Janan Ganesh: Fudge is good for Britain and Europe

Meant to wound, “Perfidious Albion” sometimes feels like a backhanded compliment. The world can see that Britain has done well out of its reluctance to commit to anything. It never fell for socialism, fascism or any absolute belief system. Its empire outgrew others by putting material interests over a mission to spread Britishness, whatever that is. The malleable constitution, the tepid Anglicanism: these are the raw materials of an envied stability.

Nothing has brought out Britain’s talent for half- measures like the European project. We were absent at the creation, then we joined, then we voted on whether to leave, then we conceived the single market, then we dodged the single currency, then we pushed the EU’s borders to the east and complained about the consequences, and now we are trying to revise the terms of our membership before voting again on whether to leave.

This is perfidy, and it works. Britain is a richer, more liberal economy than it was in 1973, when it entered the European Economic Community. This can only mean that Europe has been good for the country – or not so bad as to hold it back in a serious way. There is no third possibility. At some point, it will dawn on Eurosceptics who talk up the success of modern Britain that they are inadvertently making the case for the status quo.

European vision

And it will dawn on zealots for integration that Britain’s commitment-phobia, maddening as it must be, has saved it from continental follies. We have our own currency and, for the most part, our own labour laws. Britain’s economic performance of late owes something to these freedoms. They were negotiated by governments that, at the time, were patronised for their lack of European vision.

Vision is the enemy. For half a century Britain has been muddling through and for half a century its interests have been served tolerably well. Both sides of the debate expect too much from the coming referendum. it will not be an existential or even a very historic event. It will not “settle” anything.

If we vote to leave, we will not really leave. A bargain will be brokered that preserves some British access to the European market in exchange for some duty to observe European laws – a version of the Swiss and Norwegian compromises.

Over time, this diminished form of membership will start thickening out again as exporters ask for access to new sectors of the single market and regulations are borne as the price.

Meanwhile, European Court of Justice rulings on Britain’s status will pile up, and they will tend to bind us in to the club making it harder for us to stand apart. One day, we will wake up and realise we have something tantamount to EU membership. Then we will get on with our lives.

Even the Leavers deny that a vote for them is necessarily a vote for total exit. Some cite the Norwegian and Swiss examples favourably. If that is their opening position, you can imagine the watery mush it will turn into over the course of the campaign.

And if we vote to stay, we will never become a truly European nation anyway. Even if David Cameron achieves the square root of nought in his renegotiation of membership, Britain is already estranged from the EU core by its currency.

This will not change under his or any conceivable premiership, especially if the euro zone integrates into something resembling a state for the sake of its own survival. At that point, Britain would have but one purpose in the EU: to prevent laws applicable to all members being decided by the currency bloc, especially those affecting our financial services sector.

The Remainers should not overstate their case: a vote to stay is a vote for decades of loveless, defensive diplomacy on Europe’s sidelines. If that is the burden that comes with participation in the world’s largest single market, voters will grudgingly live with it.

There is no clean answer to the conundrum of Britain and Europe. Because the referendum pits true-believing Europeans, who think the question is something as airy as “What kind of country should Britain be?”, against fervent sceptics, who see 1973 as a historic wrong to be avenged, nobody makes the case for fudge.

But fudge works. Fudge is the British. Fudge is how Britain ended up with the best but not the worst of the European project. And fudge is what will emerge at the end of Cameron’s great democratic exercise, whenever it comes and whatever the official result. The referendum is not a fork in the road. It is a roundabout with no exits. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2015)