Denis MacShane / Jul 2024
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Sir Keir Starmer owes Liz Truss a second favour. The first of course was her paving the way to his landslide victory by the example of what Brexit Tory ideologues could do to the economy.
The second is the biggest gathering of European leaders seen on English soil since before the isolationist vote of Brexit eight years.
Last week the new Labour Prime Minister was starring in Washington at a Nato summit which gave him a chance to parley with President Biden and be admired as the only European leader who presides over a stable government for the next five years and one who has shown how a sensible left can again win power without being hostage to flaky coalition partners.
This week he hosts 47 heads of state and government at Blenheim Palace to discuss how all of Europe, not just the EU, should respond to global challenges from the Kremlin and Beijing as well as the now probable Trump presidency.
The European Political Community (EPC) was set up by French president Emmanuel Macron in 2022 to include all the countries like Turkey, North Macdeonia, Albania, Armenia, Kosovo or Serbia he and other EU leaders had kept eternally in a waiting room for full EU membership.
Twenty years ago, Tony Blair, then the most influential EU leader, helped open the doors to Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and other ex-communist states including some deeply corrupt with dodgy politics like Bulgaria or Romania to join Europe.
As a result the new EU member states have seen the biggest ever advances in their economies and living standards as well as grumpily accepting EU rule of law, democratic rules, rights for women and gays that were previously unknown in their history.
The mass Westward Ho! emigration of their citizens brought its own problems and helped spur the rise of a European populist nationalist right headed by women like Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni which has weakened 20th century political parties.
In 2017, President Macron, newly arrived in the Elysée, promised West Balkan countries they would soon enter the EU. They are still waiting. So as a compensation he got Brussels to set up the EPC which any nation nominally in the wider Europe could join.
It was assumed that the then Prime Minister Luz Truss, would maintain the Boris Johnson hard Brexit line of full rupture with anything European. Ms Truss had famously replied to the question: “President Macron: Friend or Foe?” with the snide reply “It’s too early to say” which was received with contempt at the Elysée.
But she did as PM agree Britain should join Macron’s EPC and even offered to host its 2024 meeting which has now been taken over by Starmer.
The EPC does not take EU type decisions. It does not set rules or deal with trade or people movement. It is a classic giant supra-national talking shop. But Jaw-Jaw is better than the alternative and Britain can once again this week be briefly a European player.
Since Labour’s giant win the anti-EU defensive tone Labour shadow ministers were forced to adopt after Labour lost so many seats in 2019 as Boris Johnson pledged “to get Brexit done” now seems dated. The Tory hard Brexit has cost Britain 5 per cent of its GDP and made life more difficult for every big firm, university, small business, young artist, City consultant and done big damage to the UK’s global reputation.
More than 100 Labour MPs are grouped in the Labour Movement for Europe, the biggest pressure group on Labour benches. Every opinion poll shows a clear majority that considers Brexit a massive national mistake.
That does not automatically mean a new referendum simply to reverse the 2016 plebiscite. But it does mean the new government has to put on its thinking caps to see how the continuing damage of Brexit can be slowed and, where possible, reversed.
Britain hosting the EPC at Blenheim Palace, given to the Duke of Marlborough early in the 18th century as Britain became more and more involved in continental affairs in order to safeguard British security and promote British prosperity, is a symbolic restart of Britain again accepting it is a European power with the UK’s economy and civil society linked to Europe.
