Political union is inescapable

If there is a common narrative of Britain’s entry and exit from the European Union, it is the following: the UK sought to enter the EU in the 1970s in order to provide an economic boost, this was the only real motivating factor and, as more political integration was introduced, Britain became increasingly disenchanted, until ultimately we left the Union.

It is simple, widely repeated and wrong.

We can see the flaw going all the way back to the beginning of the story, where the records show clearly the political arguments made for joining the European community as a matter of pooling sovereignty and building the foundations of a long-lasting continental peace. Yet the purpose of this blog is not to go back over that old ground, but to point instead to how still today, while no-one in the post-Brexit era would describe it as such and any politician would recoil from the mere suggestion, Britain has a secret desire for political integration in Europe.

The reality of the situation becomes clearer when we understand what European political union actually is. In the simplest terms, it is the application of democracy to international economic forces. Economic union, as represented in the Single Market and Customs Union, is a powerful contributor to growth, but it is inherently technocratic and impersonal. To function, it must be governed by rules, even if the rules are nothing more than an enforceable description of an absence of any block or constraint to the cross-border economic activity taking place within the European market.

To most Europeans, including a large majority of Britons, a strictly minimal vision of these rules is not acceptable. There must be regulations on working standards, on emissions, on pollution, on tax, on warranties, on employment rights, and many more issues besides.

Equally well, Europeans in the main do not accept that they would have no say on how these various standards are set. They would not be satisfied with such a quantity and quality of rules being determined by committees of experts. They want to pick their representatives and they want those representative to have an active role in forming the rules that govern the European space.

This is where political union comes in. The creation of common institutions where elected representatives can gather to discuss and vote on these rules that govern the European economy is precisely to meet the demand of ordinary people for democratic control.

Fascinatingly, we see the impulse that birthed these structures playing out again on a smaller scale as Britain tries to improve its position post-Brexit. The vast majority of people accept the basic principle that we need a closer relationship with the EU in order to regain some of the economic benefits we have lost since leaving the Union. Yet the UK is not comfortable with the idea of being a ‘rule-taker’, simply applying whatever new laws are determined by the EU. As already established, a market must be governed by rules, so this process of constant alignment is unavoidable, but we want to be able to influence and, ideally, even block those rules when there is a clash with our own interests.

To try and fix this, the UK government is already lobbying the EU to come to an understanding and allow for the participation of British politicians and officials in certain committees and assemblies in Brussels when dealing with the laws that would have most direct relevance of the UK.

This is in fact a basic form of political integration, where government ministers would meet to find a consensus on the new rules being proposed. It is unwieldy, slow and prone to deadlock, but it is precisely the kind of early attempts at Europe-wide democratic governance that gave rise to the EU’s Council and Parliament. We have returned to the foundations of the EU’s current political union because that is the only way that the benefits of European economic integration can be made compatible with democracy.

Britain’s real story then is of a country that sought more control and in the process rejected the very mechanisms that were helping deliver the control we crave. Now we are relearning the principles that underline political union and trying to recreate the proto-structures of common, European decision-making from scratch. It would even work – for the reasoning is sound – were it not for the fact that in this retelling of the story, the EU (with its regular direct elections, matured institutions and wide membership) already exists.

It is a reminder that the EU’s current form did not emerge all at once out of a top-down plan, but from a series of iterated compromises between the centre and the locality, between each of the nations, between citizens and governments and between the forces of economic production and democratic control. Now Britain will either keep going round in circles, trying to deny the reality of the processes that drove those compromises, or skip to the end of that journey and realise that political union is what we wanted all along.