What do UK diplomats make of the Brexit debate?

Here’s the locus classicus for the Remain option, namely the former UK ambassador to Brazil, my colleague at the Ambassador Partnership Dr Peter Collecott:

There is room for legitimate debate over the immediate effects of a decision to leave the EU. Personally, I think they will be pretty dire: a serious increase in uncertainty, leading to a fall in Sterling and a loss of purchasing power, and a permanent loss of foreign investment. There will also be perverse effects: the number of EU immigrants is likely to rise – getting in before the gate comes down.

However, it is the long term effects of a vote to leave the EU that really concern me. Firstly, this would not be a velvet divorce. It might be couched in civilised language, but at the end of the two year negotiating period the UK would have to accept what was on the table. In private, other EU Governments are fed up with the UK. They would not be generous, for fear of encouraging others to think of leaving; and they will pursue their own interests as 27. Part of this would be to ensure that as much as possible of the City’s financial services industry migrates to Paris and Frankfurt over the years to come. The safeguards for the City negotiated by David Cameron would have fallen away with the Referendum vote.

Contrasted with this.

See also former colleague from 1990s Moscow, Ian Bond (stirred but not shaken). He sides Remain:

“There is no shortage of problems facing the EU, so having the British problem to deal with as well is going to be one more thing that the EU could do without,” said Ian Bond, head of foreign policy at the London-based Centre for European Reform. “It would add to the kind of loss of self-confidence that the EU suffered with the 2008 economic crisis. It never really recovered.”

Britain’s departure could make the EU “more defensive, more cautious about undertaking radical reforms that might actually provoke other countries to say: ‘Well this is not actually the direction that we want to go in,'” he said.

The likely winners if it is an exit? The far-right political movements, which are already making major gains in some European countries amid concerns about the EU’s inability to manage the migrant emergency and prevent attacks in Europe’s capitals. For them, said Bond, Brexit “would be a success, without question.”

Whereas back in the day a group of noisy ex-ambassadors joined publicly to attack UK policy in Iraq, this time round I have not seen anything similar. I know that some of our top former ambassadors with European experience have been whirring away behind the scenes in the Remain camps. Many of them have good senior positions and maybe are constrained from speaking out too much.

Emails whiz to and fro. Here’s part of one:

•            this is not an election, where we can change our minds in five years’ time.  This decision will be irreversible and for ever.  It will have consequences for our children and grandchildren.  This is very very serious.  It is not about hitting back at “experts” or the “establishment” or “Europe”.  Nor is it about politicians or personalities.  It is about future prosperity and security for every single inhabitant of these islands, for them and for their descendants;

•            Britain is doing very well at present, with the fastest growth in the developed world, and the highest employment in our history.  Even those who favour Brexit, acknowledge that there will be a short term shock – which could be very severe – to the British and European economies.  But the aftershocks will go on for many decades, with Britain permanently poorer.

•            Much of the debate about sovereignty is based on myths and worse.  On her own Britain would have far less ability to protect and promote our economic interests than we do as part of a club of other rich and powerful nations.  By sharing our sovereignty we maximise it.   But we don’t lose it: the fact that we can make next week’s choice shows that we still have it.

Of course the EU is annoying, but, in my direct experience, the realities – as opposed to the myths – are not significantly more annoying than other forms of imperfect democratic government closer to home.  And while walking out might give some short term satisfaction it would leave us far worse off in every way: our folly would become apparent in days, but its consequences would last for decades.

•            In the long run of history, Britain deciding to leave the European Union could be the start of something much bigger and more dangerous for Europe and the West, analogous to America’s decision after the Great War to walk away from the League of Nations.

So please think hard and long before you cast your ballot next week.  This is the most important political choice you will ever make.  Some say that the longer-term benefits of us “taking back control” would be worth the short term price.  In my view, the long term price would be even higher than the short term shock.  For decades to come we – and those who come after us – would be paying the penalties for a mistaken choice next week based more on emotion than cool reason.

I have a terrible sick feeling in my stomach about next Thursday: I keep thinking of my great grandmother telling my mother in Holland in August 1939 that there wouldn’t be war, and, even if there was, Holland would be alright.  Neither Britain nor Europe will be alright should we choose next week to leave the European Union. 

Strong meat. Here’s a view going the other way:

For me, there is one issue which is so important that it must decide how I vote. It is sovereignty,  full democratic accountability, and the paramount rule of law.

These three principles, linked together, are the very essence of a decent nation state. We led the world in establishing them.

If our Parliament does not make all our new laws, and if we must obey laws which it cannot change,  then we have lost our sovereignty. (Sovereignty cannot be “shared” or “pooled”).

If our Supreme Court can be overruled, our  whole common law system of justice is compromised.

And the democratic deficit in the EU is inevitable, because there is no European “demos”.The only true  modern democracy exists in a nation state.

That is why I am voting Out. Like many of you, I chose to spend my whole working life serving Britain. I still have the same huge confidence in Britain, and in the British people .We will  be reinvigorated, we will thrive outside the EU, and we will be an inspiring example to the remaining member states.

And, finally, this intriguing strategy, ‘reporting someone on the train’:

“I think we should vote Leave just to see what happens”.

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When I joined the FCO in 1979 the EEC was an odd, distant formation where you had to dust off A-level French for inconsequential meetings with other EEC embassy colleagues and European Commission zealots. Gradually it changed as the UK got more involved and the EEC transformed into a ‘European Union’. For a few years around from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s the FCO’s EC machine – (ECD (E) and ECD (I) – European Community Departments External and Internal – sucked in the very top guns and produced stunning two-sided briefs on all sorts of abstruse issues. Robin Renwick led the effort that helped Mrs Thatcher win the UK’s Budget Rebate, truly the gift that keeps on giving.

Slowly but remorselessly the FCO’s European work and its wider effort too have declined from that lofty peak. Cabinet Office coordination squeezed out the FCO’s leading role on EU issues. UK diplomats stopped queuing up for postings to Brussels: working there became almost an embarrassment as under successive governments there was clearly no Ministerial love for EU processes, and the ever-expanding EU competences were increasingly about ‘domestic’ Whitehall work anyway. Eventually the FCO suffered the humiliation of losing the supreme job of EU Ambassador in Brussels (UK Representation or UKRep) to the Treasury.  The FCO now is a gloomy Prometheus tied to a rock where different Whitehall vultures swoop in for a tasty snack, except that unlike Prometheus the scrawny shrinking FCO does not have flesh that grows back overnight.

Those of us who worked on European issues over these decades have mixed views. Some people including people who have worked at the Brussels coal-face hate the EU. Most see it as a pragmatic necessity. Almost none really like it as such.

Diplomacy creates a specific déformation professionelle as the French wittily describe it – a tendency (in this case) to look at things from too wide a perspective. The very job of UK diplomats is to engage closely with people from other countries who either care not much about the UK point of view or actually oppose it. This requires diplomats to see UK policy ambitions ‘in perspective’: “Of course, Minister, you do of course realise that that idea will never fly with the French/Arabs/Chinese/etc?“

Years of this sort of thing enters the soul, and changes it. A sort of instinctive pessimism and obsession with gradualism and process emerge. The EU encourages this passim. Why do or think anything interesting if you know that all that can happen is a long inconclusive bickering in an EU Working Group full of people who know next to nothing about the actual problems?

Hence ‘stability’ is all. Better the devil you know. Why rock the boat? Change is unpredictable, dangerous. And why should the UK not accept a reduced and reducing world role? That’s the clear trend for us as for Europe. Best to tuck in with our fellow Europeans and hope for the best.

All this culminates in the FCO collectively representing genteel declinism. It’s so unseemly to punch above one’s weight. In our case it may even be racist: all the former colonies resent it. Let’s be a cheery global community organiser instead!

But what is our weight? Why does our diplomacy and sense of national self-respect lead us to play down our influence and potential? Our GDP is comfortably twice the size of Russia’s. Yet while Putin struts his stuff ruthlessly playing up Russia and Russianness, our Prime Minister resorts to footling prevarications and dishonesty to try to scare us into staying in a declining EU that has lost any sense of direction:

Those dreams have clashed with reality, according to Vedrine, and they have crashed. The EU, the former minister argues, should concentrate on stimulating research, innovation, education, environmental initiatives. Enough “autistic sermonizing” about less national sovereignty, enough “regulatory bulimia,” let there be a minimalist consensus among countries with widely diverging interests…

If before the Brexit campaign the EU was often criticized for its paralysis and its messy attempts at consensus-building, a post-Brexit Europe of scared politicians and demoralized bureaucrats will be an even more fetid quagmire. If reform is only possible to weaken the union, putting all reform on hold will weaken it too, as countries claw back their sovereign powers and ignore the EU’s powers under existing treaties…

David Cameron’s government doesn’t have any proposals on EU reform that would make the union more popular with “out” voters. Nor do France, Germany or the EU bureaucracy. The post-Bremain EU would be out of ideas, unable to agree on the end goal of which even Giscard has now lost sight. This is almost worse than a post-Brexit situation in which jilted continental leaders could be both vindictive toward a renegade U.K. and eager to prove that it made the wrong decision. The latter, if not the former, could boost cohesion and stimulate thought. If the U.K. votes to stay, there will be no such incentive — just a fleeting sense of relief…

Exactly.

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Conclusion?

From what I can see the broad consensus among senior diplomat ex-colleagues boils down to: “Oh dear. The EU ship is holed beneath the waterline. But it’s the best ship we have. And we don’t really deserve another one. Batten down the hatches. Brits aren’t quitters!“

Sink? Or swim?