Charles Kennedy was one of the lights of liberalism in this country, and his absence in public life is felt in many ways – not least with regard to Europe, the cause with which he was so indelibly linked.
In 2015, Charles said that “the next few years in politics will come down to a tale of two Unions – the UK and the EU”. Typically prophetic, although sadly the melodrama has already consumed more than just a few years. As we look back on an extraordinary and turbid time in our history, it is clear that we have endured a lost decade, and that we cannot afford to lose another.
Ten years on from the Brexit vote is a good moment to decide what we want the next decade to be. After all, a decade is a long time. Ten years ago, Barack Obama was president, Chat GPT hadn’t been invented, and Leicester City were Premier League champions. It is a natural point at which to take stock; one of those psychological markers we use to reflect about our lives.
Think of the opportunity cost of letting ten years go by as we lurched from one madcap post-Brexit Conservative government to the next, none of whom appeared to have a clue what role Britain should play in the world; and we continue to drift under a somewhat hapless Labour government as the world changes utterly around us.
Think of all the seeds that weren’t planted, the ideas that didn’t get off the ground, the lives and decisions put on hold while we moped around in an aimless post-Brexit funk. It was a decade, importantly, in which the victors had their chance to show what they were going to do with their narrow referendum triumph.
And on every count it is clear they have failed. Not because Brexit wasn’t done properly – the ludicrous whinge from Farage et al – because they had arch Brexiteers in government every step of the way and got everything they wanted. On the back of a very slender mandate they imposed the hardest of hard Brexits – something no one asked for nor was promised in the referendum – and look what it got us: a decade of lost growth.
In that decade, things have become harder for a lot of people in Britain. Our status in the world has shrunk, not grown. We are less in control of our own destiny, not more. This has arguably been the most costly decade of economic and political mismanagement and mendacity suffered by any economy across the developed world in the whole post war period.
There are four points that arise from this. First, time and events have cast the error of Brexit in sharp relief. The world today is scarcely recognisable from that in which decisions about leaving the EU were made. We have lost rather than gained sovereignty, and squandered a critical decade.
Second, by burning down the post-war international order, Trump and Putin have dispensed with some of the polite fictions that have hamstrung decision-making here and in Europe, and may have done us a grim favour by letting us see things as they really are.
Third, despite the politically-motivated omertà around Brexit, the economic, technological and geopolitical logic now clearly point in one direction: closer co-operation across the Channel, and a more ambitious pivot to Europe, with the obvious destination being full reunion.
And last, that – having been gifted a moment of strategic clarity – what we are missing is urgency: for genuine reform in Europe, for ambition in the UK, and for concrete steps to build a new relationship equal to the challenges ahead.
It can’t come soon enough, for the damage Brexit has done to the economic health of the UK is impossible to ignore. The recent NBER study put the overall hit attributed to Brexit at 6%-8% of GDP – significantly worse than the 4% that was famously bandied about by the OBR. That is about the same impact as the other great economic shock of the century – the 2008 financial crisis.
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It is a vast sum, likely in the region of a trillion pounds by the end of the decade, and represents a permanent reduction in output. We are not getting that growth back. Every inch we gain now is from a lower base, and will be hard won.
So as predicted, Brexit made Britain poorer. What was sneeringly characterised as elitist hand-wringing has held up rather better than the snake oil guff the Leave campaign was peddling. There is a real cost to that, one that the country has borne and will continue to bear. It is the gaping economic hole beneath the waterline.
The precariousness of our economic position is all the more unnerving given the speed and scale of the geopolitical unravelling around us. Most significant is the shattering of the transatlantic alliance. Britain and the US have disagreed on policy before. But this is something different.
If we had to pick today, would we really tie ourselves to the land of tariffs, Trump, Hegseth and Musk? It is tempting to imagine that the current cast of characters will leave, the tide will turn and that we can slip back into the comforting assumptions that have governed our national posture since Suez.
That is a dangerous misreading – not just of the mood, but of the deeper shifts in US politics and the American psyche. I listened to JD Vance cast withering scorn on Europe’s democracies in Munich last year. Then came the US National Security Strategy, a statement of outright ideological hostility. Then came the threats to Greenland, and a panicked force deployment to protect European territory from an American threat.
And now the war in Iran, the depredations and recriminations amongst supposed allies, and Trump’s open contempt for NATO. It’s not just Trump, and this is not a blip. The trend both precedes and will outlive his presidency: there is an established constituency for expansionist great-power bellicosity in American politics.
How do we rapidly unwind our dependence on an ally we no longer recognise? After all, even if a more predictable president took office next time, the risk will always be hovering in the background. How certain can we be that the next few nominees will share our basic view of the world, let alone look out for our national interest? Can we really afford to bet our future on a few thousand voters in a Midwestern swing state every four years?
Our worries for the West are more troubling given the threat from the East. Putin’s Russia is four years into a land war in Europe; it has carried out missile strikes 10 miles from the Polish border, sent ships into British waters, poisoned people on British soil.
Should the unthinkable happen and Putin prevail in Ukraine, does anyone think he would stop there? In the face of these threats, the future of NATO – until so recently the bedrock of British security policy – is less certain than ever. Can we really trust Article 5 to keep us safe? Enough to bet our freedom and security on it?
Europe is scrambling to marshal a historic defence spending effort as it seeks to make up lost time and secure the means to defend itself without America, and all the while Xi Jingping watches gleefully from Beijing as events consolidate China’s growing supremacy in the new world order. A might-is-right world where hegemons carve up hemispheres of influence is plainly perilous for small countries without deep alliances of their own. Yet this is the backdrop against which Britain decided to go it alone.
And so we are adrift in a dangerous world – not a bridge across the Atlantic, but alone in a hostile sea. Other great currents have shifted beneath us, too. Alongside economic and geopolitical ruptures, this has been a decade of profound technological change. Self-driving cars. Starlink. Large Language Models: none of these existed in summer 2016. Back then, most Britons probably hadn’t heard of Nvidia. Today it is worth more than our annual GDP.
US tech companies spend the equivalent of the UK’s annual defence budget on AI every six weeks. We are in the midst of a scramble for supremacy in Artificial Intelligence. America sees dominance in frontier models as existential; China is spreading its open-source technology; Europe is racing to catch-up.
Yet in this global race, Britain’s role remains less than it should be. Despite our many strengths – from our research base and history of innovation to our vibrant start up tech economy – most AI labs, models and products come from outside the UK. The industrial revolution gave Britain a multi-generational headstart that fuelled two centuries of success. If AI turns out to be even a tenth as impactful, are we set up to get the best of it when we are still erecting barriers to people, ideas, and funds?
In part because of decisions taken in Westminster and Whitehall, the reality is that no one in their right mind would try to train a cutting edge large language model model in the UK today. If we are in the midst of an AI industrial revolution, we barely have a single steam engine we can call our own.
In technology, as in the economy more broadly, the point is that the world is already dramatically different to 2016, and the bet we made before – that we could stand astride the Atlantic, charting our own path between two superpowers, sovereign without being dependent – seems less and less credible with every passing day.
Clearly, Brexit was not only a triumph of mendacity by the Brexiteers, and an appeal to a nostalgic yesteryear which no longer exists, it was also an act of terrible timing. Overestimating and mischaracterising our strength, Brexiteers took a punt on a nebulous conception of sovereignty just as the cost of going solo rose dramatically due to forces we could not control. Events proved the thesis unworkable, and the country has been left exposed. The EU moved on, America turned its back, and Britain has far less influence with either than we did a decade ago.
Europe, of course, has its troubles too: massive spending challenges and energy costs, an ageing population, chronic political feebleness and inertia in the face of change. One of the many tragedies of Brexit was the sense that not only were we wilfully excluding ourselves from a club where decisions that affect us are made but that this would be bad for Europe too, even if it was worse for us.
As a European by background and inclination I remain, like many, deeply frustrated by the continent’s persistent unwillingness to grasp some of its thorniest issues, its knee-jerk preference for regulation over dynamism, its habit of acting decisively only when disaster strikes. There is foot-dragging even on the plainly urgent: it’s been over a year since the Draghi report made almost 400 recommendations for improving Europe’s competitiveness; by some counts just 1 in 10 have been acted upon, and as Draghi himself said recently, each of the challenges he set out have only got worse.
Yet for all its flaws, Europe has shown once again that – when faced with a crisis – it can act to shore up its position in a hostile world. Witness the flurry of post- “liberation day” trade agreements – with Indonesia, India, MERCOSUR, and Australia – all signed after the tariff shock, creating a market of more than 2 billion people and a quarter of global GDP.
Against a current of zero-sum mercantilism, Europe is building a bulwark: a rules-based trade coalition, with the EU as the anchor. The belated realisation that the continent must bear more of the burden of its own defence has seen a similar torrent of initiatives: the ReArm Europe Readiness 2030 plan and €150bn of loans for defence procurement; security and defence partnerships with the UK, Canada, India, Iceland, Norway, Australia and Ghana; and of course, the hopefully soon-to-be-delivered €90bn Ukraine loan.
Europe is funding AI gigafactories for training and operating frontier AI. Completing the digital single market and 28th regime process for continent-wide company registration will further boost a tech sector already worth nearly $4 trillion. To my mind, then, the economic, technological and geopolitical logic now point in one direction: a much more ambitious pivot to our European hinterland.
People understand this of course. The polling on Brexit is clear: most people think it was a mistake and have done for years, and voters across all main parties want a closer relationship with the EU. But it is equally clear that overhauling our shattered relationship with Europe cannot be about rehearsing the same old dreadful arguments. People feel a profound aversion to having another fight about it, and understandably so.
There is real scar tissue there – this divided friendships and families in a way quite unlike anything else I can remember. And there is a very British quality to the response: we’ve made our bed, and now we must lie in it. But fatalism, like hope, is not a strategy. A stiff upper lip goes a long way, but in life there are some things you really can’t duck just because they’re uncomfortable. We ought to be grown-up enough to speak directly to the British public and say: look, it’s been ten years; we gave it a shot, it didn’t work out. Now the only sensible thing to do is to stop digging, move on, and try something new.
The question is not about the merits of the decision we took a decade ago. It is: “what do you think will be best for your kids, and your grandkids, a decade from now?” Unsurprisingly I am in favour of a much fuller rapprochement with the EU. That is the best way to strengthen our sovereignty, position in the world and prospects for the future. And it would end the ludicrous situation where it seems a majority of the population, politicians and businesses agree Brexit is a disaster, but we’re all just grimly pushing on as if our hands are tied.
For the UK, joining the customs union alone as a first step would likely add 1-2% of GDP, and would start to pare back the tsunami wave of Brexit red tape which has suffocated our exporters. Of all the false claims from Brexiteers the assertion they were against red tape was perhaps the most cynical – they have instead been the harbingers of vast reams of it.
Single Market membership would be of far greater economic value – not least since it would cover services which are particularly important to our national prosperity – but it would be foolish not to recognise the very real problems in joining the Single Market while not being a member of the EU itself: it would represent a marked loss of political, regulatory and legislative authority over our own affairs as rules would be set by others over which we have no control.
No wonder Norwegians call that status “fax democracy”. And no wonder they appear to be deciding that joining the EU in full is the logical step, the better to protect their own sovereignty. And that is why I have never advocated Single Market membership for the UK as a stand-alone approach: it can only ever be seen as a stepping stone back to full EU membership.
For Europe, a closer relationship with the UK promises deeper access to our expertise in defence, aerospace and tech – including AI, quantum, drones and more – where we can have outsize impact; more opportunities to leverage the UK’s strong academic and research base; reintegration of our highly developed financial markets. At a stroke it would expand the EU’s GDP and internal market and provide an immediate economic and competitive boost – not to mention adding another nuclear power and permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
For these reasons and many more, I believe we would all be better off if the UK was fully at the heart of Europe again. It will take time, and trust, and political will – resources that are in short supply. But we should spell out now that that is our end destination, so that we can start the journey today.
Pragmatic efforts should focus on areas where co-operation is most needed, easiest to achieve, or will yield the fastest results. The Government is inching towards agreements with the EU linking emissions trading schemes and integrating the UK into the EU internal electricity market, and recently announced an agreement on UK’s participation in Erasmus+.
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The Trade and Cooperation Agreement review coming up in 2026 provides an opportunity to clear a few more thornbushes, and better see the path to full reunion. The ultimate objective – of reintegrating the UK into the EU in full – should go hand in hand with the most consequential of the other enlargements in the years to come: Ukraine.
There is a live debate in EU capitals right now about whether Ukraine should be asked to jump through all the hoops before any membership status is granted, or whether associate membership – safeguarding both Ukraine’s and the EU’s security interests from Russian predation – can be a first step, with conditional steps in the following years culminating in full membership.
This same logic holds for a British reunion too. While this may not yet be evident to either country, in truth Ukraine and the UK are yoked together in their respective journeys back into the heart of Europe. Surely it is unthinkable that, after all the sweat and treasure Britain has expended to defend its independence, Ukraine should join the EU without us sitting at the top table alongside them?
Many British voters – whatever their views at the time of the Brexit referendum – will surely now recognise the overwhelming merit of joining Ukraine in a significantly altered European Union. That being the case, it seems to me that we can set a compelling objective now: namely, that our national mission will be for the UK to rejoin the EU alongside Ukraine and others by 2036, the 20 year anniversary of the Brexit vote. To meet that goal a decade from today, the argument needs to be made more forcefully by pro-Europeans in all parties today: and as Sadiq Khan and others have suggested, that will need to include a clear commitment to EU membership in party manifestos at the next election.
Ten years may seem like a long time, but in truth it is a relatively short period in which to turn things round. Of course there are real barriers to overcome, not least of which is the fact that even if the UK was wholly in favour of rejoining the EU tomorrow, 27 other countries would also have a say, and our reputation for reliability has taken something of a hit during this decade-long moment of madness.
As the partner that walked out, we have to do rather more of the work if we want to give the relationship another try. And we badly need to inject a sense of urgency – here, and in Europe’s other capitals too. Of all the resources we have, time is perhaps the most precious: it is finite and irreversible, the one thing you never have enough of and can never get more of.
I have seen how slowly the wheels of the state can grind: as an EU official, as an MEP, and a member of a government that got quite a lot done, it still felt painfully slow at times. I have also seen the frenetic, almost crazed pace at which Silicon Valley operates, where projects are measured in hours of engineering time. So I recognise the uneasy sensation among many critical observers of our battered old continent who see an astounding lack of urgency among the UK elite about rebuilding bridges, symptomatic of a ruling class asleep at the wheel.
During a decade in which the American century ended – and the peace dividend with it – we still didn’t put the foot to the floor. Our lack of urgency at a time when so many other countries have recognised that the world has changed utterly is an error that further compounds the strategic error of Brexit itself. The only remedy is not to repeat the mistake: we cannot allow the hurt of the debate of 10 years ago to stall us from moving forward for the next 10 years.
The path to undoing the immense damage of Brexit means recognising that this isn’t about re-hashing the arguments that got us here. It isn’t about rejoining the EU as it was ten years ago, or even as it currently stands. And it isn’t about continuing to muddle on in no man’s land while the liberal order disintegrates around us. It’s about summoning the will to imagine something better and the clarity of purpose to get it done.
If Charles was still with us today, I know he would be itching to help lead this cause; to raise our sights, and look for opportunities not enemies in Europe; so that when the next decade rolls around, we can look the next generation in the eye and say that in the face of momentous change, we had the courage and the conviction to build something new: a new relationship, with a new Europe, for a new world. Of that, I am sure, Charles would be proud.
The above is an edited version of the Charles Kennedy Memorial Lecture, given recently by Sir Nick Clegg, the former Liberal Democrat leader, at the National Liberal Club, London
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