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For the next few years at least, the path of UK-EU relations seems broadly settled, deepening relations within the overall Trade and Cooperation Agreement framework. How that development takes place, at what pace, with what twists and turns in the road, is harder to predict. There is for a start the burden of memory – in the Commission at least there are plenty of scars from UK negotiation handling since 2016. Meanwhile many in the UK continue to struggle with Brussels rather than Member States as the key, a story wrapped up with fear of media accusations.
This current government is already pursuing a few mini-deals. If there is a Labour administration by early 2025, one which wants to do many more, they will need to understand that this will not be straightforward, and in particular will require considerable political goodwill. To understand what they need to do differently, a short history lesson of UK approaches before and after the referendum would be useful, because the first would seem to offer a far better model.
While the current government and their media supporters are prone to seeing the period prior to 2016 as a cozy consensus of pro-EU officialdom, many involved see this as a time when the UK was a serious Brussels player. Looking back to those days as one involved, there is a recollection of the final Eurostar of the day from Brussels as something of a UK government special as officials and stakeholders fresh from their respective committees, working groups, technical meetings and consultations compared notes on their respective files.
Underpinning UK handling of matters EU was a formal weekly cross-government meeting jointly led by the UK’s lead Brussels representative and the head of the Europe and Global Issues Secretariat in the Cabinet Office, also known as the Prime Minister’s Sherpa. Known according to the surnames of those individuals, this could be for example Cunliffe-Rogers. All serious EU business was discussed to ensure departments were aligned, though not in an exclusive manner as to control all relationships.
Forming the Department for Exiting the EU in 2016 saw this system end, replaced by a single lead. Negotiation as gladiatorial combat between big-hitters trading aggression was an outdated model even then - the idea of the single figure keeping cards close to their chest to secure victory simply not appropriate for sprawling and inter-linked agreements. There is no evidence it delivered a good result for the UK, plenty to the contrary, and certainly wasn’t the model of the EU, where a lead managed the politics, more technical deputies handled the many details, and all was based on extensive consultation.
In any case, the next steps in the UK-EU relationship won’t be one single negotiation but numerous engagements across departments. As is already seen, whether it is understanding regulatory options, migration, defence, trade, and much else, the EU dimension will feature in many UK policy debates. Thus, it will resemble more the pre-2016 model, suggesting that as well as a starting point for government structure.
This is particularly as the EU is going to have reciprocal demands cumulatively and in individual negotiations, for what is their single most important external trade agreement. A ‘mini-deal’ approach to future relations will not change the underlying difficulty of discussion with a regional hegemon. For the UK, this will continue to be tough going, not least as an EU more focused on enlargement will be wary of concessions to other neighbours. Brussels has never been without its own ambitions in developing the UK relationship, but these go alongside its red lines.