26 Jun The Election Debate on…Europe
Since 2016, relations between the UK and the EU have, unsurprisingly, been fraught, and just a few years ago it would have been politically impossible for any party to speak positively and substantively about engagement with the EU in an election campaign. But, with UK-EU relations slowly improving in recent years, this election has seen more willingness from the parties to engage with our European partners.
Indeed, the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru have committed to rejoining the EU single market, and the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru are pushing to rejoin the EU in due course. While neither of the major parties – Conservatives and Labour – want to rejoin the single market, the customs union, or the European Union itself, both increasingly value closer relations with Europe, as the UK and its partners continue to face a litany of geopolitical threats.
Indeed it is these global challenges that have already brought the UK and the EU closer together. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the looming prospect of a Trump Presidency in the US has made clear that, whether the UK is in the EU or not, it will always be a key part of the UK’s foreign and security policy. This has enabled Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to edge closer to the EU during his time in office – from rejoining the EU’s Horizon programme and signing the Windsor Framework, to instigating close collaboration with European partners on Ukraine. While the Conservative manifesto does not make any commitments to closer collaboration with the EU, it does repeatedly refer to the importance of European security, and commits to strengthening the Joint Expeditionary Force and new defence treaties with Germany and Poland. It is a striking shift from the 2019 election, where a key crux of the manifesto was built around ‘Getting Brexit done’.
Nevertheless for the Conservative party, Europe remains a highly charged issue, and the party remains resistant to drawing ties too closely – preferring ad-hoc cooperation with Brussels, over formal agreements, e.g. over defence, for which the Labour party is pushing. At the core of the ongoing debate is UK membership of the European Court of Human Rights. Illegal migration is a top priority for a strong contingent of the Conservative voter base, and ECHR regulations which have limited the ability of Sunak to implement his highly contested Illegal Migration Act have only fueled anti-European sentiment within the right-wing ranks of the party. Under the Conservatives then, and so long as the debate over the ECHR can be overcome, cooperation with the EU would likely continue mutedly, remaining focused largely on policy that appeals to the vocal Conservative right, including bolstering European security and limiting cross-Channel illegal migration.
Meanwhile, Labour has taken a noticeably warmer tone to the EU. While not breaching its self-imposed red lines, reconnecting Britain to Europe is a top priority for Labour. Promising to pursue a reduction in trade barriers, regular UK-EU structured dialogues, and the mutual recognition of standards, among much else, Labour is drawing a clear dividing line between the Conservatives’ and its own European policy. A considerable renegotiation of the 2021 Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) is also a priority for a Labour government, with Starmer having expressed his desire to get a “much better deal” when TCA negotiations come round, particularly on security, innovation and research cooperation.
The flagship commitment within Labour’s plans to reconnect the UK with Europe is in the field of security, particularly via its proposed UK-EU security pact. The pact would seek to drive more systematic and closer coordination across fields from defence and economics to cyber and climate; drawing on the common security interests that have been reinforced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as the rise of China, emerging AI technologies, and the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. With the UK set to host the European Political Community (EPC) Summit just two weeks after the election, if Labour win they’ll no doubt seek to use this opportunity to cement a new more European vision for the UK from the outset.
Closer UK-EU relations of course require mutual interest and effort. In this regard, June’s European Parliament election, and the resulting European Commission election in Autumn, are just as important to UK-EU relations as the desires of those in the UK. While the centre ultimately held, parties on the populist right made significant gains in the European Parliament election. And while a number of those populist right politicians elected are Brexit sympathisers, this shift to the right in Europe may prove challenging for a potential incoming left-wing government in the UK, whose values vary substantially from those of many in Europe. This is compounded by the instability the election result has caused in Europe – with a snap election already triggered in France, and a potential National Front French government likely to prove particularly challenging if Labour wins the election.
But regardless of whether Labour or the Conservatives are elected, it is clear that in the UK there is growing appetite for closer cooperation with the EU; a result not least of current geopolitical challenges, including a more inward-looking US and the ongoing Russian threat to European security. Just how close that relationship is will depend on the election result and the future of the EU’s own political trajectory.
