Author Archives: Helen and William Wallace

For many Liberal Democrats like us, rejoining the European Union is an article of faith and a top political priority.  Helen and her family were advocates of European integration in the 1950s; William joined the Liberal Party when Jo Grimond was arguing for joining the EEC, Harold Macmillan was struggling to persuade his party, and Gaitskell was moving to oppose the idea.

We’re now back at a similar juncture: outside, increasingly aware of the costs of exclusion, this time with Labour edging awkwardly towards a half-commitment to closer relations, the Conservatives divided between realists wanting to re-establish a degree of mutual trust and collaboration and a hysterical anti-European right wing.  We are the only party that has set out a road map for moving back towards the EU, in stages, including rejoining the Single Market, with the intention in time of rejoining the EU.

Many Liberal Democrats are unhappy that we have not come out for a faster path to rejoining than the stage-by-stage road map set out by the working group in last year’s policy paper.  The contrast between that strategic path, from re-establishment of mutual trust to association to eventual membership, and Starmer’s effort ‘to make Brexit work better’ without joining either the customs union or the single market, is clear enough.  But we need to recognise, as we re-assert that we are committed to moving back towards the closest possible relationship with our European neighbours, that the EU is itself changing rapidly, and that the UK cannot fully rejoin until public opinion has accepted the full consequences of doing so.

The Ukraine conflict and the need to respond both to China’s technological and industrial challenge and the USA’s commitment to an industrial strategy have shifted priorities within the EU.  After years of prevarication, further enlargement is now firmly on the agenda: to include Ukraine first and foremost, but also Moldova and the Western Balkan states.  That will necessitate major increases in shared funding, above all to pay for Ukrainian reconstruction.  It will also require painful changes in the way over 30 diverse states agree decisions, in a context in which Hungary and Poland have already shown the difficulties that recalcitrant governments can create for collective policy-making.