Can Britain Escape Europe’s Twilight Zone (and Does it Want To)?

Gathering at Blenheim Palace on July 18 for the semi-annual meeting of the European Political Community (EPC), European leaders may well gaze upon the magnificence of the huge 18^th-century building and reflect.

Built at enormous cost by a grateful nation to celebrate the battlefield victory of John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough in 1704, Blenheim is also a testament to the virtues and rewards of detailed preparation. Without extraordinary levels of planning, Marlborough would never have smashed the myth of French military invincibility in that seminal battle.

It’s fair to say, even a month before the EPC summit, neither of Britain’s possible prime ministers to emerge from the July 4 general election have been willing or able to prepare themselves with anything like the same attention to detail.

Indeed, the approach of the UK’s current premier, Rishi Sunak, has already caused aggravation to many participants.

While the UK government lobbied to host the EPC, its actual approach has been slow, unfocused, and tactical. Given the significant opportunity that the EPC represents for UK leadership in key strategic areas, this seems incomprehensible. Sunak’s failure to set a date within the first half of 2024 “caused irritation across Europe”, with diplomats becoming convinced that the delay was directly related to the British leader’s concerns about general election timings.

So when Sunak eventually confirmed in March that the EPC would take place in July, many European leaders were skeptical of his belated claim that the EPC represented “an important forum for cooperation across the whole of Europe on the issues that are affecting us all, threatening our security and prosperity.”

Britain will now have to work very hard indeed to establish its credentials as a joint navigator for what the continent’s governments acknowledge is an increasingly perilous future. Worse perhaps for those sensitive to French grand designs, it seems that President Emmanual Macron, the EPC’s architect, intends to come armed with an (as yet unspecified) plan of his own.

Assuming the belated confirmation of dates will not produce a correspondingly lackluster turnout, the UK government is on course to welcome between 44 and 47 European leaders to Blenheim, representing both the 27 EU member states and those from countries outside the union.

Astutely handled, there are several positives that could be harvested from the Blenheim EPC. At the individual level, whoever becomes prime minister following the election has an opportunity to use the EPC “as a symbol of soft power and leadership”, replacing pre-summit detachment with real commitment amongst a key peer group.

Should Starmer take office, and be genuinely prepared to dash directly into the EPC, the meeting will represent his first truly European set-piece in a summer of summitry, a singular opportunity to reverse both the (often Euroskeptic) attitude, and policy approaches, of the Conservative government. In the unlikely event that Sunak is returned, he will likely repeat the UK-focused preferences of previous summits, where he sought allies for narrower policy initiatives like cross-Channel migration.

From a party perspective, the likely Labour government can identify early wins with the EU. Pressing the reset button is a challenge, but Blenheim’s Churchillian history (Winston was born here) may assist in reminding historically minded leaders of his Euro-enthusiast post-war vision for a secure and peaceful continent. Helpfully — or perhaps cynically — there is an opportunity to overwrite memories of the previous EPC in Granada, which was not an unmitigated success, with key no-shows and disputes over the EPC’s overall rationale.

Starmer could look ahead by emphasizing that since 2022, the UK has successfully played a leading role in supporting Ukraine, and by doing so highlight its continuing influence as a leading defense and intelligence power, and as a reliable bulwark against Russian expansionism.

Thus far, opposing Russian aggression has proved to be not only “a unifying theme which has helped hold the EPC together” but also provided much-needed networking opportunities for states seeking EU membership, and those like the UK seeking to clarify the EPC’s relevance, as Oxford University’s Professor Derrick Wyatt wrote. But the EPC also needs to offer its multifarious members real utility, in order to get the most out of being a uniquely “open political space”, as described by Pierre Vimont, a former executive in the EU’s External Action Service.

It is no secret that post-Brexit, Britain continues to cast around for non-EU forums in which to exert its influence. It has used selective clubs like the G7, as well as its traditional security groupings in and related to NATO, and the UN Security Council. But there are clearly more opportunities available, and old friends who still miss the British presence within the EU.

“You are an island, but you are a European island,” Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said to the British in May. “You may have affairs elsewhere, but to us, you are married. The EU-UK security defense cooperation must be revitalized and underpinned by a more methodical framework.” As an example, Sikorski suggested UK attendance at EU foreign minister meetings.

The UK might reasonably think about other steps within the EPC. It could, for example, propose semi-permanent working groups or issue-specific task forces with preferred partners, producing smaller but possibly more doable “wins”, and promoting enhanced coordination between EPC summits, to glue the EPC structure together more effectively.

Whatever route a new government might decide to take (the polls currently suggest a Labour landslide), there are opportunities aplenty.

Most importantly, it offers an opportunity to press the reset button with the EU with the UK as host, building on the generally improved mood music between London and Brussels of the past year, but with the chance to push things quite a bit further.

This would be welcome news to European and EU leaders alike. As recently suggested by one European diplomat, “if the UK is looking for a more positive relationship, they will be pushing an open door at this end”, with the scope for “a lot available in terms of closer relationships”, starting with foreign and security policy.

Keir Starmer, if elected, will have a short, but crucial to-do list.

• First, be emphatic in harmonizing a new mood music for relations with European counterparts, in particular, dropping the “pointless hostility towards the EU”;

• Second, commit in detail to genuinely European-wide solutions to continental problems. Assure EU delegates that the post-election government will take seriously the need to renegotiate the current EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement next year; and

• Thirdly, underline the central importance of supporting Ukraine, and the need for greater European security cooperation on everything from intelligence sharing to increased military-industrial output and higher spending on defense, with improved opportunities for UK leadership.

Europe will expect clear signs from Starmer, presiding as the EPC host at Blenheim, as to just what a Labour government wants from a rekindled relationship with Europe. Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy recently said he is “ready for difficult conversation about burden sharing” regarding European collective security.

There is certainly an expectation on the far side of the Channel that the time is right for such changes. As one European diplomat said recently: “The European Political Community summit will be a major stage to prove that the UK wants to make a difference”.

All eyes on Blenheim, therefore.

Professor Amelia Hadfield is Head of the Department of Politics, Founding Director of Centre for Britain and Europe (CBE), and Associate Vice President of External Engagement at the University of Surrey.

Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.