This week’s European Council in Brussels marks an important step in the Brexit negotiations. As the talks intensify, we should reflect briefly on a fundamental challenge faced by everyone involved, namely the importance of recognising our shared responsibility to history.
An awareness of that responsibility, grandiose though it sounds, remains a key consideration as we approach the Brexit endgame. By history I don’t mean the aspiration of many Brexiteers to return to a glorious largely imagined past. Rather I mean the importance of all of us being aware of the future we are creating together for ourselves and for those who are to come after us.
Our world today faces immense challenges. The multilateral system which, with all its imperfections, has played a central role in nurturing peace and prosperity is facing unprecedented threats.
A populism which denies the complexity and diversity of reality is on the rise. Democracy, human rights and the rule of law are increasingly treated as irrelevant or of marginal value, including by some countries which formerly were their champions.
The European Union, warts and all, is increasingly the most important bulwark in defence of the infrastructure of decency and rational debate which generations have worked to build. Of course, many other countries around the world fully or partly share the EU’s approach.
However, increasingly the EU is called on to provide gentle leadership. Where else could such leadership come from these days?
Little attention
This crucial truth has received little attention in British public debate. Remainers have tended to emphasise Britain’s economic interests. Leavers to focus on a narrow version of sovereignty.
Many peoples around the world, none more so than ourselves in Ireland, have good reason to know that the centuries during which Britannia ruled the waves were very far from being an unmixed blessing. Nevertheless, I think it is fair to say that Britain over the centuries has had a particularly strong sense of history. It has played an immense role, of which we can understand it is proud, in shaping the world in which we live.
The Brexit referendum was in effect a decision, contrary to British tradition, to diminish the UK's international influence
The Brexit referendum was in effect a decision, contrary to British tradition, to diminish the UK’s international influence and to take a sharp step back from shaping the future. Sadly any new relationship which the UK can negotiate with the EU will leave it less influential than it is at present. Much of the substance and tone of the UK’s negotiating approach raises the question as to why on earth it wants to leave.
Nevertheless, in the ongoing discussions, the British government, as opposed to the wilder fringes of the Brexiteer firmament, seems to be struggling, within the self-imposed limits of its negotiating approach, to minimise the damage to itself and to relations with its European neighbours. It rightly prioritises a deep relationship with the EU including in the areas of foreign and security policy, the fight against crime and in defence of the European values.
Xenophobic minority
Even with the recent empowerment of a xenophobic minority, Britain has not abandoned the basic values which have often stood the world in good stead. The EU is rightly responding with appropriate flexibility to help the UK to continue to play a constructive, albeit diminished, role in building the future we will share.
However, if there is to be a deal, the British government for its part also has to understand its negotiating partner. It must grasp that a deep awareness of history is the bedrock of the EU’s approach.
A key factor influencing the 27 governments this week will be a sense of responsibility to their own citizens of today and tomorrow and to the wider world. Yes there are other less noble motives.
Of course there are. The EU will pursue its pragmatic interests as Britain will. But human motivation is necessarily mixed.
A more altruistic element also plays a central role in shaping the EU’s approach. The UK, for its own sake, should understand why the EU will continue to defend its nature, its internal market and its institutional arrangements. The EU will do so not because it is being bureaucratic or theological. Still less because it wants to punish anyone.
The EU will defend its nature because, as a great British parliamentarian once put it, those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
Moreover, when it comes to finalising the backstop for Northern Ireland in the withdrawal agreement, our EU partners will be influenced not just by practical and legal considerations.
Having listened carefully over decades to Irish and British governments and to representatives of Northern Ireland, they will be influenced by a deep sense of the history of the tragic conflict which bedevilled a small corner of Europe for so long. They will be acutely aware how crucial it is to maintain the delicate balances of the Belfast Agreement.
Bobby McDonagh is a former ambassador to the EU, Britain and Italy