Brexit

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)]

My Lords, I am rendered almost speechless, but I shall try. I have no desire to add to the reservoir of recrimination into which so many words have been poured because of Brexit. But, despite the kind words of my noble friend Lord Foulkes and my cherished former research student, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, I must confess that I am still struggling to absorb quite how a formidably resourceful country with a deeply mature parliamentary system, and which nurtures a real pride in its gift for international statecraft, could have come to such a pass as a destabiliser among the constellation of nations in Europe and the wider world—a nation that other countries can no longer read. What have we done to ourselves? What will become of us?

In that context, it dawned on me earlier this month that the number one target for British intelligence surely now is us. Since, nearly three years ago, we moved temporarily into a strange new country—let us call it “Brexitland”—we have become a mystery even unto ourselves; so much so that in a column in last Friday’s Tablet, I respectfully suggested to the chairman of the Cabinet Office’s Joint Intelligence Committee that he commission a special assessment under the heading, “Brexitland: Questions Facing the UK”.

Such an assessment might touch on a range of themes that are in play: future relationships with the EU, obviously; Britain’s wider place in the world after withdrawal; the sustainability of the very union of the UK and the prospects for a Scottish separation in the early 2020s; the social, economic and regional inequalities within the UK; the stress testing of UK institutions, including Parliament, the party-political structure and the Civil Service; the durability of the UK’s international alliances, including the special nuclear and intelligence relationships with the United States; prospects for the UK economy, research, innovation and technical education; and the enhancement of UK soft power, the transmission of values abroad and the restoration of a relatively rancour-free national political conversation at home. Perhaps the Minister, when he gets back to the department, could get on the phone to the Cabinet Office’s joint intelligence people and tell them what I have just said.

When it comes to my own future assessment—as a remainer but not a second referendum man—I carry an optimism about the longer-term prospects for the UK, provided that the cumulative effects of living in Brexitland do not leave us wallowing in a resentful torpor blighted by mutual scapegoating. Every generation needs a flag to which it can rally, a banner upon which it embroiders its shared aspirations. The banner under which my own, early post-war generation lived, for example, was particularly lustrous, very much woven by the great collective experience of the Second World War. What went into its embroidery? The answer is: the Beveridge report on welfare of 1942; the Education Act 1944; the full employment White Paper of 1944; the formation of the National Health Service in 1948; the placing of a collective security roof over all of this with the creation of NATO in 1949; and, from the late 1940s onwards, the transition from Empire to Commonwealth.

What we need now, especially in these highly polarised times, is another shared banner. We would all have our individual aspirations, but there are three I would embroider as a priority, for which I think there might—just might—be a new consensus once we are through Brexit. These would be: to do for social care what 1948 did for health; a very substantial building programme of social housing based on a public/private mix; and to get technical education right for the first time—after all, we have been trying to do this since the late 19th century.

If we can rally to a new banner, we might take not only ourselves pleasantly by surprise but our European neighbours and the rest of the world, in our ability to bounce back and cohere once more. In the meantime, I hope that the Prime Minister gets her deal through the House of Commons and that Friday 12 April does not go down as one of the bleakest days in our history. We have most definitely not been living through a finest hour, but a finest hour just might be there for the living if only we can get across the Brexit barrier and plant that shining flag on the other side. My Lords, I live in hope.

Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Wednesday 9th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)]

My Lords, in a celebrated article in the Times to mark the unveiling of a statue of the great Benjamin Disraeli in Parliament Square on the second anniversary of his death, the leader writer penned a sentence that has resonated ever since:

“In the inarticulate mass of the British populace which they”—


the Conservatives—“held at arm’s length”, Disraeli,

“discerned the Conservative working man as the sculptor perceives the angel imprisoned in a block of marble”.

Is that not a wonderful sentence? The angel-in-marble image flashed across my mind when, in a burst of admitted optimism, I first picked up the political declaration. Euro-documents are, of their very nature, free of the poetry of that Times article, let alone of Disraeli himself, and they can never be a thing of statue- like beauty and symmetry. But here in these 26 pages of aspirations just might, I thought, be found sufficient pieces of marble that we could somehow sculpt into a set of arrangements which capture the real possibility of a sustained, even dynamic, future partnership with the EU 27.

The future relationship document admits that it reflects what it calls a “high ambition” with regard to its “scope and depth”, which “might evolve over time”. Indeed, virtually all of its 147 paragraphs assume a harmony model, not just in the converting of the declaratory framework into a legally binding treaty but in a developing partnership thereafter—and “harmony” is not quite the word one associates with the often tense and never serene relationship between the UK and an integrating Europe. Nonetheless, the ambition is there in black and white, as are suggested mechanisms for both the regular review of the proposed arrangements and the seeking of new ways and additional areas in which future co-operation might take place.

Certainly there are, in my judgment, more reasons to be cheerful than I had expected in the deal Mrs May brought back from Brussels on Sunday 25 November, especially as the UK’s negotiating position was weakened from the outset by our inevitably being the mendicant at the table. Though a remainer—but not a second referendum man—I have always held the view that there is much force in the sovereignty arguments expressed by my leaver friends, and there is a very substantial pulse of returning sovereignty in that political declaration.

To my regret, the Prime Minister's deal has been greeted by a cacophony of negatives across the parties. Mrs May has managed to unite a battalion of critics. I do not share their disdain for what she has brought home. I have no idea how the great showdown in the House of Commons will play out next week. The Rubik’s Cube of possibilities shows yet again how difficult it is to reconcile plebiscitary democracy with representative democracy, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, put so eloquently. The primary colours of a binary referendum do not—cannot—sit easily with the shades and subtleties of our standard model of parliamentary democracy.

Another general election would not be a satisfactory means, in my judgment, of settling the European question in its stark current form—of their very nature, general elections cannot be single-issue events.

Never before have we been faced with a contingency comparable to a hard Brexit with all the short-term dislocation that would bring, as well as GDP forgone in the medium term. For all the respect I have for my leaver friends—and I genuinely do—I cannot fathom the insouciance, verging on Pollyanna-ism, about it that some of them exhibit. In my darker moments I sometimes think it would take the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to ask for landing rights at Heathrow before they showed the slightest trace of anxiety about what lies ahead. Heaven forbid that we should face such an outcome, for if it happened it would seriously damage—perhaps for a long time—our people’s faith in the ability of the state to fulfil its duty of care to those it exists to protect and serve.

Even so, if Mrs May’s proposal—or something very like it—makes its way through the House of Commons, it would take years of our diplomatic and political skills at their finest to implement it fully and satisfactorily. But it could work and in doing so draw at last the sting from the question of Britain and Europe to the surprise and relief of not just ourselves but of Europe too, as we cease to be a destabiliser nation—that is exactly what we are at the moment—and revert to being a bringer of stability and maturity to the councils of the world.

What a great prize it would be if at last we could find a settlement of the Britain in Europe question, which, in the words of the great Rita Hayworth, has bewitched, bothered and bewildered us as a country and a people for nearly 69 years since in May 1950 the French sprung the European Coal and Steel Community plan on us out of the blue.

There are multiple reasons for our being bewitched, bothered and bewildered—for this particular condition. Especially potent among them is that the European question has always touched directly upon our individual notions of patriotism. The paramount need now at this time of high national anxiety is, while respecting each other’s patriotisms, to find a way through, while satisfying nobody, that somehow carries us to a workable settlement with the EU 27. In my view the Prime Minister’s deal does this and I hope she wins the vote in the Commons.

What a gift it would be to our country—above all to our children and grandchildren—if we could lift the curse that has seared us for so long, freeing up everyone’s minds and energies for application to the other great economic and social questions we face that are crying out for attention. What an angel in marble that would be if somehow we could fashion a viable and durable settlement out of the molten mass of uncertainty and possibility that the people we serve and the country we love are facing.

Despite many other instincts that are pushing the other way, I insist on living in hope.

Brexit: Preparations and Negotiations

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Monday 23rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)]

My Lords, in a history department somewhere within the British university system, there may well have sat this very afternoon a young man or woman sifting their way through the paper trail already laid down by Brexit. When in 10, 15 or 20 years one or other of them sets out to write The Strange Birth, Life and Death of European Britain—the book which will make their scholarly reputation—what might they make of the document before us this evening?

Much, of course, will depend on the coming days, weeks and months as our civil war—almost sometimes, I think, our war of religion—over Brexit fights over the White Paper’s pages, especially if the contents of those pages are at some stage somehow fashioned into an instrument for removing the Prime Minister from 10 Downing Street. Whatever happens, I think that the young scholar will linger long over Command Paper 9593. Why is that? There are three reasons.

First, The Future Relationship Between the United Kingdom and the European Union captures in its 98 pages the sheer mass of factors, complications and pitfalls that have to be tackled if 46 years of European Britain are to be unravelled successfully and a viable set of successor relationships put in place. The White Paper, in my judgment, is a fascinating—almost overwhelming —piece of geopolitical cartography without, I think, parallel in our history.

The second reason that I adduce for the enduring significance of Command Paper 9593 can be found in a cascade of paragraphs in the Prime Minister’s foreword to the White Paper. Mrs May says,

“over the last two years I have travelled up and down the country, listening to views from all four nations of our United Kingdom and every side of the debate ... We share an ambition for our country to be fairer and more prosperous than ever before … Leaving the EU gives us the opportunity to deliver on that ambition once and for all—strengthening our economy, our communities, our union, our democracy, and our place in the world, while maintaining a close friendship and strong partnership with our European neighbours”.

Those paragraphs alone illustrate why this is such a heavily freighted White Paper. Like all properly trained historians, our young scholar and future biographer of the relationship between Britain and Europe will have been trained how to slice up history into capital Q “Questions”.

Think how many can be extracted just from that snatch of the Prime Minister’s opening refrain. The European Question, obviously—that great tormentor of successive British political generations—has prised wide open once more the Britain’s-place-in-the-world Question; the stress generated by Brexit has reheated the very union of the UK Question and the possibility of a Scottish separation some time in the 2020s; and, as we are all aware, the need for a friction-free border between Northern Ireland and the Republic has re-posed the Irish Question. The European Question has, too, revived what Disraeli would have called the condition-of-Britain Question, as the referendum result showed that the UK was an extended family but no longer knew itself or fully appreciated the disparities in life chances and outlooks across large parts of our country.

There lurks, too, a special post-Brexit problem in the pages of this White Paper. Chapter 4, which I do not think we have discussed much today, on post-leaving institutional arrangements, makes for sobering reading. It assumes a high level of harmony to make its complicated mechanics work. I fear that there will be a rich harvest here for those whose political lives have so far put them on permanent grudge-watch with Europe. That will continue.

Perhaps my greatest anxiety, apart from the possibility of Scotland one day leaving the UK, is the coarsening, sometimes even the envenoming, effect of the European question on our national political conversation more generally. Once we have left the European Union we will need to put much care and real persistence into putting that right: the first people we have to get on with are ourselves. I live in hope—and there is no tariff on hope.