In February 2018, the British foreign secretary declared: “It makes sense for us to continue to be intimately involved in European foreign and security policy.” But when he became prime minister he took foreign and security policy cooperation off the table in Brexit negotiations.
Inconsistency is not rare in Boris Johnson’s record. Two years before that 2018 speech, during the referendum campaign, he was singing a different tune, blaming the EU’s association agreement with Ukraine for provoking Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Mr Johnson claimed Brussels was meddling beyond its competence and could only “cause confusion”.
Mr Johnson dropped formal partnership with the EU on security issues in pursuit of a “clean” Brexit – an arm’s-length relationship based on trade in goods and not much else. The official foreign policy doctrine was “global Britain”, with no special interest in Europe.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shown that approach to be petty and futile. Vladimir Putin’s military aggression has landed on one country, but his strategic hostility is directed at the two institutions that have historically underpinned democracy in Europe: Nato and the EU. The UK’s commitment to the former is unbending, which is often cited by Brexiters as proof of a European commitment that doesn’t have to be channelled through Brussels.
That is true, up to a point. Brexit has not stopped the UK being proactive in support of Ukraine. British suspicion of Russian motives and readiness to turn solidarity with Poland and the Baltics into military aid has gone further than in most EU member states, and been vindicated by events. UK military capability, matched only by France on the continent, will always be a vital asset to the whole of Europe. By contrast, on sanctions against Mr Putin’s cronies, the EU has moved faster than Britain – in part because the relevant laws were in a mess post-Brexit.
That is not to romanticise the European response or overstate continental unity. An EU summit in Versailles on Thursday is meant to discuss “decisive steps” towards reinforcing a “sovereign” Europe with an explicit strategy to reduce dependency on Russian energy exports. How that is done in practice and to what timetable is not easy to agree when some states, Germany the biggest among them, are heavily reliant on Russian gas. That, in turn, raises questions about how the transition will be funded, which reopens divisions over fiscal integration that were papered over in the first days of the crisis. Those issues will get harder still as the economic cost of maintaining political and military solidarity with Ukraine rises.
Populists in EU states who once openly admired Mr Putin have distanced themselves from his butchery, but not suddenly embraced liberal pluralism. The European project has been given momentum in reaction to Russian aggression, but the direction is not clear. Britain, being intimately bound to Europe’s economy and security concerns, has a huge stake in the outcome of that discussion, but surrendered its seat at the table where it happens. That was a mistake. It will not be reversed, but it can be mitigated.
There is no great national appetite for relitigating the Brexit arguments that raged from 2016 onwards, but it should be possible to recognise that the world has changed enough to drop some of the delusional Eurosceptic mythologies that characterised those arguments. For the foreseeable future, British interests will require institutional partnership with the EU on the level of foreign and security policy. Mr Johnson was right about that once, then took a wrong turn. Now would be an auspicious time to correct the course.
