With the UK-US special relationship on the rocks, we need a seat at the EU table more than ever

Thanks to Brexit, Britain is excluded from the summit which will decide the existential future of Europe, writes Sean O’Grady. This is all the more alarming as it’s entirely possible that even when Trump leaves, America won’t revert to the role it has previously played

Nearly a decade on, and Brexit is the malign “gift” that keeps on giving. Today in Brussels, the leaders of the 27 European nations of the European Union will meet with Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to agree on funding a defence strategy for a continent increasingly abandoned and disparaged by its supposed ally, the United States. The British prime minister will not be there.

It feels entirely wrong, even distressing, to be absent at such a moment: a real turning point in history. A European rearmament fund of €800bn, roughly equivalent to the annual US defence budget, is being organised by the European Commission. As the leader of a major European power, Keir Starmer should be there arguing for it, contributing to it, and framing this emerging European defence union.

The UK has assets to bring to this table as a large economy with effective, if denuded, armed forces, aircraft carriers, intelligence capability, a defence industrial base, technological leads in areas such as aerospace, and a nuclear deterrent. It should be, as it was in the days when it was a respected and powerful member of the EU, leading the argument from the inside. Instead, Starmer and his team will be watching from afar, British diplomats offering inputs to the summit and getting read-outs of the conclusions from Commission and other officials – but with no voice in the conference room.

So this political emasculation is what “take back control” amounts to in reality. It is complete – and actually could have been avoided even after the Leave vote. In one of the worst blunders he made after he took over from Theresa May in 2019, Boris Johnson ditched the security and defence sections of the draft EU-UK treaty that she was proposing. No need, concluded Johnson. In due course, he armed and supported Ukraine from outside the EU, which was sometimes reluctant to come to Zelensky’s aid – but we could have done that if we’d remained EU members, and persuaded them to follow suit.

But now, such arguments are redundant. We know that we no longer have the option of remaining outside European defence structures now that America has deprioritised us all on this side of the Atlantic. It is intolerable that decisions that vitally affect the UK’s national security and industrial interests are being made by European friends, but we have stayed outside without a single vote or opportunity to pursue the national interest, as all the other countries will. Obviously, it was not in the script that the US would, in effect, “change sides” on Ukraine and, even worse, regard Russia and not Europe as its strategic partner.

It is such a change and has come so quickly that many cannot process the geopolitical shift – nor yet its profound implications. We certainly could not foresee this in 2016, at the time of the EU referendum, when many assumed the UK could retain its cosy “special relationship” with the US, and deepen it with that elusive free trade deal. It does not seem that way now, when, for example, some in the intelligence community actually wonder whether sensitive, secret information transmitted by the British to the US agencies about Ukraine might end up in the Kremlin. Donald Trump is dangling a trade deal in front of Starmer, but we may be sure that it would inflict enormous damage on the NHS and British farmers.

‘Thanks to Brexit, Britain is excluded from the summit which will decide the existential future of Europe’ (AP)

The UK-US special relationship is turning into an abusive relationship. It would be nice to think we can be Atlanticists and Europeans, as we were from 1973 to 2021. But the Americans are shifting away from us – and it may well not be a temporary Trumpian interlude before some sensible Democrat gets back in and presses the reset button. After Trump, what then?

Well, remember the insults vice-president JD Vance threw at the British forces who died and were wounded alongside Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. Remember that he said the world’s first “truly Islamist” nuclear power would be the UK. Remember when he travelled to the Munich Security Conference to tell us on this side of the Atlantic that it is not Russia but our own values that are the greatest threat to our future – and in any case, why should America go to war for such cowardly decadent people? This man may be president in 2028, and there until inauguration day in 2037 (unless he changes the constitution and stays even longer).

The working assumption must be that even when Trump leaves, one way or another, America won’t revert to the role it has played in the world for the past 80 years. Nothing lasts forever, and the isolationist, nativist and protectionist instincts of the American people may not dissipate for many decades.

Europe, including the UK, cannot rely on the US, but nor should it ever have had to. The whole idea of the European project was to make the continent another major force in the world, another “pole” in a multipolar world of great powers: America, China, Russia, and their assorted allies. France, Germany, Britain, Italy, Spain – all great nations, and wealthy, but post-imperial and not big enough to make much impact when standing alone. But together as now, they comprise almost the whole continent, numbering nearly 500 million people and the world's largest economic bloc – but still lacking the clout that a defence dimension would bring and which has now become a necessity.

It has taken Trump and the Ukraine crisis to crystallise that dreamy case for European unity into a hard strategic necessity. We may be forgiven for not seeing this in the very different world of 2016, when Barack Obama was still commander-in-chief, Trump was running for president as a publicity stunt, and the first Russian invasion of Ukraine was, tragically and mistakenly dismissed as a side-show. The new realtors have to be faced up to, and they are forcing a choice on Britain between aligning with America and Europe. Increasingly, in fact, America is making the choice for us, if it makes traditional defence and economic relationships untenable.

The British may not even now realise it, or find it a particularly palatable idea, but unless we want to join this new weird Moscow-Washington axis, we’d better get much closer to our European friends. Our self-enforced isolation must come to an end.