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This weekend the Telegraph ran a story with the striking headline “Burnham told to trade nuclear umbrella for access to single market”.
The idea is the brainchild of Nick Boles, the former Conservative MP who quit the party in 2019 over Brexit, helped to advise Keir Starmer on the transition to government, and subsequently joined Labour.
The Telegraph article reported that the plan has been “circulated to top government officials, including Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser”. Boles’ proposal has also been published as an essay on the website of the thinktank Demos.
This does not necessarily mean the plan is being taking seriously. Anyone can submit a proposal to the government of the day. An ex-MP with links to the ruling party might expect a politer response than an ordinary member of the public. But “circulated” is not the same as “read”.
The proposal does look fanciful. In short, the UK would push for the creation of a “European Confederation”, linking the EU’s Single Market for goods with NATO-style commitments on mutual defence. It would not require free movement of people, Schengen membership, or Eurozone entry.
These are obviously two very different arrangements, covering different spheres and with different memberships. But non-EU states would be invited to join in due course, including Switzerland, Norway, the candidate countries in the Western Balkans (such as Albania and Serbia), and eventually Ukraine.
This proposal is certainly in tune with the calls to strengthen European economic and security cooperation in the face of US disengagement and the growing threats from China and Russia.
Indeed, this is how it is pitched in Boles’ essay, which proposes to “recast NATO as a European-led alliance in which the UK and European powers assume ever greater responsibility for providing key defence capabilities.”
But it is a non-starter, for two main reasons.
First, the EU has been crystal clear that it will resist any form of cherry-picking on access to the Single Market. Only full members of the EU can participate fully.
Switzerland’s deal is perhaps the best example of the sort of selective access that might be on the table, based on a series of bilateral treaties. But it only covers some industrial goods and excludes most agricultural products. Even then, Switzerland has to accept freedom of movement of people and become in, effect, a rule taker. This would not be an attractive deal for the UK.
It is also unclear how the EU would respond to a rival “European Confederation”, unless the EU itself were the dominant partner. And that is even before asking whether the UK public would be happy with the loss of sovereignty that this would imply.
Second, the defence proposals are all over the place.
In the essay, Boles suggests that the new security agreements would be “in exchange for a long term agreement on tariff-free trade between the United States, Canada and their European allies”. This would be even more ambitious.
He also suggests that, in return for full participation in the European Single Market, the UK should commit to invest at least 3.5% of GDP specifically “in the renewal of its naval strengths to defend Europe’s western sea frontier and to extend across the continent (including, in time, Ukraine) the protection of its independent nuclear deterrent”.
That may or may not be a sensible military strategy. But either way, it makes no sense to tie this commitment to one particular economic arrangement between the UK and the EU, especially when that arrangement would come with substantial costs. As it stands, it looks like asking for something that is not in our interests in return for something else that is not in our interests either.
And Boles also suggests the UK should “invite non-European ‘middle power’ nations that share democratic values and a commitment to free trade (Canada, Japan, South Korea, India) to join in agreements covering the defence of critical chokepoints like the Straits of Hormuz, the supply of critical minerals and components and other issues of shared concern like AI security.” Crikey.
I think I can guess what has happened here. The Telegraph reported that Boles’ plan drew on discussions with “the likes of Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, John Bew, an ex-Tory foreign policy adviser, senior Brexiteer Michael Gove, and Olly Robbins…”
Reading between the lines, this is a wish list of grand plans for world peace and global free trade, culled from multiple sources, patched together with a half-baked proposal on membership of the EU’s Single Market.
It would be better to separate the foreign policy and defence ideas from the Single Market proposal. It would also be more candid to admit that the real aim is to reverse Brexit and rejoin the EU outright – and to make a separate case on that basis. But I suspect Nick Boles knows that is an argument he would still lose.
