UK, the outsider in Europe

“Up Eurs” was the triumphalist headline in The Sun , Britain's Murdoch-owned tabloid, the day after the Prime Minister, Mr David Cameron, vetoed making amendments to EU treaties earlier this month. The paper likened his style to that of Winston Churchill and those who criticised him to poodles.

Others struck a similar note: in an article in The Times , historian Niall Ferguson only half jokingly drew parallels with the defeat of the Spanish Armada all those centuries ago: another moment of Britain bravely resisting European hegemony! Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph harked back to the country's 19th century policy of “splendid isolationism.”

With the early morning declarations by the leaders — not to mention the war of words between the French President, Mr Nicholas Sarkozy, and Mr Cameron that ensued — the Prime Minister's walkout was certainly a dramatic moment, but by no means the first time a Briton had acted tough. Right from the birth of the European Community, Britain's relationship with it has been marked by awkwardness and at times outright hostility in a way that no other country's has.

Those looking for a review of this rather tempestuous relationship could do worse than read A Stranger in Europe , in which the former senior civil servant, Mr Stephen Wall, painstakingly charts the relationship with Europe of the Prime Ministers he worked with: Mrs Margaret Thatcher, Mr John Major and Mr Tony Blair.

STRAINED TIES

The relationship was strained from the start, a state of affairs not helped by former French President Charles de Gaulle's avowal in 1967 to veto Britain's application to join what was then the European Economic Community. Within Britain opposition to membership came not only from the Conservatives, but from the Labour Party too, with that party's former leader Hugh Gaitskell declaring in 1962 that joining the European Community would mean “the end of a thousand years of history.”

After Britain finally joined the European Community in 1973, its early days of membership involved constant battles over its contribution to the budget, as well as annual demands for rebates. Mrs Thatcher, who once famously declared that “I am not puttable offable”, went as far as to hold up the annual agricultural price fixing agreement in order to get her way on the UK rebate.

In 1988, Mrs Thatcher infuriated her continental counterparts with a speech in the Belgium city of Bruges in which she launched an angry assault on the Commission. “We have not embarked on the business of throwing back the frontiers of the state at home, only to see a European super-state getting ready to exercise a new dominance from Brussels,” she declared.

During much of Mr Major's time as prime minister, relations were smoother although Britain could still prove awkward: for example by getting itself to an opt out of the Maastricht Treaty on certain social commitments and postponing the decision on joining the single currency. Back home, Mr Major's negotiations on Maastricht were met with huge acclaim. Mr Major himself declared the outcome to be: “Game, set and match to Britain.”

Politicians, Mr Wall notes, held a concept, which eluded him personally: one of “glorious defeat”. “I was struck by the occasions when British ministers of both main parties thought it better to go down to defeat in a majority vote in order to demonstrate political toughness, rather than rally to the majority, when it was clear that, otherwise, defeat was inevitable,” he writes.

Among the most strained moments was the EU's decision to impose a worldwide ban on British beef after the outbreak of BSE or mad cow disease in 1996. Never mind that the US had imposed a ban too, it was Europe that became the target of media vitriol, while the government took the churlish decision to veto literally any decision that required unanimous consent at the European Council.

While neither Mr Blair nor Mr Gordon Brown's premierships were as negative to Europe as those of their Conservative predecessors, neither fully embraced the project either. It was commented on at the time that Mr Blair saved his most pro-European speeches for when he was travelling elsewhere in Europe. Britain kept itself firmly out of projects embraced by many other European nations, including the Schengen agreement, to which even non-EU member Switzerland is a signatory.

Significantly, there has been little change in levels of support for the European project in Britain, unlike in most other European countries, where initial uncertainty has largely given way to critical acceptance. According to data from Ipsos MORI in October, 49 per cent of Britons would vote for leaving the union should there be a referendum on the matter, against 42 per cent back in 1977.

Where does this hostility come from? In a fascinating paper published in 2005 on English national identity and European integration, London School of Economics professor Anthony Smith takes it back centuries to the early development of a distinctly English identity — driven in part by the adoption of a single language, centuries before this would happen in most European states, and the early establishment of English law, and strengthened by its geography, which set it apart from the continent, and nurtured a feeling of an “uncrossable ring of sea.”

Such a sense of isolation, and a separate national identity only increased after Henry VIII took the country out of the Catholic church and established a national one. “They have an antipathy to foreigners and imagine that they never come into their island, but to make themselves masters of it, and to usurp their goods,” Smith quotes a 16th century Italian as saying.

RELATIONSHIP WITH US

Since the Second World War, another factor that can't, of course, be discounted is the huge weight that Britain still gives to its “special relationship” to the US and one it's certainly not willing to jeopardise for the greater European cause — rather seeing itself as the mediator between the US and Europe. It is a relationship that Britain has clung to over the years, reinforcing its sense of importance in a world in which it had quickly lost power.

The disastrous Suez Crisis of 1956 only strengthened the country's sense that going against the US would be foolhardy. Former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan compared Britain's relationship to the US led by the young John Kennedy to that which existed between Greece and Rome, while even Mrs Thatcher enjoyed warm relations with the US, describing Ronald Reagan as the “second most important man in my life.” Over the years, including under Mr Blair, Britain has shied away from any significant pan-European defence arrangements that would rival NATO.

Fuelled by a negative press, which insists on seeing battles in Europe in terms of national wins and losses, Britain's euro scepticism seems just as rooted in the political establishment as it ever was. The sad reality for the country is that the posturing and isolationism it perceives to be a triumphant moment rarely turns out to be the case. It's hard to see how isolating itself from discussions on the future of the euro zone, a region to which just under half of Britain's exports went last year, could in any sense be glorious.

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