Insight
The British and their exceptionalism by Simon Tilford 3 May 2017
Few countries have allowed their sense of exceptionalism to damage their interests in the way Britain is doing. British overconfidence is unjustified and will come at a heavy price. Most countries see themselves as exceptional, but few have ever allowed the belief in their exceptionalism to damage their economic and political interests in quite the way Britain is currently doing. What makes so many British politicians, business leaders and newspaper editors so confident that Britain will flourish unencumbered by the EU? Why do so much of the British elite see the EU as a constraint on British influence in the world? Both France and Germany sometimes bridle at the EU but neither seriously thinks that the EU diminishes their ability to pursue their interests. Even now, when it is clear that Brexit will do profound damage to British political and economic interests, few powerful figures in British business, politics or the media feel it necessary to speak out. There is no justification for British overconfidence or sangfroid. The UK needs the EU as much as the Germans or French. The British are less euro-centric than many other Europeans. They are generally less anti-American and more likely to move to non-European countries to work. And Britain has global interests and reach in ways that small and medium-sized EU countries do not. The country has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Like France, it is a serious military power and has nuclear weapons. The question is why so many Britons believe that it will be easier to defend those global interests outside of the EU than within it. The French elite do not believe that France’s ability to defend its interests – which are similar to Britain’s – is held back by its membership of the EU. For the French the EU has always partly been about locking Germany into multilateral European institutions and preventing Germany from becoming too powerful. But the French have always understood that France could only remain a significant global power by harnessing the power of the EU as a whole. The benefits of EU membership for Germany are obvious: the country regained legitimacy and respectability through its founding membership of the EU; by
CER INSIGHT: The British and their exceptionalism 3 May 2017
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