.

Moreover, many of us in the Obama administration were concerned about what Brexit would mean in the military field. The UK has the biggest defense budget in Europe and arguably its most effective armed forces. The UK has contributed roughly 15% of the common costs of the EU’s military operations. It has supplied ships and operational headquarters for important naval missions, including the one in Somalia and one to disrupt the business model of human smuggling and trafficking networks in the Southern Central Mediterranean. Its nationals have made up a significant portion of the EU’s Crisis Management and Planning Division staff. The EU has relied on the UK to secure United Nations Security Council mandates approving EU military operations, as well as to deepen cooperation with NATO.

The second core reason why many of us in the Obama administration were concerned about Brexit was that the EU 27 would be at risk of being even further unbalanced. Ever since the UK’s entry into the European Community, Germany, France, and the UK have been like the three legs of a stool; removing one of the legs would make the structure rather unstable. The traditional Franco-German tandem, that had propelled European integration, had long existed in name only because of persistent French economic weakness. For at least the first two decades of its existence, the culture of the European Commission had been thoroughly French: The institutions worked in French and the bureaucracy reflected French mentalities, procedures, and priorities. But since then, French influence had been slowly ceding ground to the growing influence of British and German bureaucrats. While Britain’s semi-detached status within the EU, and increasingly acrimonious relationship with the EU in the decade prior to Brexit, undermined London’s influence within the EU institutions, Britain still carried a great deal of weight because of the quality of its intellectual contribution and diplomatic skills.

Brexit would mean that the EU institutions would be even more under the control of Berlin. I witnessed repeatedly during my diplomatic mission how Germany appeared to be the predominant voice at the EU table. Although criticisms that the European Commission is a German-run institution are very wide of the mark (other countries hold more of the key posts), decisions in the Council (representing member state ministers) and the European Council (representing EU heads of government) certainly do reflect German priorities. On critical issues—including relations with Russia, especially after its invasion of Ukraine, the threat of a Greek departure from the euro (Grexit), and the refugee crisis—policies in Berlin carried the day. Everyone in the EU institutions seemed to be obsessed with the question: “What does Chancellor Merkel think?”

German predominant influence is quite natural as most policies have financial implications and Germany is Europe’s economic powerhouse that writes the biggest cheques. And German inaction (for which Chancellor Merkel has often been accused) would be far worse than German influence. But German predominance isn’t healthy over the long term. The more that EU citizens outside of Germany consider the European integration project to be in the interests of Germany alone, the less they will be prepared to sustain it.

The third core reason for our concern about Brexit was that the EU might shift toward a more protectionist, more interventionist, and less market-friendly approach. The influence of European forces promoting national champions, industrial policy and state planning, and the dilution of free competition rules and free market liberalism, might increase. We worried about the future of our cooperation with the EU on data privacy regulation and the digital economy, where we had done so much together. The UK had played an important role in enabling the US and the EU to negotiate the Privacy Shield agreement and to keep the Digital Single Market proposals relatively benign for US technology firms. These concerns seemed to be borne out when, soon after the Brexit referendum results, the French government immediately announced its intention to promote a less market-friendly approach. France and Germany are now urging the new Commission under German President Ursula von der Leyen to pursue an industrial policy.

Our fourth concern was that Brexit would injure the interests of many US firms, both in manufacturing and services (especially financial), that had chosen the UK in large part as a launchpad into the much larger EU single market. Moreover, we were concerned that it would be a body blow for the EU’s self-confidence and that it would lead to a long period of introspection that would diminish its ability to engage with us on our wide external agenda. The UK, as well, would be potentially overwhelmed by a tsunami of legislative and bureaucratic efforts needed to create a host of new regulatory institutions, pass vast amounts of legislation and rush to negotiate new trading arrangements to replace those that it benefited from as an EU member.

We also worried that Brexit would provide a fillip to populist movements on the continent and increase the likelihood of copy-cat referenda, leading to a fracturing and potentially the dissolution of the EU. Although our initial fears were borne out, with populist parties in France, the Netherlands and Denmark calling for plebiscites, we were eventually proven to be too pessimistic. Those parties were defeated at the polls and public opinion rallied in favor of the European Union. The European elections in May 2019 resulted in a more fragmented European Parliament with weakened center-right and center-left parties but they were far from the result that populists had hoped for.

One of the few upsides of Brexit, we reasoned, is that it would discourage the EU 27 from adopting an overly regulatory and protectionist agenda. The logic behind that conclusion was that such an agenda would trigger an unacceptable loss of competitiveness if the UK, the world’s sixth-largest economy parked a few kilometres off the European continent, were to choose less regulatory and more market friendly policies.

After the Brexit vote, some influential voices in the administration (egged on by our embassy in London) thought we should change tack entirely and clearly favor the UK in its negotiations with the EU, specifically with regard to minimizing the financial settlement and launching contemporaneous talks about the divorce and the new partnership. I thought that was counterproductive as it would not lead the EU to change its clearly defined positions, underpinned by legal obligations in the EU treaties. Our interests were not to plump for our traditional British friends, as wonderful and deep as the special relationship might be, because the EU would be a far more capable partner than the UK going forward.

The real problem, as I explained to Washington, was the sloganeering and the magical thinking taking hold in London. Delusions about the EU, of course, had deep roots in the UK. I recalled that Chancellor Rab Butler had dismissed the negotiations in Messina on the Treaty of Rome in 1957, the key foundation of the European Economic Community, as “archaeological diggings in an ancient Sicilian town.”

The best way to help our friends in London, I thought, was to delicately remind them of their true relative position in the world. This was not a negotiation between equals. The EU took almost half of Britain’s exports (12% of British GDP), whereas Britain took less than 10% of the EU’s (3% of EU GDP). Britain’s trade deficit was mostly with the Germans and the Spanish, not with the other 24 member states that would have to agree on a trade deal. The idea that Germany would ride to the UK’s rescue in the negotiations on a new UK–EU partnership agreement would be disappointed, just as similar hopes had been during the negotiations for a settlement agreement before the referendum: Berlin’s clear priority was to ensure the cohesion of the EU 27.

A Failure of Leadership

The Brexiteers were adept as sloganeering. They repeated the comforting mantras of “take back control” and “global Britain.” They boldly predicted that the UK would have ready on Brexit day fully fledged trade deals with the EU and fast-growing countries. Of course, that was fiction. They asserted that it would be no problem for the UK to leave without a deal because the UK could happily live with WTO trade rules that would then apply. That ignored the facts that tariffs would come into force and a host of non-tariff barriers would add friction to UK–EU trade. Most important, WTO rules don’t cover many of the service sectors that the UK cares about, including financial services.

As a cabinet minister, Theresa May had given a cogent speech in April 2016 explaining why, on balance, it was not in the UK national interest to leave the EU.⁴⁷ As Prime Minister, she assumed the responsibility of doing what she had opposed. She uttered a number of rather Sphinx-like pronouncements, such as that she was in favor of a “red, white and blue Brexit” and that “Brexit means Brexit.” She asserted that “no deal is better not than a bad deal,” and affirmed that the UK would get a bespoke deal delivering everything it wanted. Like the title of Luigi Pirandello’s play Six Characters in Search of an Author, these were slogans in search of a strategy. And they consumed most of the two-year period that the EU treaties had provided for exit negotiations. The prime minister had triggered the two-year withdrawal period in March 2017 without a clear roadmap of what the UK wanted to achieve. By the time she presented her first detailed proposals in July 2018, roughly two-thirds of the negotiating time had been used up (Fig. 3.3).

Fig. 3.3

The UK’s negotiating position toward the EU

(© Kevin Kal Kallaugher, 2019. The Economist, Kaltoons.com. Reprinted with Permission)

Voters in any democracy naturally have the right to express their views and every democratically elected government should respect them. It was rather odd, however, for the Leavers to claim that the people should only be asked their opinion once and never again. It was rather odd that those stridently defending the UK Parliament’s “sovereignty” against Brussels diktat argued in the same breath that parliament should not interfere with the results of one referendum—decided by a razor-thin margin and on the basis of misinformation. (The fact that Boris had glorified British parliamentary sovereignty during the Leave campaign did not prevent him as Prime Minister from attacking parliament for thwarting his no-deal Brexit plans.)

The central problem, however, was that at no time did Prime Minister May analytically lay out for the British people the realistic choices facing them following the Brexit referendum and the consequences of each choice. Rather than manage Brexit as a national project of historic importance that required cross-party talks, she focused on managing her divided party and cabinet. The result was that the government spent more time negotiating with itself than it spent negotiating with Brussels. May’s approach was to agree reluctantly to the demands of the hardliners, including by drawing negotiating red lines that severely boxed her in.

The most extraordinary, and catastrophic, miscalculation was to state that the UK would leave the EU single market and customs union without fully appreciating that this would by necessity require a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (or require a border in the Irish Sea between Ireland and the UK if Northern Ireland stayed within the EU single market and customs union). It should have been patently clear that the EU 27 had to protect the integrity of its single market and union by carrying out border checks. Trying to achieve a Brexit on these terms while preventing a border was always going to be a hopeless exercise.

The EU initially proposed a solution to the border issue that would keep Northern Ireland in the EU customs union and parts of the single market. The solution would apply in the event that a future partnership with the UK (such as a comprehensive free trade agreement) did not find technological or other means of avoiding a hard border while ensuring the integrity of the EU single market and customs union. When this “backstop” proved unpalatable to the UK because it would allegedly undermine the unity of the UK, the EU and UK agreed on a different arrangement that would keep the whole of the UK in the customs union but only Northern Ireland in parts of the single market. That solution enraged Prime Minister May’s coalition partner, the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, because it would require checks on goods in the Irish Sea. There was simply no way to accommodate May’s red lines and avoid a hard border somewhere. And it was foreseeable that the EU could not agree to a time-limited “backstop” as it had to protect its customs union and single market.

The UK government refused to listen to the many experts in EU affairs who would have pointed why its approach was doomed to fail from the very start. In the spring of 2019, I was stunned to learn from a distinguished former UK permanent representative to the EU that the UK government had never asked his advice during the Brexit negotiations; to his knowledge, moreover, none of the other former permanent representatives had been asked their advice either. Several senior civil servant and business figures told me that Prime Minister May never asked any questions during their briefings with her. It seemed as if the government was not only misinformed, but simply didn’t care.

When negotiations with Brussels predictably stalled, the sloganeering started reaching fever pitch. As Samuel Johnson once said, “Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings.” The Brexiteers repeatedly invoked the “spirit of Dunkirk” as if the EU were an advancing Nazi Panzer corps. On the fringes of the Tory Party conference in early October 2017 Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg invoked battles against the French in 1815, 1346, 1415 and 1805: “[Brexit]…is the Magna Carta…it’s Waterloo, it’s Agincourt, it’s Crecy…and Trafalgar. We win all of these things.”

Listening to this sloganeering was rather dispiriting, especially for an Anglophile like myself who had grown up admiring the great English virtues of pragmatism and the quality of UK government (especially its civil service). Having spent a lot of time in Southern Europe, regrettably prone to unstable and even chaotic governments, I thought the UK was different. I had never imagined that the fate of a country could be sacrificed on the altar of party or even personal ambitions.

The core “I can have my cake and eat it too” delusion was that the UK could move from being an EU member with nearly all the opt-outs it desired to being a third party with all of the opt-ins it desired, preserving all the benefits of membership without the burdens. This delusion could never escape the forces of gravity.

The failure of Prime Minister May to show leadership by explaining the consequences of Brexit merely emboldened the extremists. Sir Ivan, who had been warning of a “hard” no-deal Brexit for years, proved prescient when Boris became the new leader of the Conservative Party, largely on the basis of pledges to remove the Irish “backstop” and, if that failed, to take the UK out “come hell or high water.” His victory in national elections in December 2019 was due in large part to a relentless focus on “getting Brexit done.” Boris was also extremely fortunate to oppose Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, widely viewed as a left wing extremist.

Remarkably, a poll of Conservative party members showed that a majority wanted to leave the EU even at the cost of economic hardship and at the risk of uniting Ireland and triggering a successful second Scottish referendum on independence. It is questionable whether the majority of Britons (especially the young and economically vulnerable) are prepared to pay that price.

From Great Britain to Little England?

Although some initial projections of a savage Brexit hit to the UK economy were quickly proven to be exaggerated, economic analysis two to three years after the 2016 referendum showed that the UK economy is already suffering. One detailed study conducted by Goldman Sachs in April 2019 estimated that Brexit was costing the UK around £600 million per week, equivalent to 2.4% of GDP, based on comparing the UK economy with a hypothetical “look alike” economy that did not withstand a Brexit shock.⁴⁸ Another study from the Centre For European Reform found in October 2019 that the UK economy was 2.9% smaller than it would have been if Britain had voted to remain in the EU.⁴⁹ Brexit is costing far more than the fictitious savings that Boris Johnson had put on his bus. A leaked confidential draft of the government’s own EU exit analysis showed a significant hit to the economy under all Brexit scenarios.

The deal that Prime Minister Johnson has agreed with the EU is not very different from the offer proposed by the EU (and rejected by the UK) back in February 2018 for a “Northern Ireland-only backstop” that would have kept Northern Ireland in the EU customs union if other means of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland failed. Although the “backstop” is unnecessary because Northern Ireland will officially be part of the UK’s customs territory (unlike in the EU’s rejected proposal) in the sense that it will apply UK tariffs and participate in future UK free trade deals, Northern Ireland will de facto follow EU customs rules and therefore customs and other checks on goods trade will be required between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, i.e., within the United Kingdom, despite the Prime Minister’s repeated assertions to the contrary. Northern Irish companies and farmers involved in trade south of the border will follow EU regulatory rules as well. In general terms, the dilemma facing the UK is unchanged: The greater the regulatory divergence, the less ambitious the UK–EU free trade agreement will be.

The Johnson deal does not guarantee that there will be no further delays to Brexit or indeed that the UK will not leave the EU without a deal. It is possible that a new UK government under Prime Minister Johnson might decide to leave with no deal rather than extend the transition period for another few years. Johnson himself has repeatedly argued that the trading relationship between the EU and Australia, governed by WTO rules, is a reasonable model for UK–EU relations when it is clearly not.

It is unrealistic to expect that the UK and the EU can finalize a comprehensive free trade deal before the end of the transition period (that essentially extends the status quo until December 2020). A comprehensive free trade deal with the EU will not be quick or easy to negotiate. Irishman Phil Hogan, commissioner for agriculture under the Juncker Commission and currently trade commissioner under the von der Leyen Commission, will be particularly vigilant about tough agricultural issues and the Irish border. As the UK is a few more important and geographically close trading partner of the EU than Canada, the EU will be more concerned about the UK’s ability to disrupt its economy without tough and binding provisions ensuring a level playing field.

Boris’s great hope that the United States can serve as an enormous life raft after a post-Brexit economic slowdown is likely to be disappointed. Despite repeated promises of a big beautiful free trade deal between the US and the UK, it will be difficult to achieve. President Trump didn’t exactly market the deal well during his state visit to the UK in 2019 when he claimed that the National Health Service, an institution that attracts very high support among the British, would be up for negotiation. He later rowed back from the comment, perhaps realizing that it was about as popular as proposing that Buckingham Palace should be turned into a Trump-branded luxury spa.

A free trade deal would be a fine thing. Some of the obstacles the US faced in its TTIP negotiations with the EU, as described in Chapter 4, will not be as problematic in US–UK negotiations. Although the UK has a few important geographical indications, GIs will probably not be a major stumbling block. Furthermore, the US is likely to ditch the idea of including investor-state dispute settlement on the ground that UK law and courts are entirely capable of dealing fairly with investors’ complaints. It may also be the case that the Trump administration and Congress will show greater flexibility on public procurement with the UK than they did with the EU.

But many of the obstacles that plagued our TTIP efforts will be troublesome in US–UK negotiations as well. It is not at all clear, for example, that UK farmers will be keen on much more competition from US exports, especially so soon after losing EU subsidies. It is also doubtful that the UK will be keen on adopting US regulations, especially on food and product safety standards, when doing so would significantly impede UK exporters’ access to the far bigger EU market. A UK digital services tax, if implemented, would impact large US technology firms and would trigger US retaliation, complicating efforts at concluding a trade deal. Moreover, it will be difficult for the US to negotiate a deal with the UK before it is clear what the UK’s final trading arrangements with the EU will be.

During his state visit to the UK in 2018, President Trump warned that the UK’s decision to remain aligned with EU regulation would “probably kill” a US–UK free trade deal. This statement was misinformed for several reasons. Many US firms have invested in the UK (like their Japanese counterparts) precisely because the UK has been part of the EU single market and has been aligned with EU regulations. While some US exports to the UK would be facilitated if the UK abandoned EU regulations and adopted US ones, many US investors in the UK would not favor this at all. Second, EU regulatory obstacles to US agri-food exports (such as hormone-treated beef, poultry disinfected with chlorine, GMOs and pork containing the ractopamine growth promoter) are highly unlikely to be abandoned by the UK after Brexit in any event.

Due to its diminished negotiating leverage, it is highly unlikely that the UK could extract from the US as favorable terms as the EU would do in a US–EU free trade deal. And it may have to “pay” for the agreement by aligning itself with the United States on a host of issues unrelated to trade. The UK wants to show it has an alternative to the EU, but it should also be realistic about the chances of the former real estate developer in the White House being sentimental about the special relationship. Moreover, the issue of the Irish border might be problematic. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, has stated that no US–UK free trade deal will be ratified if the UK leaves the EU on terms that re-establish an intra-Irish border and undermines the Good Friday peace accords that brought peace and stability to Northern Ireland. A “hard” Brexit without an agreement with the EU is almost guaranteed to achieve that result.

Even if an ambitious US–UK free trade deal could be signed, it will not be nearly as significant as many people seem to believe. One exhaustive study about the impact of TTIP on the UK concluded in 2013 that it would increase UK national income between £4 and £10 billion pounds annually—equivalent to 0.14 and 0.35% increase in GDP.⁵⁰ Similarly, an internal UK government study in Whitehall concluded in 2018 that a free trade agreement would increase UK GDP by only 0.2% after 15 years. It will not come close to compensating for the loss of frictionless access to the EU market.

The UK’s place in the world after Brexit will perhaps never recover. Years of mismanagement and division over Brexit have already tarnished its valuable reputation of being a stable, well-managed country. Out of economic necessity it will wind up being a rule-taker, most likely of EU rules over which it will have no influence. It will lose the benefit of many dozens of significant EU free trade agreements and hundreds of other international agreements regulating a vast array of economic activities; while it can naturally seek to replace these agreements with bilateral agreements of its own, it will almost certainly find that it will achieve worse terms because of its diminished leverage. Unable to harness the EU’s influence in the many areas that are discussed in this book, the UK will find it harder to influence events in Europe and beyond. The world will look like a more forbidding place. As a convinced Anglophile who has been fortunate to have lived 22 years in the UK, that saddens me. The UK has been an enormously positive force for good in the world.

As much as I regret the UK’s decision to leave the EU, it is a better outcome than a second referendum yielding a small margin in favor of Remain. Such a result would have deepened the wounds in a divided country. According to one poll, nearly three-quarters of Leave voters and slightly more than half of Remain voters believed that violence toward lawmakers was a “price worth paying” to get their preferred Brexit result.⁵¹

The only way to heal the deep Brexit wound will be for the UK to be outside of the EU for a significant time and for voters to understand the consequences of that choice. Brexit has shocked millions of Britons into realizing, for the first time ever, that the EU is a force for good. Perhaps something positive will eventually emerge from that realization. It is also time for the UK to focus on non-Brexit problems. The key issues facing the UK, including education, infrastructure, productivity, and its health and welfare system, are far more important than Brexit. None has anything to do with the EU.

Some observers also harbor hopes that a future government might soon wish to take the UK back into the EU. They are likely to be disappointed as the EU is likely to evolve in a direction that the UK will find increasingly hard to accept. The five year plan of the new European Commission includes programs focusing on the EU’s foreign policy coherence and assertiveness, including a European Defence Union and a bureaucracy dedicated to defense and space policy. Even more important, the EU intends to use majority voting more often in common foreign and security policy. These will be anathema to many British voters. And even if it weren’t, it is likely that the majority of the EU 27 would not want to risk further integration progress by bringing a problematic member back into the fold. Brexit has already been a major unwelcome distraction for the EU from many other pressing issues.

As I listened to the chipper delusions of the Brexiteers as the UK tore itself apart in a seemingly endless psychodrama, I was reminded of Voltaire’s satiric work Candide in which Professor Pangloss, the mentor of the protagonist Candide, repeats that “all is for the best” in the “best of all possible worlds.” Optimism is not a substitute for serious leadership and it can lead to serious disappointment. “What is this optimism?” asks another character. Candide responds: “Alas, it is the madness of maintaining that everything is right when it is wrong.”

Footnotes

1

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-says-donald-trump-betrays-a-stupefying-ignorance-that-makes-him-unfit-to-be-us-a6766871.html.

2

Boris Johnson, “I Want Hillary Clinton to Be President,” Telegraph, November 1, 2007.

3

Boris Johnson, “UK and America Can Be Better Friends Than Ever—If We LEAVE the EU,” The Sun, April 22, 2016.

4

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/13116/8-times-boris-johnson-has-made-bigoted-remarks-and-faced-no-consequences.

5

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/boris-johnson-wins-the-spectators-president-erdogan-offensive-poetry-competition/.

6

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/nov/03/brexit-will-be-titanic-success-says-boris-johnson.

7

Simon Kuper, “How Oxford University Shaped Brexit—And Britain’s Next Prime Minister,” Financial Times, June 21, 2019. https://www.ft.com/content/85fc694c-9222-11e9-b7ea-60e35ef678d2.

8

Speech at the University of Liverpool, “Brexit: Nine Lessons to Learn,” December 13, 2018. http://www.astrid-online.it/static/upload/roge/rogers_brexit-speech_13_12_18.pdf.

9

Boris Johnson, “The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History,” Riverhead, 2014.

10

Ryan Heath and Hanne Cokelaere, “The Cappuccino Index,” Politico, January 16, 2018.

11

Martin Wolf, “The Self-Inflicted Dangers of the EU Referendum,” Financial Times, May 26, 2016.

12

Tony Barber and Kerin Hope, “Brexit Shows Flaws of ‘Nationalistic’ Politics, Says Greek PM,” Financial Times, April 23, 2019. https://www.ft.com/content/cca5ee6c-6429-11e9-a79d-04f350474d62.

13

Carol Morello, “Kerry Meets with Boris Johnson, and It’s a Friendly but at Times Awkward Affair,” The Washington Post, July 19, 2016.

14

His boss at the time, Max Hastings, has written: “There is room for debate about whether he is a scoundrel or mere rogue, but not much about his moral bankruptcy, rooted in a contempt for truth.” Max Hastings, “I Was Boris Johnson’s Boss: He Is Utterly Unfit to Be Prime Minister,” The Guardian, June 24, 2019.

15

Stanley Johnson, Kompromat (Oneworld Publications, 2017).

16

The Sun, October 19, 1994.

17

“Hands Off Our Barmaids’ Boobs,” The Sun, August 4, 2005.

18

Tom Newton Dunn, “Hair Hitlers: EU Rules to Ban Hairdressers from Wearing Rings and Heels,” The Sun, April 9, 2012.

19

Macer Hall, “EU Wants to Merge UK with France,” The Sunday Express, May 2, 2011.

20

Interview on BBC Radio, as reported by Estelle Shirbon and William Schonberg, “From Brussels Bashing to Brexit, Boris Bets Against EU,” Reuters, March 1, 2016.

21

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/london-mayor-election/mayor-of-london/10909094/Boris-Johnsons-top-50-quotes.html.

22

Jessica Elgot, “Secret Boris Johnson Column Favoured UK Remaining in EU,” The Guardian, October 16, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/oct/16/secret-boris-johnson-column-favoured-uk-remaining-in-eu.

23

Steven Poole, “‘Cake’: Europe’s new codeword for Britain’s impossible Brexit demands,” The Guardian, July 5, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/05/word-of-the-week-cake.

24

Daily Telegraph, March 25, 2019.

25

David Campbell Bannerman, Time to Jump: A Positive Vision of Britain Out of the EU (Bretwalda Books, 2013).

26

Boris Johnson, “There Is Only One Way to Get the Change We Want—Vote to Leave the EU,” Daily Telegraph, March 16, 2016.

27

House of Commons Research Paper 10/62, “How Much Legislation Comes from Europe?” October 13, 2010.

28

Roger Bootle, The Trouble with Europe (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2014), p. 157.

29

Philip Stephens, “Nostalgia Has Stolen the Future,” Financial Times, July 25, 2018.

30

Robin Niblett, “Britain, the EU and the Sovereignty Myth,” Chatham House, May 2016. https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/publications/research/2016-05-09-britain-eu-sovereignty-myth-niblett.pdf.

31

Philip Stephens, “Why Europe Needs Cross-Border Lawnmower Regulations,” Financial Times, October 15, 2013.

32

The Economist, “Dreaming of Sovereignty,” March 19, 2016.

33

Roger Bootle, The Trouble with Europe (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2014), pp. 44, 46.

34

For example, see Simon Hix, Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics, “Is the UK Marginalised in the EU?” The Guardian, October 19, 2015.

35

Roger Bootle, The Trouble with Europe (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2014), p. 171.

36

For example, the higher minimum wage for people aged 25 and over; the apprenticeship payroll tax for large companies; restrictions on skilled migrant workers; and the requirement for large companies to publish their gender pay gaps.

37

BBC News, April 19, 2016.

38

Daniel Korski, “Why We Lost the Brexit Vote,” Politico, October 20, 2016.

39

Full transcript of BBC Interview with President Barack Obama, July 24, 2015. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-33646542.

40

Barack Obama, “As Your Friend, Let Me Say That the EU Makes Britain Even Greater,” Daily Telegraph, April 23, 2016.

41

Shawn Donnan, “Top US Trade Official Warns on Brexit,” Financial Times, October 28, 2015.

42

Boris Johnson, “Americans Would Never Accept EU Restrictions—So Why Should We?” Telegraph, March 16, 2016.

43

John Redwood, The Commentator, July 24, 2015. http://www.thecommentator.com/article/5999/obama_gets_europe_wrong_again_why_doesn_t_he_allow_free_immigration_from_mexico_and_cuba_then.

44

Francis Elliott and Matt Chorley, “Don’t Vote For Brexit, US Defence Chiefs Warn,” The Times, May 10, 2016. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/dont-vote-for-brexit-us-defence-chiefs-warn-2nncnhplw.

45

John Murray Brown, “Former US Treasury Secretaries Warn on Brexit,” Financial Times, April 20, 2016. https://www.ft.com/content/7b6b1514-06d4-11e6-a70d-4e39ac32c284.

46

Sarah Knapton, ‘“English sparkling wine will be better than Champagne as climate warms’ says Michael Gove,” Daily Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/02/english-sparkling-wine-will-better-champagne-climate-warms-says/.

47

Theresa May addresses audience at the Institute of Mechanical Engineers in central London, April 25, 2016. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/home-secretarys-speech-on-the-uk-eu-and-our-place-in-the-world.

48

Adam Samson, “Brexit Costs UK £600 million per Week, Says Goldman Study,” Financial Times, April 1, 2019. https://www.ft.com/content/fb6285a4-5460-11e9-a3db-1fe89bedc16e.

49

John Springford, “The Cost of Brexit to September 2018,” Centre for European Reform.

50

Centre for Economic Policy Research, “Estimating the Economic Impact on the UK of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) Agreement Between the European Union and the United States,” March 2013. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/198115/bis-13-869-economic-impact-on-uk-of-tranatlantic-trade-and-investment-partnership-between-eu-and-us.pdf.

51

Cristina Gallardo, “Poll: Violence Against MPs ‘Price Worth Paying’ to Get Brexit Result,” Politico, October 24, 2019. https://www.politico.eu/article/poll-violence-against-mps-price-worth-paying-to-get-brexit-result/.