The Case for a Royal Commission on Britain and Europe

How much longer can we tolerate the lopsided instability of Britain’s relationship with the European Union? Despite Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s vocal support for European unity when it comes to Ukraine, he denies it for his own country. At the same time, nearly ten years after the referendum, the costs of Brexit are mounting, and public opinion is shifting back in favour of a closer relationship with the EU.

This post argues that the current deadlock calls for an unusual Royal Commission to cut through parliamentary paralysis, provide an evidence-based assessment of post-Brexit realities, and prepare the ground for strategic decisions about the UK’s position in Europe. I outline here why the government’s policy of trying to make Brexit work will fail, what a Royal Commission could achieve and how it might be composed. Such a rethink by the British should also encourage the EU to revise the way it enlarges its membership without deepening political integration.

The post-Brexit state

British politics are suffering a severe case of cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, Keir Starmer extols the virtues of European unity on Ukraine and plays an important part in building an international “coalition of the willing” against the Kremlin; he even supports Ukraine’s accession as a member state of the European Union. On the other hand, Starmer sticks religiously to his election pledge that, under his leadership, the United Kingdom will not rejoin the EU, seek membership of the EU’s internal market or even negotiate an EU customs union agreement.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves clings to Starmer’s negative line on Europe despite the fact that Brexit has shrunk the size of the UK economy by over 5%. The UK’s productivity growth is negligible while its trade with the EU continues to plummet. Its domestic regulatory system, bereft of the acquis communautaire, is enfeebled. Britain’s scientific and artistic potential is blunted by its detachment from the European mainstream. Stopping the boats in the Channel is impeded by the UK’s self-exclusion from the EU’s immigration policy. Britain is absent from the development of EU common foreign and security policy, while its own influence in international affairs is diminished.

The government hopes to tinker at the edges of Boris Johnson’s 2020 Trade and Cooperation Agreement to mitigate its worst effects. Minor improvements have been made to the situation of Northern Ireland, which straddles uncomfortably the two competing internal markets of the EU and UK. There is hope of compromise on frontier controls in Gibraltar. But bigger prizes, such as securing a deal on plant and animal goods (SPS), are frustrated by the EU’s determination to prevent cherry-picking by a UK unwilling to accept all the disciplines of EU law.

There is in fact a cabinet minister responsible for EU affairs, but Nick Thomas-Symonds finds it difficult to escape from repeating platitudes about “resetting” the relationship and does not entertain substantive renegotiation. All he offers is “ruthless pragmatism” to make Brexit work better. Starmer presides over all this futility without strategic ambition, fearful of losing Labour supporters right and left if he moves on Europe in any direction.

Parliament at Westminster is hardly any help. All parties agree that Brexit was botched – but they disagree as to how or why this is so. Labour’s European militants have not yet broken ranks with the government. The Liberal Democrats want a new customs union with the EU and better access to the single market. Their leader, Ed Davey, is rightly critical of Labour’s empty promises to deliver a closer relationship with Brussels but he draws back from campaigning to rejoin. In any case, the Lib Dems left to their own devices lack firepower. The Greens and Scottish Nationalists, ostensibly pro-European, seem absorbed in their own internal affairs.

The Conservative Party, owning Brexit, has since discarded Prime Ministers Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak. It slides further rightwards; the Tory pro-European rump is silenced. Bumptious Nigel Farage, now at last an MP, sounds off about immigration (bad) and national sovereignty (good), boosting his popularity. At the same time, however, the general trend of public opinion, as consistent polls show, is regretting Brexit and warming to Europe.

Transcending Parliament

So what is to be done to break the logjam? There is, in my view, a good case for setting up a Royal Commission on the future of Britain and Europe. Royal Commissions are top-level statutory public enquiries with the power to impel witnesses; but importantly, they are independent of parliament. In the great period of Victorian reform, Royal Commissions were common but have since fallen out of fashion (the last was on Lords’ Reform in 1999). A Royal Commission is the perfect constitutional instrument to deploy when the House of Commons is paralysed on the big issue of the day, and the House of Lords merely wrings its hands. Starting this autumn, the body could be charged with reporting in two years’ time, well before the next general election, due in 2029.

The enquiry would not lack witnesses. Business stakeholders would be at the forefront of those dissatisfied at the present arrangements, with NGOs, think-tanks and campaign groups not far behind. The unpopularity of Brexit will grow as further burdens are placed on cross-Channel travellers. The Royal Commission would command a lively civic audience and media profile. The Supreme Court should be invited to submit evidence on the new constitutional relationship between the UK and EU. The UK’s three devolved assemblies in Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh should have trenchant views. Britain’s political parties would be put under heavy pressure to make cogent argument on Europe.

An early agenda item for the enquiry should be to revisit the Balance of EU Competences Review that took place under the coalition government in 2012-14. Although several sectoral reports emerged from that exercise, no final report was ever produced once the Brexiteers discovered its drift. In their review of the Article 50 shenanigans, the Royal Commission might also be minded to re-draft the Political Declaration on the future relationship agreed by Johnson in 2019 but thereafter suppressed.

The Royal Commission would certainly need to brief itself on events in the EU since Brexit, including recent budgetary and competence developments. The Union Britain might apply to rejoin would not be the one it left a decade before. All the EU institutions, including the Court of Justice, should be invited by the British to answer questions they usually prefer to ignore. What, after all, will the future of Europe be once the Americans have gone home and Ukraine is left to hang dry? Is enlargement to Ukraine and the UK plausible without triggering treaty change under Article 48? How will national capitals react to the return of the prodigal British? Such questions fired from London should encourage the EU to properly assess, in fact for the first time, its own Brexit experience.

What kind of EU member state would the UK be, second time round? Particular attention will be paid by the British to the defence dimension of the Union, including its relations with NATO. Evidence from Norway, Iceland and Switzerland would clarify the context in which a reversal of British policy might take place. Revisiting past successes, such as Britain’s contribution to the development of the single market, would be valuable, just as learning from past mistakes could be cathartic. The enquiry should not hesitate to propose reform of the institutions of the British state as it gears up again to Europe.

There will be much speculation not only about the remit of the Royal Commission but about its composition. One possible chair (I have not asked him) would be David Miliband who, as Labour Foreign Secretary signed the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007.

Conclusion

The most likely outcome of such a Royal Commission will be a report that furnishes the Prime Minister with a cast-iron case for reversing Brexit. It will prepare the ground for the referendum campaign that must inevitably follow. And it will ready the Brussels institutions for another outing of Article 49.