David Davis's now infamous claim that German car manufacturers would provide the silver bullet in Brexit negotiations for the UK has become the subject of much ridicule. But he was not alone in making it. As Chris Grey writes here, this claim was made by the leading donor to Vote Leave, by the campaigning group Out Means Out, and in my limited experience leafletting for remain the idea had real purchase with voters. And it is deeply revealing that it should have been so popular a belief amongst leading Brexit campaigners. For all the obsession with the EU, and Germany's role in the EU specifically, they have showed remarkably little interest in how Germany actually works, and in the dominant themes of recent German history, politics and society. If they had done so, they would have immediately known how ridiculous a notion this was.
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| Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer |
European integration and Atlanticism have provided the overriding diplomatic framework for West Germany and later the united Germany after the second world war. This is not just a story about economics. In the aftermath of the horrors of the war, it was widely recognised by the German political class that the only way a German state would be accepted as a legitimate actor on the international scene was as part of a European alliance. It was the only legitimate vehicle for German interests and foreign policy objectives, and the only way Germans could legitimately conceive of their national identity as a subject of pride. The so called 'Stunde Null' or hour zero, on 8th of May, 1945 had to mark the start of something very different from what had occurred before. This notion was, on one level, ridiculous. There was unsurprisingly a large element of continuity in the state and economy economy in the immediate years that followed the creation of the West German state in 1949¹, and change on a societal level was a gradual process, and the subject of generational conflict². But for the notion to have any reality at all, Germany and Germans fundamentally had to re-conceive their own national identity as part of a wider European story, in which Germans would be not just German, but European citizens. If this sounds like a facile overgeneralisation, it probably is, and I suspect it is also an overly teleological account of the story. But as crude generalisations go, I think this is roughly right.
When the referendum result came in, there was a real disappointment to be seen in the German press, as the UK had been a large part of this vision of European integration and the Atlantic alliance. Moreover, British culture has real purchase in Germany. When we see the front page of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung comparing the House of Commons to a Monty Python sketch, what's interesting is not just the ridicule, but the fact that a Monty Python reference means something to a German audience. This disappointment may have been real, but would ultimately always come second to the broader goal of protecting the overall project of European cooperation and integration. To do otherwise would go against pretty much all of German foreign policy since 1949. And even in terms of raw economic cynicism, the calculation was quite different to the one many British commentators thought it was. Yes, British consumers buy a lot of German cars. But ultimately, efforts that undermined the integrity and functioning of the single market were believed to be vastly more significant in their economic impact on Germany.
The only real point of evidence to the contrary Brexiteers had was the case of the Greek sovereign debt crisis³. Didn't the German government play hardball in order to protect the balance sheets of German banks? I think even here, British commentators have largely misread the situation. The response of the German (and French) government was indeed hugely damaging to Greece, and perhaps born of a misunderstanding of the effects of fiscal austerity on the Greek economy. As someone who has admired Angela Merkel for her actions on refugees, the humanitarian consequences of the terms of Greek loans have been a major source of dismay and perhaps even some cognitive dissonance on my part. But here too, in understanding motivation (if not in defending action) it is important to see that the perception of many German politicians was that a loosening of fiscal rules would undermine the integrity of the eurozone. It was also borne of the fact that to do so would have been seen as a betrayal of the then Spanish and Irish governments, who would have not have been able to defend their own policies to a domestic audience. This may have been mistaken, and was certainly damaging, but it was not simply a case of the German government ignoring European interests for national ones.
In the case of Brexit, we now know just how ridiculous Davis's claims were. But frankly, we should always have done so. This lack of knowledge or interest in the domestic politics of other European countries has been a major disadvantage to the British in negotiations. It is mirrored by the repeated bad faith claims made to the British press about post negotiation intentions. It is as if because they have no interest in European domestic politics and never read a German newspaper, they assume German politicians are equally ignorant and uninterested in British politics. On some level, this is perhaps the curse of English being the world's lingua franca. We do not appreciate just how much more ignorant we are of the affairs of other EU countries than many are of our own. But whatever happens with Brexit, if the UK is to go into future negotiations with some chance of a decent outcome, this has to change. Britian's political leaders need to start showing an actual interest in the subject they claim to be obsessed with.
¹ Kiesinger, the third Chancellor of West Germany had himself been a member of the NSDAP, many firms which had done well under National Socialism continued to do so in the post war era
² The 1968 student protests in West Germany focussed, amongst other things, on former members of the NSDAP continuing to hold academic posts in universities
³ This was always an odd example, as it would hardly bode well for the UK
Just to state the obvious, the referendum was not a pseudo-general election. I was not casting a vote for David Davies or Nigel Farage, so pointing out ways in which they may have been wrong is missing the target. There is simply no way the referendum would have been re-run if Remain had won and various promises made by Pro-EU folks turned out to be piffle.
ReplyDeleteGermany is notoriously defensive about its industrial base. So the Single Market in goods, which favours Germany, is well developed but the Single Market in services, which favours the UK, still not well established. the UK's manufacturing balance of trade deficit has grown steadily whilst in the EU. I see no sign of this stopping, or mechanism for this. There is not future for UK manufacturing in any significant sense whilst we are in an EU constructed like this. In contrast, when out, we have choices about how we use tariffs to protect industry. Good luck getting all those VWs and BMWs through the regulatory border checks.
I would note in passing the large overlap in the group of people who insist that Brexit must not result in a single job loss with the group of people who think the commitment to be carbon neutral in 20150 is a great achievement. Without tariffs we will simply be exporting manufacturing jobs to countries that generate power more cheaply by generating carbon, and obviously, we cannot do that whilst in the EU. It is almost as if Caroline Lucas's political views were completely self-contradictory.