Brexit: The Debate Continues
Summary
TLDRDans cet entretien, John Stevens et Brendan Donnelly discutent de la possibilité pour le Royaume-Uni de rejoindre à nouveau l'Union européenne sans référendum. Ils abordent les positions politiques actuelles, les obstacles potentiels et les événements économiques et géopolitiques qui pourraient influencer cette décision. Donnelly souligne l'importance de la confiance et de la stabilité pour le rapprochement avec l'UE, tandis que les déclarations récentes de personnalités politiques comme Michael Gove suggèrent un éloignement du Brexit.
Takeaways
- 🇪🇺 Peter Mandelson a déclaré que l'idée du Royaume-Uni rejoignant l'UE est ridicule, reflétant l'orthodoxie actuelle du parti travailliste de ne pas aborder ce sujet.
- 🤔 Brendan Donnelly pense que l'UE serait ravie de voir le Royaume-Uni souhaiter rejoindre l'Union, mais cela nécessiterait un travail important pour rétablir la confiance.
- 👥 Des pro-européens en Grande-Bretagne accordent des espoirs à un gouvernement travailliste, mais des obstacles, y compris les commentaires de Mandelson, pourraient rendre ces espoirs vaines.
- 🔄 L'impact de Brexit comme force perturbatrice est inévitable et cela pourrait conduire à un retour à l'UE pour restaurer la stabilité économique au Royaume-Uni.
- 💡 Il est envisageable que des événements économiques et politiques pousseront un gouvernement travailliste vers une position plus pro-européenne, malgré le discours actuel.
- 🗳️ Les commentaires de Michael Gove suggèrent un éloignement de Brexit et une possible acceptation d'un référendum sur la réadmission à l'UE si le parti travailliste le promettait dans son programme électoral.
- 🤝 La position future du parti conservateur sur l'UE est incertaine et pourrait influencer la direction que prendra le parti travailliste par rapport à l'UE.
- 📊 L'article dans The Daily Telegraph suggère une réévaluation de la position de l'UE par certains conservateurs, qui pourrait indiquer un changement dans leur approche de la dérégulation et de l'immigration.
- 🏛️ L'idée d'une 'Grande-Bretagne globale' opposée à une 'Grande-Bretagne européenne' est discutée en termes de réorientation possible vers une intégration européenne plus approfondie.
- 🚫 Le débat sur Brexit reste un tabou dans la politique britannique, ce qui est perçu comme un signe de décadence, mais cela pourrait changer dans les années à venir.
Q & A
Pensez-vous que le Royaume-Uni pourrait envisager de rejoindre l'UE sans référendum?
-Il est possible que le Royaume-Uni puisse envisager de rejoindre l'UE sans référendum, mais cela nécessiterait probablement le soutien d'un large spectre du gouvernement et du public.
Quel a été le commentaire de Peter Mandelson sur la possibilité du Royaume-Uni de rejoindre l'UE?
-Peter Mandelson a déclaré que la perspective du Royaume-Uni rejoignant l'UE était ridicule et irréaliste, reflétant une orthodoxie actuelle du parti travailliste de ne pas aborder ce sujet.
Comment le directeur du Federal Trust, Brendan Donnelly, perçoit-il les commentaires de Mandelson?
-Brendan Donnelly pense que les commentaires de Mandelson sont une partie de la rhétorique que le parti travailliste développe pour associer l'idée d'une reprise en main économique avec la stabilité, contrairement à la position précipitée des conservateurs.
Quelles sont les raisons pour lesquelles le Royaume-Uni devrait reconsidérer son adhésion à l'UE selon Brendan Donnelly?
-Donnelly souligne que la reprise économique et la nécessité de restaurer la stabilité économique pourraient forcer un gouvernement travailliste à adopter une position plus pro-européenne.
Quelle est la position de Rachel Reeves sur l'Europe et comment cela pourrait-il influencer les espoirs de certains Britanniques?
-Rachel Reeves a exprimé que s'approcher de l'UE sous un gouvernement travailliste serait perturbateur pour l'industrie britannique, ce qui pourrait décourager certains Britanniques favorables à l'Europe.
Quels événements pourraient pousser un gouvernement travailliste à adopter une position plus pro-européenne?
-Des événements économiques, politiques ou géopolitiques, tels qu'une crise économique ou une pression internationale, pourraient pousser le gouvernement à réévaluer sa position envers l'UE.
Quelle est l'opinion de Brendan Donnelly sur l'impact du Brexit sur l'économie britannique?
-Donnelly considère que le Brexit est une force perturbatrice qui a détruit 50 ans de stabilité économique et politique au Royaume-Uni et que seule la révocation du Brexit pourrait restaurer cette stabilité.
Quels sont les obstacles potentiels pour un gouvernement travailliste à adopter une position plus pro-européenne?
-Les obstacles comprennent la rhétorique actuelle du parti travailliste, la nécessité de gagner la confiance des partenaires européens et la possibilité d'une défaite électorale qui pourrait entraîner un changement de position au sein du parti conservateur.
Comment les changements internes au parti conservateur pourraient-ils influencer la position du Royaume-Uni envers l'UE?
-Si le parti conservateur subit une division significative après une défaite électorale, cela pourrait faciliter un mouvement plus pro-européen pour le parti travailliste.
Quelle est la position de Michael Gove sur les référendums et l'UE?
-Michael Gove a exprimé qu'il n'était jamais particulièrement en faveur d'un référendum et qu'il pensait que le gouvernement devrait être en droit de mettre en œuvre des mesures si elles sont promises dans un manifeste électoral.
Quelle est la signification de l'article dans The Daily Telegraph sur la position potentielle de la Grande-Bretagne envers l'UE?
-L'article pourrait être interprété comme un signe de réévaluation de la position de certains conservateurs sur l'UE, suggérant que la dérégulation et l'intégration européenne pourraient aller de pair.
Outlines
🇬🇧 Brexit et le retour de l'UE
Le paragraphe 1 aborde la question de la possibilité pour le Royaume-Uni de rejoindre à nouveau l'Union européenne sans un référendum. John Stevens, président de la Federal Trust, discute avec Brendan Donnelly, directeur de la même organisation, des développements autour de Brexit. Ils évoquent les commentaires de Peter Mandelson qui considèrent l'idée de retour à l'UE comme ridicule. Donnelly réfute cette idée, soulignant que l'UE serait ravie de voir le Royaume-Uni souhaiter rejoindre à nouveau l'Union, mais que cela nécessiterait un regain de confiance de la part du Royaume-Uni. Ils discutent également des espoirs placés dans un futur gouvernement travailliste et des obstacles potentiels à une rapprochement avec l'UE, y compris les déclarations récentes de Rachel Reeves sur les conséquences perturbatrices d'une rapprochement avec l'UE.
🌍 Impact économique et politique de Brexit
Le paragraphe 2 explore l'idée que les événements économiques pourraient pousser un gouvernement travailliste à adopter une position plus pro-européenne, malgré les déclarations actuelles. Les commentaires de Michael Gove sur le référendum et sa position sur Brexit sont également examinés. Gove suggère que les gouvernements devraient avoir la capacité d'agir sur des questions controversées sans avoir recours à un référendum, suggérant un éloignement de sa part de Brexit. Le paragraphe aborde également la possibilité d'un repositionnement du parti conservateur après une défaite électorale, et la manière dont cela pourrait influencer la position du Royaume-Uni par rapport à l'UE.
🔄 Une repositionnement possible du parti conservateur?
Le paragraphe 3 discute de l'évolution potentielle de la position du parti conservateur sur l'UE, avec des signes de réflexion interne et des articles dans la presse suggérant un retour possible à l'UE. Les débats sur la dérégulation et l'immigration, qui étaient des piliers du Brexit, sont également explorés. Il est question de la difficulté de concilier ces deux objectifs et de la manière dont cela pourrait être transformé en une orientation plus européenne, notamment en termes d'économie et d'identité.
🚫 Tabou du débat sur Brexit
Le paragraphe 4 traite de la situation paradoxale où le débat sur Brexit et la possibilité de son annulation est un tabou politique au Royaume-Uni. Il est question de l'importance de continuer à discuter de ces questions malgré les réticences et les moqueries, et de la nécessité de réévaluer la position du Royaume-Uni par rapport à l'UE. Le paragraphe souligne l'absence de consensus et la nécessité de trouver une solution stable à l'instabilité créée par Brexit, en envisageant une réintégration plus complète dans l'UE.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Brexit
💡référendum
💡Starmerite
💡économie
💡gouvernement travailliste
💡déréglementation
💡immigration
💡référendum sur le Brexit
💡Conservateurs
💡Union européenne
💡manifeste électoral
Highlights
UK rejoining the EU is considered by some as currently unrealistic.
Peter Mandelson's comment that UK rejoining the EU is a joke reflects a desire to avoid the topic.
The EU is not hostile to the idea of the UK rejoining, contrary to some opinions.
The UK would need to rebuild trust with the EU before rejoining.
A Labour government is seen by some as a potential path towards a more pro-European UK stance.
Labour Party rhetoric suggests that getting closer to the EU would be disruptive for the UK.
Brexit is inherently disruptive and reversing it could restore stability.
Economic events might push a Labour government towards a more pro-European stance.
The position of the Conservative Party on Europe will significantly influence UK politics.
Michael Gove's remarks indicate a possible shift in Conservative thinking on the EU.
The possibility of the UK rejoining the EU without a referendum is speculative but not inconceivable.
The solidity of the decision to rejoin the EU is important for the UK's partners.
The Conservative Party's future stance on the EU is uncertain and could significantly change.
The idea of a 'Global Britain' versus 'European Britain' is a complex issue in the Brexit debate.
The current political climate in the UK makes discussing Brexit and its reversal a taboo.
The Federal Trust continues to debate Brexit despite it being a taboo subject in broader UK politics.
Transcripts
Do you think it's conceivable that the UK would be able to rejoin the EU without a referendum,
and would our partners or potential partners be satisfied by a decision purely by the government?
Hello, I'm John Stevens. I'm the chair of the Federal Trust, and I'm talking once again to
Brendan Donnelly, the director of the Federal Trust, about developments in the UK relating
to Brexit. Brendan, there have been a number of quite intriguing developments commenting
on the current position of the UK in relation to whether it can rejoin the European Union at
some stage. The first thing that caught my attention was the remark by Peter Mandelson
saying that it was a joke to even contemplate the UK rejoining. What do you make of that?
Well, it's a Starmerite orthodoxy at the moment that you should talk as little as possible about
Europe and even less about the possibility of rejoining, and Mandelson wanted to associate
himself with that orthodoxy. I think his contribution to the debate was to say that
it's naive and unrealistic and exotically ludicrous even to talk about rejoining.
Well, one of the arguments he put forward was that the EU isn't at all interested in the United
Kingdom rejoining. It's interesting that there he's attempting to shift the responsibility to
the other side rather than to the British side. I think it's untrue that the European Union is
hostile or even indifferent to the idea of the United Kingdom rejoining. I think the EU would
be very pleased if the United Kingdom wanted to rejoin. But the United Kingdom would have
to understand that there's a lot of work to be done from the UK side in order to build up trust,
which has been destroyed and wantonly thrown away over the past eight years.
A lot of pro-Europeans in Britain are placing great hopes on a Labour government,
which now seems highly likely if not inevitable following the next election. Do you feel that
these remarks by Peter Mandelson reveal that those hopes may be misplaced?
I think there are barriers to those hopes being realized, which shouldn't be underestimated,
and Mandelson's remarks are part of that rhetoric that the Labour Party is developing.
Rachel Reeves recently talked about the way in which attempting to get closer to the European
Union under a new Labour government would be disorienting and disruptive for British
industry. It's part of the narrative that the Labour Party is trying to develop,
that they are the party of economic stability in contrast to the feckless Conservatives.
Well, I think that what Reeves, who was never a great enthusiast for the European Union,
is saying is the opposite of the truth. Brexit is, of its nature, a disruptive force. It's
something that has trashed 50 years of economic and political stability for the United Kingdom
within the European Union, and there are always going to be new manifestations coming forward
of how Brexit is a disruptive force. It's only really when Brexit is reversed that
stability will be restored to the British economy. Do you think that economic events will force a
Labour government, regardless of these remarks, in this position, into a more pro-European posture?
I think that's entirely possible. I think that for a year or so, the government will
be stuck with its present unenthusiastic, even soft Euroskeptic rhetoric. But then economic
and political events may well force it to look for a new narrative, particularly if it hasn't
been able to show the economic benefits and advantages that it's been claiming for itself
in its next term in government. Europe might be an answer to that, the Labour maiden's prayer.
It'll be politically difficult, but I think it's one of the great unresolved questions of
present British politics. Will halfway through its first term in office, the Labour Party pivot
in a more pro-European direction? And I think it's entirely possible that that will happen,
not because, at the moment, Starmer or his close associates want it to happen, but
because events may force them in that direction. But these events, you see as being primarily
economic realities, the problem of finding growth, or are they wider political ones or
geopolitical ones related to developments vis-a-vis Russia or the United States?
Yes, I think it's certainly true that if there were a Trump presidency,
then that's something which objectively would force both militarily and economically and
politically the United Kingdom much closer to the European Union. Quite a lot of these
hesitations and Mandelsonian reticences would be overtaken by events, not just economic as you say.
Of course, I suppose part of this picture will be what position the opposition to a
Labour government takes towards the European Union following the next general election, particularly
in circumstances in which the Conservatives suffer a very major defeat and go through a process of
internal turmoil over their future position. And here we've had some intervention from a
person perhaps as compromised reputationally on the Conservative side as Peter Mandelson has
been on the Labour side, namely Michael Gove, in a recent interview. What do you make of his remarks?
I agree. It's very important for where the Labour Party ends up on Europe in a couple
of years' time. What happens to the Conservative Party over the next couple of years? I think it's
entirely possible that they'll suffer a crushing defeat and that the party will then split, a part
of it associating itself with Reform and a middle ground which may attempt to form a regional party,
say in the Southeast, say in London, or may come to be associated with the Liberal Democrats. If
that's so, then it might be easier for the Labour Party to move in a more pro-EU direction. But the
remarks from Gove were quite extraordinary. We now find that he was never particularly
in favour of a referendum anyway. He thought it might be divisive, and courageously he's
admitted that the person who took the decision was David Cameron, and he was against it at the
time. Learning through suffering is what the Greek tragedians used to talk about. Well,
the learning is Gove's because he says that no future Prime Minister should ever engage
in a referendum on a controversial subject. But the suffering, I'm afraid, is the UK's.
It may be when he says in this interview that he was never agitating for the United Kingdom
to leave the European Union, although he was a Euroskeptic, he's carrying out the first very
tentative steps in distancing himself from Brexit. That may be an interesting straw in the wind.
I mean, it's not clear, though, that what Gove is telling us is actually the truth
of the matter because he was always a very convinced Brexiteer and he knew that the
only way in which Cameron could deliver Brexit in any form would be by calling a referendum. Well,
he encouraged Cameron to call a referendum by saying that he would support him in the
event of that referendum in favour of the Remain cause, which he then did the opposite.
Well, the present position of Michael Gove is that referendums are a very bad way to
settle major political questions. He thinks that governments should have a commitment in
a manifesto to carry something out and if they then win an election,
they're entitled to do so. Presumably, if in 2029, the Labour Party advocated rejoining
the European Union or holding it in its manifesto, he'd go along with that and
find that perfectly acceptable, that the Labour government should take us back into the European
Union after winning an election victory. But do you think it's conceivable that
the UK would be able to rejoin the EU without a referendum,
and would our partners or potential partners be satisfied by a decision purely by a government?
That's a very reasonable question. At the moment, these things are so much in the
realm of speculation that you can only look at possibilities. It might well be that one of the
things that our partners would find convincing about is the solidity of the decision to re-enter
the European Union, and that might take time. But it's not going to happen unless you have political
leaders advocating for that rejoin position. One of the dishonest things which is sometimes said,
not just by Labour, but by other supposedly pro-EU parties, is that nobody's talking about
rejoining. Well, the reason why nobody's talking about rejoining, other than when
they're asked in opinion polls, is that their political leaders are so mealy-mouthed on the
subject, so reluctant to advocate the obvious solution to the problems that Brexit causes.
The reason why our partners might wish to see a referendum is because clearly they would require
the assurance that there is support right across the political spectrum from left to right in favor
of rejoining. And so, therefore, the position taken by the Conservative Party, if it's remade
following this election, becomes very important. We've seen some indications that Conservatives
could be considering a total reversal of position on the EU. We've had an article, for example,
in The Daily Telegraph by one of their leader writers advocating a rethink along these lines.
Is this just a sort of a flash in the pan or a bit of clickbait or does it indicate the possibility
that among Conservative opinion there could be a reversal of thinking on our membership of the EU?
I think the question is not just how the Conservative Party positions itself on Europe
over the next five years, but the question of how big and how significant a political force that
Conservative Party is. Because if it's true that a portion of the present Conservative Party, which
finds, by the way, Rishi Sunak too left-wing, we know from opinion polling, allies itself with
the Reform Party, then that might be a party which would score 20, 22, 23% in the polls, but it would
run the risk of being electorally insignificant under our first-past-the-post system. So we have
to ask ourselves not merely where the Conservative Party will stand, but how important it will be in
the possibly remade framework of British politics in the next five or six years. As far as the
article was concerned, it was a surprise, but I don't think it reflects yet any significant change
in general orthodox Conservative opinion. The argument that was being made was rather a niche
one. It was the one that said that since the government and political opinion in the United
Kingdom wasn't prepared to accept a deregulated post-Brexit Britain, then it made sense to go back
to the warm embrace of the European Union. Some of this was said tongue-in-cheek, but it did reflect
what we've discussed before, that the one part of the Brexit coalition was the Singapore-on-Thames
folks, as they say, the MAGA folks, the people who thought that the way to take advantage of leaving
the European Union was to introduce a radical program of deregulation and privatization. Now,
that was never politically saleable to the United Kingdom, and it's the reason why these people were
kept under wraps during the referendum period. I think that they have realized, or many of them
have realized, that it's politically a non-starter in the United Kingdom, and some of them draw the
conclusion, or may draw the conclusion, that a return to the European Union is envisageable if
it's not going to lead, if Brexit is not going to lead to this deregulation that they want. I think
there may have been another agenda at work behind this particular article. There may have been the
invitation to some people to consider, if you want to save Brexit, you've got to go down the
deregulatory path, and perhaps that might be the beginnings of an argument for saying that
a Truss 2, or someone like Liz Truss, ought to be the next leader of the Conservative Party.
There were two pillars, I suppose, of the right-wing, so-called right-wing case for Brexit,
and one was deregulation, one was imitating essentially the economy of the United States
far more than a European model, and the other was opposition to immigration. Of course,
these two don't entirely mesh with each other, and that's one of the problems underlying the failure
of the current Conservative government. But is it conceivable that either or both of these pillars
could be transformed into a European direction? I mean, if one wants an economy comparable to
that of the United States, you need economies of continental scale, and that's only really feasible
within a much more integrated European Union market, and that's certainly what the right in
Continental Europe is now increasingly moving towards, away from its opposition to European
integration, in favor of a form of European integration that would be essentially on a
right-wing agenda. Immigration too, because it raises issues of identity, could also conceivably
take a European turn, could it not? Because, after all, there is the question of to what
extent this idea of 'Global Britain' as opposed to 'European Britain', reflected in current patterns
of immigration, is actually really what the people who voted for Brexit on the basis of opposition
to immigration were really calling for. You're quite right that there's a failure
to mesh together of those two elements of the Brexit coalition, and what I've always found
particularly ironic was that Mrs. Thatcher was very much in favor of the single market as a
deregulatory mechanism, which, on the whole, it was very substantially. There were some
elements of sovereignty-sharing which she didn't like, and that's why she took against the single
market. But I can see the entire logic of those on the continent and perhaps increasingly in the
Conservative Party who think that the authentic deregulatory agenda can best be pursued at the
European level, and of course, migration within the European Union, a free market in labor,
is an important component of that. I think it's very incipient and ill-formed at the moment,
this thinking within the Conservative Party, but we may look back in a few years' time
and say that this particular article was a precursor of a wider reassessment of the way
in which perhaps a market liberal Conservative Party, one interested in European identity,
can find its home within the European Union. But in the meantime, we're faced with the
extraordinary situation that talking about Brexit, and let alone talking about any possibility of
reversing Brexit, is a total taboo in British politics, right across the spectrum. We have
a general election coming in which the debate about the deepest issues which face the country
is actually excluded, and I'm reminded of a commentary made on the decline of the Spanish
Empire in the 18th century that it was observed by the Marquis de Pombal, who was the Portuguese
statesman, that all problems that were really serious had become impossible to discuss, and that
this was a mark of a decadent society. One feels that that observation is becoming relevant for
the UK sadly. It couldn't be an objection held at the Federal Trust and ourselves. We spend a great
deal of time talking about Brexit, but I think it's important that people like ourselves who do
think Brexit and its reversal is important should not be deterred by sneers from Peter Mandelson.
I'm rather encouraged by the fact that the debate in this country is so confused and so murky on
Brexit. There are so many crosscurrents in it. I think it's entirely possible that in two or
three years, the clouds will lift and there'll be a much more straightforward and realistic view of
the disaster that Brexit is and the way in which it needs to be reversed. Eight years after the
referendum, there's no sort of possible consensus emerging, and it's my view that it's only when at
least we make moves towards the single market and the customs union that that instability
can be in some way mitigated. Ironically, one of the things I agree with Cheryl Jacobs about
is that the halfway house of simply being in the single market and the customs union is
perhaps an impossible fact to achieve and certainly an unsustainable, politically
unsustainable halfway house. In for a penny, in for a euro will be my motto, and I hope that's the
consensus that will emerge in two or three years' time. Brendan, thank you very much for this.
The Federal Trust will go on actually debating these matters if no one else is at the moment.
I hope you enjoy this video and we'll follow our other work on the same topic. Thank you.
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