Written evidence to the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy

Evidence submitted back in September, addressing the committee's question of how the 2015 NSS should handle the uncertainty over the UK’s role in Europe. My evidence appears on pages 53-58:

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/joint-committees/national-security-strategy/The%20next%20security%20strategy%20(forth%20review)/ThenextNationalSecurityStrategyEvidence18122014.pdf

Europe to Britain: Our Patience is Running Out

A piece for the Huffington Post.

The E.U. values Britain's membership and a "Brexit" would be felt across Europe and around the world. But Britain is not indispensable. If faced with a choice the E.U. comes first, Britain second.

Once again Europe has found itself transfixed by British politics. Scotland's independence referendum raised unease across Europe, whether it was Spanish worries about Catalan independence or German concerns an independent Scotland would carry on Britain's habit of demanding special E.U. opt-outs. But one concern registered everywhere: that a Scottish exit from the U.K. might make a British exit from the E.U. more likely.

Almost all debate about a Brexit is about what it would mean for Britain. Yet a Brexit would have big - but largely unexplored - implications for the E.U. and Europe's place in the world. A recent compilation of research from 26 countries from across Europe and countries such as the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, China, Singapore and Brazil has shed light on European and international thinking about where U.K.-E.U. relations are headed. The message for Britain is hardly positive.

Britain's European debate does not pass unnoticed. But understanding of the nuanes of the debate varies from country to country. While nobody is planning for a Brexit, many feel plans may become necessary because Britain's debate increaingly seems detached and closed to outside influence. Nobody is under any illusions that a Brexit would be an unprecedented and damaging experience for the E.U. and Europe. It is the U.K., however, that many feel would be the most damaged.

Views of Britain's behaviour are framed more by the wider concerns facing the E.U., especially the Eurozone. While the catchwords of the U.K.'s reform agenda for the E.U. - competitiveness, flexibility, democracy - resonate across the E.U., the real pressure for reform comes from those rescuing the Eurozone.

Countries within the Euro zone, Euro pre-in countries such as Poland and Sweden, and even Denmark with its opt-out, have focused on Germany and France for leadership. Despite its efforts, London is seen as a bystander and at times an additional hurdle.

Too often Britain misunderstands initiatives that seem to align with the U.K.'s own hopes. States such as the Netherlands and Germany seek a better enforcement of the principle of subsidiarity, not London's aims for repatriation. A multispeed E.U. is considered a possibility, but not - as the U.K. might hope - in a pick-and-choose fashion. There is increasingly less appetite in Brussels for "third ways" like Switzerland. For other E.U. member states, London's proposals, while tempting in the short-term, are not seen as sustainable in the longer run as they could leave the E.U. weak and divided.

This does not mean nobody worries about losing the U.K. Almost every state worries about losing Britain's free-market, liberal outlook. Yet some countries note a growing "mercantilist" attitude in British thinking. Some countries traditionally close to the U.K. also note a decline in economic links, and some are clear they would seek to exploit the economic opportunities that could arise from Britain's marginalisaiton. Britain can forget any hope of securing a withdrawal deal which allows it to undercut the E.U. States outside the E.U. fear the economic disruptions of a Brexit, and dread the E.U. becomming more inward looking.

Euroepan secuirty would also be changed. France would be left facing Germany's "culture of restraint" on international affairs, leaving little hope of improvements in European defence. For the USA, a Brexit would stunt long-standing hopes for improvements to European defence cooperation, weakening relations between the E.U. and NATO. A Brexit would create opportunities for outside powers to play on European divisions.

While economic and security concerns remind other E.U. members of the U.K.'s role, they do not necessarily generate sympathy. Instead the feeling is exasperation at London's inability to offer anything but negative leadership. The U.K.'s debate on limiting immigration is seen as a direct attack on the Single Market's right of free movement of people and labour. E.U. countries fear the influence of British Eurosceptics on their own domestic debate and are frustrated London has not done more to confront the issue.

The end result is a situation where the rest of the E.U. is angry at how the U.K. appears to be advancing agendas that are about Britain's national interest and where the threat of Brexit is used as leverage - or blackmail as some see it - to achieve these aims.

For both the E.U. and the U.K., avoiding a further deterioration of relations will not be easy. With the U.K.'s general election campaign soon to get underway (and the ongoing fallout from Scotland's referendum), engaging London on European policies is likely to become even more difficult.

With Britain on the sidelines of E.U. politics, both the U.K. and the rest of the E.U. will need to appreciate that this could easily turn into the outside. Britain could leave, or the E.U. could lose patience and end up excluding Britain by integrating in ways that leave it behind.

Brexit Stage Right

A comment piece for Foreign Policy magazine (online) on the geopolitics of a British exit from the EU.

A ‘Brexit’ would have important implications at the European and international levels

A piece for the LSE's British Politics and Policy blog and EUROPP blog: 

The implications of a ‘Brexit’ for the UK has been endlessly discussed, but its implications for the EU and other international powers has hardly been considered. Tim Oliver explores the complex set of possibilities and implications at the European and international level that both the UK and EU need to keep in mind as they move forward.

UKIP’s success in the recent European Parliament elections has once again raised questions about whether Britain is headed towards an EU exit, AKA ‘a Brexit’. The likelihood of this happening remains open to debate. But the debate is focused almost entirely on what such a move could mean for Britain. In contrast, with only a few exceptions, the implications for the EU and wider international relations are given next to no thought. Ed Miliband’s warning that Britain risks sleepwalking towards an EU exit should be heeded by the rest of the EU who appear to be asleep to what it could mean for them. The same might be said for other powers such as the USA. A British exit will change the EU and European integration with implications for the UK, transatlantic relations and the West.

An EU without the UK could go a number of ways. When added to the Eurozone’s problems, a Brexit could tip the EU towards being a more inward-looking, less Atlantic focused union shaped more by the outlook of smaller states and whose centre of power has moved eastwards. Alternatively it could strengthen the position of Germany. Or, more neatly aligned with the Eurozone and rid of its most awkward member, the EU could tip towards a United States of Europe. While some other states may contemplate following the UK, hoping a Brexit will reveal the EU to be a house of cards that comes crashing down as soon as the British leave will likely only prove true if a Brexit combines with wider problems in the EU to trigger a crisis in Germany, the EU’s heart. While Britain has contributed much to the EU, it alone has not held the EU back, caused all its problems or held it together.

Even if, as seems likely, quitting the EU damages the UK’s standing, a Britain outside the EU will remain a major European power. It will be one of the EU’s biggest trading and political relationships. By the 2040s it will have overtaken Germany as the most populous country in Europe. Britain will therefore not disappear from EU politics, just as it is nonsense to think a vote to leave the EU means the EU disappears from British politics. From the outside London may well attempt to use its new position to change or redraw Europe’s regional politics, moving arrangements away from the politically driven European Union towards a more traditional state based trading system with NATO (read USA) as the security provider. Whether a Brexit can redraw the regional politics of Europe will depend in large part on how the UK copes outside the EU and how the EU copes without it.

A Brexit offers the EU and Europe some possible positive opportunities. A new arrangement with the UK on the outside could offer ways forward in relations with Norway, Turkey, Iceland, Switzerland, or even Ukraine; states that may never join the EU but with whom the EU will always have – or seek – a close relationship. However, the UK and/or the EU may be unwilling to extend any UK-EU model to these other states, and those states may themselves reject such an offer preferring their own individually tailored models instead.

Despite what some in the UK may hope, any new UK-EU relationship will depend largely on what the remaining EU (including the European Parliament) is prepared to grant it. The UK will be the junior partner, despite the UK’s significant trading and political relations with the EU. And what the EU will agree to depends in large part on what type of EU emerges as the British depart and what it decides is in its best interests. A more protectionist inward looking EU, or one that worries about the possible appeal of a UK outside the EU, may be in no mood to grant the UK a good deal. Alternatively, an EU that feels more confident and united could simply expect the UK to fall in line with whatever is offered.

A wider view of a Brexit would also be taken by powers outside Europe. For countries such as China,Australia, New Zealand or Canada, the EU is better off with the UK inside it. But a Brexit will not make them give up on the rest of the EU, a multilateral relationship that is collectively more important than their bilateral relationship with the UK. Even for Washington, a Brexit would not simply be about what it would mean for UK-US relations. The larger US-European relationship, while more brittle than the smaller but deeper UK-US one, is cumulatively of greater strategic significance to Washington. If the exit of one of Europe’s leading international and military powers further complicated European cooperation on foreign, security and defence – long sought by the USA – then it could further weaken efforts to strengthen the European side of NATO. This would exacerbate US frustrations about Europe that developments in Ukraine have once again exposed and deepened.

And the future of transatlantic relations rests on more than just NATO. Any attempt by the UK to secure a UK-US free trade deal would be a poor substitute for a much larger, and globally significant, US-EU trade pact. With the UK already heavily linked to the US, an EU exit would likely lock it in even more, leaving it able only to offer up the military assets it still has in hopes of retaining influence over US decision making. Meanwhile other allies in Europe would grow in importance for the USA. The UK would be stuck, unable to do anything such as pivot to Asia, but with its primary political, security and defence concerns still concentrated in its regional home of Europe and the North Atlantic, but where it has spurned and risked locking itself out of the predominant political, economic, security – if not traditional defence – organisation of Europe. It would be a losing scenario for all concerned.

It is this complex set of possibilities and implications at the European and international level that both the UK and EU need to keep in mind as they move forward. For the EU and its member states it will be the implications for their national interests and the wider implications for Europe as a whole that will shape any decision as to whether – to borrow from President Lyndon Johnson – it is better to have the UK inside the EU tent pissing out, or outside the tent pissing in. For the UK, focusing on what is the best or worst exit deal or renegotiated relationship for Britain overlooks that this is more a question of what is good or bad for the rest of Europe. And that is not a question the British alone can answer.

Evidence to the House of Lords EU Sub-Committee C (External Relations) inquiry into the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

The written evidence I submitted with Dan Hamilton to the Lords EU Sub-Committee C's inquiry into TTIP can be found on pages 94-100 here.

The committee's full report will be published in due course.

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/lords-committees/eu-sub-com-c/TTIP/TTIPwrittenevidencevolumeFINAL.pdf