Trading Relationships with Europe
Debate between Gordon Brown and Richard Graham
Mr Gordon Brown (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Lab)
Across each generation during the long march of our country’s history, we the British people have always had to choose how we engage with the world. In particular, we have had to decide, century by century, how and on what terms we engage with our nearest neighbours in Europe. This generation is no exception.
I acknowledge the current strength of anti-European sentiment in the country and I believe passionately that there is no way forward for Europe other than through reform. I have always insisted on reform of the Commission and its bureaucracy, the Parliament and its accountability, and the flawed economic model of the euro, which I recommended that we should refuse to join, just as we should refuse to Europeanise everything—we should certainly not Europeanise our armed forces, as was recently suggested by my old friend President Juncker.
I asked for this debate not just because we must never allow sections of our country to indulge in the delusion that we can discount the 3 million jobs, 200,000 British companies, £200 billion of annual exports and £450 billion of inward investment that are linked to our trade with the continent, but because we must resist defining every part of our relationship with the continent in confrontational terms that pit Britain against Europe and that wrongly make the issue Britain versus Europe, asking, “Are you for Britain or are you against Britain?”, as if to be patriotic one must reject Europe in favour of Britain.
Up against the view, which I see is represented by some Conservative Members, that sees Britain as wholly separate, defiantly independent of others and standing to gain strength from a European exit, there is another strongly patriotic view, which I believe in passionately, that affirms that Britain is not the Britain we know unless we are outward-looking, unless we are engaged with the continent and unless British values—tolerance, liberty, fairness, social responsibility—play a leading role in shaping Europe and helping Europe to lead in the world.
Let me state three maxims that sum up what I believe is the patriotic view of Britain’s future. The first is the belief that:
“Our links to the rest of Europe, the continent of Europe, have been the dominant factor in our history.”
The second is a desire that we should
“let Europe be the family of nations…doing more together”,
a Europe that is more united, with a greater sense of purpose. The third is to have
“a Europe which plays its full part in the wider world, which looks outward not inward”.
I know that many Conservative Members may find some of those statements challenging or difficult, but they are exactly the statements that Lady Thatcher set out in her seminal Bruges speech in the late 1980s.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that many Conservative Members could agree with everything he has said so far, and also recognise that the opportunity in the renegotiation with Europe is to improve Europe for the whole of Europe, not just for Britain, so that this great continent goes forward progressively?
Mr Brown
My view is that the hon. Gentleman does not speak for many Conservative Members, some of whom are present, and he should accept that Britain is linked geographically, historically, economically and culturally, as set out in the Bruges speech, to the rest of the continent. We cannot meet and master the challenges of the future for a country like ours unless we accept that co-operation was always desirable and advisable. Now, in the ever-more interdependent and integrated world we live in, that is even more essential and imperative, not as a surrendering of the British national interest, but as the best way to realise it in the modern world.
Cross-border trade used to be one fifth of the world’s economic activity and it may soon rise to being one half of it—evidence that we can be an island geographically but we can never again be an island economically or geopolitically. Like all Europe, Britain is engaged in the same fiercely competitive struggle for global markets, not just with America but now with Asia, which will soon be what Europe once was—half of the global economy.
Just as the US, the biggest economy in the world, needs its economic union, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the rising Asian nations need to be part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, how much stronger is Britain, which, at her peak, captured nearly 20% of the world’s economic activity but now has only 2.5%? How much stronger will we be in future when competing and negotiating with China, India and the rest of the world to secure the best deals in trade, address pollution, deliver financial stability and set the rules for tax, patents, action on money laundering and corruption, and to protect our basic security, most recently against Russian aggression, as part of Europe?
If we look further ahead, how much stronger will we be in exploiting the economic and employment benefits of modern science, from the human genome to the semantic web to space—projects too big for one country alone—if we, the Britain of 60 million people, have alongside and around us the strength of our neighbours, a Europe of 500 million people? If anyone is in any doubt about the wisdom of co-operation with our nearest neighbours, they should think of how young people today see the world as interconnected and think nothing of linking up and communicating with friends across Europe and the world.
Whether it was our indispensible role in the defeat of Napoleon, the containment of Germany, the defeat of fascism, the resolution of the cold war, or more recently the response to the global recession, Britain is not truly Britain if we are anything other than engaged. Looking at our history, there was never for us, I believe, any long period of splendid isolation, tempting as retreat may sometimes appear. It is never the British way to be anything but in the vanguard in Europe at the continent’s decisive moments. In doing so, we help make Europe the biggest instrument for peace that the world has ever seen, as vital to ensuring stability now against Russian aggression in the east as it was against Nazism at the heart of Europe.
There is not one single shred of evidence that our engagement with Europe has made us any less British, any less true to ourselves, and any less patriotic. What sort of message will the British people send to the world if we, Britain, the most open, outward-looking, seafaring and trading country the world has ever seen, gives up on centuries of ever-growing co-operation with our nearest neighbours, casts aside the London-Paris-Berlin axis that we have painstakingly built up over decades, and surrenders our rightful influence over future events on the continent, even though it is directly on our doorstep?
What message do we send if, in a betrayal of our history and of our future, the Britain that did more than any single nation to spread liberty across Europe and stood resolutely for democracy, the Britain that helped take on fascism, communism, totalitarianism, anti-Semitism, and is now working with others to defeat extreme Islamic fundamentalism, simply walks away from and abandons our historic role of standing with Europe against ideologies that threaten to deny opportunity and spread prejudice, discrimination and intolerance around the world?
The real challenge is to convert a far too inward-looking, self-obsessed Europe not into some federal superstate—all the European nations that I have visited are proudly independent, with their own traditions—but into an outward-looking, globally oriented Europe with a reach and influence spanning every hemisphere. What message do we send if, by abandoning not only our history of engagement but our history of being at the forefront of Europe, we give up on the opportunities and obligations of a central leadership role in shaping the next stage of our continent’s destiny?
This is the fundamental truth about Britain in Europe. Given our history, the question for Britain can never just be whether we are in Europe; it has to be whether we lead in Europe. Our destiny can never be to be some kind of bit-part player on someone else’s stage or a bystander hectoring from the wings. We must at all times be setting the agenda, bringing people together and championing change. Indeed, Britain makes more sense to the British people, and will enjoy more popular support, if we are more than just part of Europe and we are at its heart, leading from the front and charting the way forward.
The way to reconcile what has too often seemed irreconcilable—in Hugo Young’s famous words, the British past we cannot forget and the British future we cannot avoid—is to see our leadership in Europe not as an abandonment of our patriotism but as the truest modern expression of it.