Trading Relationships with Europe
Debate between Gordon Brown and Steve Brine
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.
Mr Brown
I have given way once, and I have to get through this.
There is no doubt that millions of our fellow citizens now feel more insecure than ever because of the bewildering pace and destructiveness of what seems to them to be an out-of-control and uncontrollable global economy. They are looking for someone or something to shelter, insulate, protect and cushion them from these bewildering and often alien forces that are on occasion taking their livelihoods from them. They are looking for someone to hold responsible, and they are now being urged to turn what started off as an economic protest, rather than cultural prejudice, into a culture war whose main weapon is to blame foreigners, target immigrants and engender a siege mentality against the outsider.
In this culture war, arid statistics on exports and investment from well-meaning, London establishment-led, corporate-financed campaigns by the great and the good, who will be accused of being elites who do not understand Britain, will appear to many to be no match for the cultural charge from the right that Britain has ceased to be the Britain that they know and love. We cannot win in a culture war which asserts that Britain is no longer a country we recognise just with factsheets about the percentage rises and falls in business investment. Technical arguments are not enough to trump cultural grievances. When we are fighting back in a culture war that others have started, we must take on one strongly felt set of beliefs with another strongly felt set of beliefs.
If we are to win hearts as well as minds, our core message must be bigger than the business case and bigger even than the principled case for engagement in Europe. We must tell the British people not just about our patriotism and our historic role at the hinges of history but about how, through putting our enduring progressive British values to work, we will lead in, and shape the future of, this continent. The Britain that has consistently championed toleration, liberty and social responsibility before any other country in Europe—and that, as far back as the days of Adam Smith, invented the idea of civic society and mutual obligation, influencing Europe massively in the process—is ready once again to lead a progressive movement mobilising Europe towards the greatest challenge we face: to make the global economy and global change work for people by tackling their injustices, their inequities and their unfairnesses, and by giving globalisation what it most needs now—a human face.
Let no one tell us that the Britain that changed the world in every century in modern times is today some powerless, hapless victim unable to wield power in Europe for good. And let no sceptic tell us that we need to be an impotent bystander when we are, by our history, our values and our temperament, the country that is best equipped to lead Europe forward.
So let us deal confidently with the argument that the European single market somehow hobbles our trade with the rest of the world and undermines London. Let us show that London’s unique role, essentially one of bringing together financial services for the continent, could not now so easily be performed outside the European Union. Let us in championing European reform avoid another trap of representing pro-Europeans as the status quo and anti-Europeans as change. Let us be honest with the British people that those who say that if we exit we can retain the benefits and ditch the burdens have not thought through the alternatives, including the folly of the Switzerland or Norwegian alternatives to membership— even the Norwegians warn against the Norwegian option—which leave us subject to European rules but with no vote in shaping them. To rephrase the aphorism, we would be out of Europe but still run by Europe.
Let me end by saying that positioning ourselves half in, half out, as a Britain that is somehow semi-detached and disengaged, the Britain of the empty chair even when we are in the room, is already making us weaker than we have been before. We have been irrelevant on the Greek crisis, a fringe player on climate change and a mere spectator in the debate that could have shaped a European growth policy. We are marginal on Ukraine, with Ministers looking faintly ludicrous as, in one and the same breath, they say, “Russia must be confronted with a more united Europe,” and, “By the way, we are thinking of leaving Europe.”
In a few years’ time, as the German population falls, Britain can once again become Europe’s biggest and most powerful economy. It would be a terrible irony if, just at the moment we are in an even stronger position to lead in this more interdependent world, Britain were to opt out, leaving Europe divided, Russia empowered, the United States bypassing us for a French-German axis and Scotland threatening to leave a non-European UK. An England that glories in isolation is not the England that I know and love.
Instead we must stand up for a Britain leading Europe, not leaving Europe, and for a Britain that has always seen the English channel not as a moat but as a highway and the North sea not as a defence against engagement in the world but as the route to it. In doing so, we have shaped the destiny of Europe and the world and it is only those defeatists who claim to be championing a patriotic future but who have, in fact, given up on British leadership in Europe who will say that we cannot make leading rather than leaving Europe our mission again.
I stand for Britain in Europe because just as I came into this House believing in Britain, I leave it believing in a Britain that can lead in Europe. I will never stop believing in that vision of Britain’s future.