When Britain leaves, the power imbalance between Berlin and Paris will be laid bare
Philip Stephens
© Ingram Pinn/Financial Times
He had never forgiven Britain for winning the war. So Harold Macmillan concluded after Charles de Gaulle vetoed the UK’s attempt to join the then common market. Right or wrong, the British prime minister’s estimate of the French president’s motives itself reflected the enduring rivalry between the two nations. Perhaps they are forever doomed to be at once friends and enemies.
“We’ll miss the Brits,” a long-serving French diplomat says of Britain’s departure from the EU. The respect is mutual. These diplomats are cut from the same, expensive intellectual cloth. In the Elysée Palace, however, it seems that Emmanuel Macron has lost patience. Brexit paralysis has stretched his forbearance beyond limits. The president wants the latest extension of Article 50 — until January 31 — to be the last.
The irritation is understandable. Brexit was a British decision that, beyond the self-harm, imposed significant costs on the other 27 EU states. Yet, justified as Mr Macron may be, it is less evident that his frustration serves a useful purpose. What does he propose, should next month’s UK election fail to break the deadlock? A nation faced with the truly dismal choice of returning Boris Johnson as prime minister or backing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn may summon up the collective wisdom to deny either a majority.
It would be odd if the EU were to respond by expelling Britain. Who would win from a disorderly Brexit? Donald Tusk, the thoughtful outgoing president of the European Council, warns against an acrimonious rupture. Britain and the EU must live with each other after Brexit. Then there is the possibility — no more than that — of an inconclusive election giving Brits a chance to change their minds.
Mr Macron’s ire, I suspect, is rooted in a deeper discontent. The president is one of those rare politicians who takes risks to change the political weather. He has ideas for Europe, many of them sensible. Across the rest of the EU he sees a collection of leaders whose first instinct is to run for shelter.
Before Mr Macron reached the Elysée, Berlin bemoaned the absence of a credible partner in Paris. Now that they have one, Angela Merkel’s ambition for the twilight of her chancellorship is a quiet life. Germany still nods in the direction of Europe, this week signalling a softening of its opposition to a eurozone banking union. But nothing can be allowed overly to disturb German voters.
A nuisance it may be, but Brexit is not the explanation for Ms Merkel’s refusal to create a sizeable eurozone budget or for the failure of German politicians of left and right to confront voters with the awkward truth that they are the big winners from European integration.
By the same measure, Britain’s Brexit breakdown cannot be blamed for the complaints heard across European capitals about Mr Macron’s imperious manner. The president is an immodest man. He might have learnt something from the trouble he has had with the gilets jaunes protests across France. Emotional intelligence has its uses.
Possibly, and this is pure speculation, the irascibility reflects something else: a secret understanding that, for all the pleasure some will draw from Britain’s misfortunes, France may well emerge the biggest Brexit loser among the EU27.
Through the decades, governments in London have deployed all sorts of diplomatic chicanery to insert themselves between Paris and Berlin. Once or twice, on the principle that “if you can’t beat them, join them”, they have promoted the idea of an informal trilateral directorate in place of the Franco-German axis. The attempts failed, yet Britain’s presence in the EU provided, of itself, an element of balance. Post-Brexit, the union will look and feel quite different. Above all, the power imbalance between Berlin and Paris will be brutally exposed.
Alone among the big EU nations, Britain and France have global outlooks and interests. They have sizeable, deployable armed forces. History has left them with a national temperament at ease with venturing well beyond their own frontiers. France can do much with other EU partners to improve European defence. It cannot do anything serious without Britain.
Brexit will weaken Britain economically. The temptation will be to turn inwards. France would be a loser. The two nations have been travelling in the same, leaky boat — struggling to hold on to their claims to a global role against the claims of rising states, and constant pressure on national defence budgets. Their hold on permanent seats on the UN Security Council looks anachronistic. If Britain now falls overboard as a result of Brexit, France will find it that much harder to keep the vessel afloat.
Mr Macron likes to invite comparisons between his own leadership and that of de Gaulle. And it is true enough that the general’s decision to wield a veto now seems prescient. Britain would always be at best a halfhearted European, ever fearful of compromising its relations with the US, de Gaulle declared in January 1963. So it has proved, you might say, watching Mr Johnson cuddle up to Mr Trump.
Mr Macron, though, might also reflect that de Gaulle’s vision of a united Europe led by France and equal to the US has also been sorely disappointed. At some point, when the acrimony has dissipated, and the British have cleared their heads, Britain and France will need to find a way to get along again. Patience would then be repaid.
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