THE EU that Britain is trying to get closer to is no longer the EU Britain left in 2016.
It’s concerned with its eastern borders, whether or not to enlarge with new members, raising vast new sums for defence, but also more generally with a drift to the right and what consequences that might have for the EU’s future.
Well, you might say, fair enough, but what’s any of that got to do with here?
We’re no longer in the EU apart, luckily, from its customs union and single market for goods, courtesy of the wingnuts in the Conservative party, Boris Johnson and our DUP dupes.
So what difference does a drift to the right in the EU make?
More than you might think because, in its anxiety to find ways to improve its dire economic prospects, the British government will soon take up where Starmer left off in negotiations. That requires making concessions to Brussels.
Already Britain has scrapped a lot of the crazy plans to go it alone in food, chemical and industrial standards and has accepted the internationally recognised EU standard.
Britain is heading towards accepting ‘dynamic alignment’ with the EU in as many areas as possible.
It’s cheaper, it’s easier for trade and services, and so what if it means being a law-taker instead of a law-maker?
This means that when the EU changes its rules and regulations, so will Britain, and therefore as the EU shifts to the right, so will Britain.
The beginnings of that shift were in the European Parliament elections of 2024.
The European People’s Party (EPP), a centre right, heavily Christian Democrat umbrella of 83 parties and partners in 43 countries, remained the largest group in the 720-member parliament with 182 MEPs.
Both the president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the president of the Parliament, Roberta Metsola, are EPP members.
However, far right parties also won seats across the EU in 2024.
Although they are separate parties, together the far right amount to 187 when they pull together.
Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen Picture: Benjamin Girette/Bloomberg (Benjamin Girette/Photographer: Benjamin Girette/B)
They include Patriots for Europe (PfE) led by Jordan Bardella, president of Marine Le Pen’s party in France; Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR); and Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) which includes Germany’s far right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
The swing to the right in the 2024 European Parliament elections is mirrored in a similar swing in domestic politics in EU countries, with populist parties on the rise notably in France and Germany.
Le Pen is miles ahead in French polls. In elections in September in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD, polling 41%, looks set to win an absolute majority, the first for a far right party since the war.
In three other states, Thuringia, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with elections a fortnight later, AfD is sitting at 40%, 37% and 36% respectively.
Will Germany’s Christian Democrats in the EPP go against this prevailing political climate in Germany and vote against measures supported by AfD in Brussels?
The evidence so far is that they won’t. In Germany the CDU leader Friedrich Merz says he will abide by what he calls the ‘firewall’ and refuse to cooperate with AfD.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham (James Manning/PA)
Yet in the Brussels parliament, CDU members of the EPP have been voting with far right parties on matters like migration and climate change.
Since the 2024 European election, EPP members from various EU countries have voted 20 times with far right parties.
What the EPP has been doing is enlisting far right support for its proposals if the diminished socialist and left wing bloc threaten to vote against them.
Sensing their growing power, members of far right parties have been offering the EPP deals.
Malta’s Roberta Metsola is going for a third term as parliament president in January. The socialists say there was a deal to give their candidate the presidency. If they stand against her, Metsola will need the support of other parties.
Marine Le Pen’s PfE has offered her its 85 votes if she will remove the firewall excluding the PfE from positions of power in the Brussels parliament. Metsola may also need the support of Meloni’s ECR members.
Now, this swirling alphabet soup may seem a far cry from events on the ground in Britain, much less here, but remember: the European parliament is a legislator and it’s not just deals on migration hubs they control, but farmer’s objections to green legislation, regulations on services and accountability, protections against AI and more.
Britain will have to go along with whatever Brussels decides if Westminster seeks prosperity by closer links with the EU.
Burnham may find himself following rules brokered with Europe’s far right. Just as well Britain left the EU, eh?
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