The United Kingdom and the EU try to overcome Brexit mistrust with security and defense cooperation

The war in Ukraine has had a positive collateral effect: the United Kingdom and the European Union have discovered in military cooperation in defense and security the route to rebuild a relationship that has deteriorated over almost a decade.

Brexit, like the legendary Alephby Jorge Luis Borges, has become the mirror and center of the reality of the United Kingdom. It is the real cause of an economy weaker than that of the continent, but also the excuse to justify any disenchantment. The elephant in the middle of the political debate that no one wants to talk about, and the explanation for any defeat. When at the beginning of May the Gielgud Theater in London closed the musical Opening Night Two months ahead of schedule, the author of its songs, the American Rufus Wainwright, blamed the failure on the parochialism that, according to him, brought about the United Kingdom’s departure from the EU. “There is a lack of imagination and curiosity about change. All the criticism of the work from Europe was incredible. “Its staging and rhythm are very European, and there has been a very corrosive reaction against that,” he complained.

In the realpolitik From day to day, however, the agreement reached in February 2023 between the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, baptized as the Windsor Framework Agreement, was perhaps the last chapter of a long series of years, during which Brexit was more of a political battle than an effective decision. With the solution agreed for a definitive fit of Northern Ireland into the new era, the spirit to continue fighting, both in Brussels and in London, deflated.

“Brexit was a major crisis, and I would say that we are in the phase of overcoming the crisis. The treaties that frame the new relationship are working, the differences that arose around the Irish protocol were overcome thanks to the new Windsor Framework Agreement, and that helped reestablish a climate of dialogue and trust,” explains the Spanish Pedro Serrano, who occupies from October 2022 the position of EU ambassador to the United Kingdom. Even the name of that rank, that of ambassador, was questioned by Boris Johnson’s Government, when any anecdote was used in the ongoing war with Brussels. “Sunak was the one who introduced that important change in the tone of the relationship. It was he who said: ‘We are not going to deal with this matter on a basis of confrontation, but on a basis of agreement,’ explains Serrano, who occupies a position as delicate as it is necessary to rebuild and pamper a relationship that has deteriorated for almost a decade.

The future of labor

All polls predict, almost with notarial guarantee, an overwhelming victory for the Labor Party in the next general elections in the United Kingdom, which are expected to be held next autumn. The great success, many analysts believe, of the party’s leader, Keir Starmer, has been to accept the reality of Brexit and get rid of a debate toxic to his electoral interests. Many voters of leftist tradition in the so-called red wall of England (North and Midlands) were seduced by Boris Johnson’s anti-European rhetoric in 2019. Starmer wants to win them back. Both he and his probable Foreign Minister, David Lammy, walk the wire to launch a declaration of love for the EU, although without express commitments.

“The Labor Party will strive to improve trade and investment relations with Europe, as well as with India or the United States. Brexit is now a firm reality. A Labor Government will not pursue rejoining the EU, its internal market or its customs union. But there are a lot of pragmatic steps that can be taken to rebuild trust and cooperation, and reduce current barriers to trade,” Lammy wrote in his manifesto for “realistic progressivism,” which he recently published in the magazine Foreign Affairs.

Labor wants to build bridges from a solid foundation, such as the growing security and defense cooperation that the United Kingdom and the EU have forged, which has been evident in Ukraine. It is the terrain where mutual trust can be recovered, to later explore improvements in other fields, such as commercial relations. Starmer knows that the current Trade and Cooperation Agreement that avoided a hard Brexit leaves much to be desired, regarding British interests, and he hopes to improve it when the review process that the treaty itself contemplates for 2025 opens.

“Security and defense policy is the most intergovernmental of the Union’s policies, and, therefore, the least communitarian. For a country like the United Kingdom, which never had a community spiritvery developed, it is easier for it to enter into a policy that is purely intergovernmental,” explains Josep Borrell, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, passing through London last week. “All this means that the British Government has less institutional prejudices when embarking on this policy. The field of security and defense is, without a doubt, a good track to start creating links,” he defends.

The recovery of trust

All the actors in the drama that has been Brexit agree that, as in couples therapy, any rapprochement implies trusting each other again. Sunak managed to make progress in that direction, but the political tension within the Conservative Party itself due to the prospect of defeat at the polls and the threat of flouting international legality in the announced deportations of irregular immigrants to Rwanda have not helped.

“I believe that if you show that you are a trustworthy partner, anything is possible. We’re not there yet, though. I am still quite embarrassed by the way our country has behaved on the international stage. And even today we continue to flout international law,” says Labor MP Stella Creasy, president of the Labor Movement for Europe party’s internal current. “It is true that there is already a shared agreement on defense, even if it is within the framework of NATO. In any case, whether this cooperation becomes the route to something more will depend on the conversation that is established between the two parties,” she warns Creasy.

Any progress is currently on hold, until it is clear who will govern the United Kingdom in the coming years. Even an issue as attractive to both sides of the channel as the recovery of a certain freedom of movement for young people, to work or study, has been flatly rejected by the Sunak Government, fearful of once again agitating the eurosceptics in its party.

“There is great interest on the part of many EU Member States in having agreements in the field of mobility. The EU is already preparing for a possible negotiation. There is no offer, but the Commission has published a draft negotiating mandate,” says Ambassador Serrano. “Surely it will be taken into account later, because it is an issue that also generates interest in the United Kingdom. It is not, in any case, a return to freedom of movement or a migration agreement,” he clarifies. Any progress, as Serrano clarifies with measured words, must prevent ghosts that are almost buried today from being stirred.

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