Denis MacShane / Aug 2024
Photo: European Union, 2024
So what will be Britain’s new relationship with Europe? A key decision has been taken already by transferring formal control of the UK’s relationship with Europe from the Foreign Office to the Cabinet Office.
This may seem an arcane bit of Whitehall chair shuffling but it is a major win for those in government who are happy to pretend that Europe isn’t that important, Brexit can under no circumstances be challenged, and the best Britain can hope for are small nuts and bolts improvements in technical areas like veterinary inspections, perhaps professional qualifications provided it doesn’t mean qualified doctors, nurses or architects coming to the UK and “taking” British jobs.
The Cabinet Office is where the toolmakers of British government work . They take the different projects for laws that come before parliament and refine them with precision so they mesh fully with all other laws and policies a government has to implement.
However high level EU policy is what the Germans call a Chefsache – something reserved for chiefs of government. It is foreign ministries who build the networks in Europe to allow the policies of individual government to come to fruition.
One of Starmer’s early shadow appointments was the Swansea barrister, Nick Thomas-Symonds as Mr Brexit. He has written three well-received biographies of Labour giants Clement Attlee, Nye Bevan and Harold Wilson.
Thomas-Symonds like Starmer is a cautious, one-step-at-a-time lawyer not moving until he is sure of his ground. Now he is in charge of the Cabinet Office.
But Europe is governed by big personalities most of whom really, really believe in Europe. The current key leaders like Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, Spain’s Pedro Sanchez are all embattled figures with unsteady majorities or testing elections around the corner.
Tony Blair massively invested in befriending all key European leaders in the three years between being elected party leader in 1994 and Downing Street in 1997.
He asked me to use my French, German and Spanish and European political and media contacts to go out as a Foreign Office minister to schmooze the leaders he would deal with in office.
It was political work while cabinet office officials devilled in the background ensuring the nuts and bolts of EU regulations and rules worked for Britain.
David Lammy with his back story as a Guyanese immigrant who went to Harvard Law School where he befriended Barack Obama and was an early star in the Commons has taken his outsize friendly personality tirelessly to every EU capital even dropping into Prishtina in Kosovo to pledge a Labour government’s support for the young nation.
His chief aide Ben Judah, is an Anglo-French intellectual, who knows everyone in Paris and has written books on Europe that are read by Europeans, a rare honour for a Brit.
Like it or not Europe is a political project and if Sir Keir Starmer wants a reset or to see Britain as a place foreign investors can do business from into Europe the denizens of the Cabinet Office competent as they are may not have the flair and feel for what works across the Channel.
