Brexit Was Decades In the Making

Daniel P. Vajdich

Politics, Europe

The UK has never wished to be part of the European project.

There has been a near total absence of historical context since the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union in June. The British have had a tortured relationship with European integration for several decades now. In 1945, after two global conflicts had concluded on the European continent in twenty-five years, some European (and many American) policymakers began the process of bringing Europe together in way that would spawn unprecedented interdependence and thus reduce the likelihood of yet another major war. Winston Churchill famously espoused a “United States of Europe,” but he did not intend for the UK to be a part of it.

The British were never enthusiastic about this process. Even collective defense and the creation of NATO—both hailed today by most proponents of Brexit—were viewed with skepticism by UK political elites and many citizens in the wake of World War Two, despite their clear-eyed appreciation of the emerging Soviet threat. While British leaders saw the value and necessity of European unification, the United Kingdom was skeptical of its own participation in continental integration projects.

Two factors drove these sentiments. First, the UK wanted to safeguard what Churchill called its “special relationship” with the United States. Less than a year later, London notified the United States of its inability to finance Greece and Turkey in the face of internal communist threats and external Soviet pressure. It was now clear that the UK’s younger cousin would inherit leadership of the Western world and spearhead its confrontation with Soviet communism. A collective Europe with the UK as its member would surely undermine the special relationship it was thought.

Second, the British Empire would soon be greatly reduced, but its leaders refused to engage in a corresponding adjustment of their imperial mentality. After being the world’s most dominant nation for over three centuries, the British did not want to be treated as just another European country—neither victorious but war-torn France, nor vanquished Germany. They would not allow themselves to be dragged into a nebulous union to advance the interests of others, that is, in order to assuage French fears of long-term German domination and help create conditions that would justify U.S. withdrawal from Europe.

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