In the five years since the United Kingdom left the European Union, the Brexit legacy has become just one of several pressing geopolitical dramas. From the pandemic to Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the UK-EU divorce has made it harder to unite on issues concerning both sides.<\/p>\n
The UK\u2019s Labour government, in place since July and the country’s first since 2010, wants to change that. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has promised to \u201creset\u201d the relationship. After more than six months in office, however, what that looks like in practice remains a mystery.<\/p>\n
The EU has made its position<\/a> clear, but Starmer faces a tougher balancing act. He must look to appease the Leave voters his party won over in the last election while addressing the European enthusiasm from much of Labour\u2019s traditional base.<\/p>\n Shoring up common defence<\/strong><\/p>\n Proposals such as freedom of movement schemes and some kind of return to the EU\u2019s single market have been rejected by the new government. Defence, on the other hand, is the \u201clow hanging fruit\u201d for cooperation, David McAllister, chair of the European Parliament\u2019s Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Parliament.<\/p>\n The UK may be out of the EU, but it joins 23 EU members as part of the Euro-Atlantic NATO military alliance. That creates significant policy overlap, especially as the EU has expressed more interest in taking on greater responsibility for its own security.<\/p>\n Discussions are ongoing<\/a> around the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP), while the EP\u2019s subcommittee on security and defence has been upgraded to a full standing committee.<\/p>\n The EU, conceived foremost as an economic area, could learn from the UK\u2019s long history of warfighting. When it left the EU, it left France as the bloc\u2019s only nuclear-armed and major military power.<\/p>\n A clearer and shared sense of danger has given the UK and EU more reason to work together. The UK was an early target of covert Russian action against Western interests, such as nerve-agent poisonings<\/a>, cyber attacks<\/a> and Russian involvement in democratic processes<\/a> like Brexit. These kinds of incidents<\/a> have become more common in the EU.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we take collective responsibility on procurement as allies in Europe, rather than as individual nations, we will be in a much stronger place to deter any possible aggressor,\u201d Helen Maguire, the UK Liberal Democrats\u2019 defence spokesperson, told The Parliament.<\/p>\n The UK is not as detached from the EU as Brexit fans might like to think. No amount of legislation or regulation can change geographic realities, a factor that weighs on relations between the two players.<\/p>\n \u201cThe United Kingdom is not an island. It has a land border with a member state,\u201d Jonathan Faull, the chair of European public affairs at Brunswick Group, a policy advisory,\u00a0and former Director General of the Task Force for Strategic Issues related to the UK Referendum told The Parliament.<\/p>\n The border between the UK\u2019s Northern Ireland and the EU\u2019s Republic of Ireland was one of the most contentious issues during Brexit negotiations. The Northern Ireland Protocol and Windsor Framework were both<\/a> adopted to avoid a hard border between the two, a key component of the Good Friday agreement<\/a> that ended decades of violence. \u00a0<\/p>\n That means the physical UK-EU border is not only an economic issue, but a security one, too.<\/p>\n Starmer visits Brussels on Monday, on an EU invitation to an \u201cinformal EU leaders’ retreat,\u201d alongside NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. The renewed outreach could rub Leave voters the wrong way, as Brexiteers campaigned partly on warnings<\/a> of the UK armed forces becoming subservient<\/a> to an umbrella European one.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody is talking about a European army, which was a great scare story of the referendum campaign,\u201d Faull said. \u201cBut there will be military cooperation.\u201d<\/p>\n The Trump card<\/strong><\/p>\n US President Donald Trump\u2019s apparent ambivalence regarding European security has been an additional incentive for the two sides to work more closely together.<\/p>\n Remove the US and\u00a0NATO loses over half<\/a> of its fighter and ground attack aircraft. The US also provides logistical, intelligence, and command and control capabilities.<\/p>\n \u201cWith President Trump now in office, fixing our broken relationship with Europe is more important than ever before,\u201d Maguire said.<\/p>\n With many European countries having barely made it to the NATO guideline of spending two per cent of GDP on defence, pressure is already mounting to bump this to three, four or even five per cent \u2014 as Trump\u00a0recently demanded<\/a>.<\/p>\n NATO’s European contingent, including the UK, has yet to commit to a new spending target. In an address in December, alliance Secretary-General Mark Rutte said whatever it is, it must be because allies call for it \u2014 not because Trump has demanded it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt will be as much as we actually need to respond to the threats coming from the Russian Federation,\u201d McAllister said.<\/p>\n Defence first, more cooperation later?<\/strong><\/p>\n Where defence goes, other areas may follow. Starmer’s predecessor, the Conservative Rishi Sunak, put the UK back into Horizon Europe \u2014 the EU’s research and innovation fund. It reconnects British researchers and academics with more financial and project resources.<\/p>\n Upon leaving Horizon in 2020, the UK took<\/a> back \u00a31.6 billion (\u20ac1.8 billion) of a larger pot of money it had dedicated to the fund. Having rejoined, it’s set to contribute<\/a> \u20ac2.4 billion annually.<\/p>\n Whether academic exchange bleeds into other kinds will be the focus on negotiations to come. A much-discussed mobility scheme may be inching forward<\/a>. If Brits and EU citizens start to have an easier time living, working and studying in the other’s territory, the two sides would also have to discuss securing rights.<\/p>\n Starmer has expressed interest in relinking<\/a> the UK’s emissions trading programme, which aims to meet net-zero goals. It could also help to avoid trade friction when the EU imposes carbon-based tariffs<\/a> on imports. Any broader integration, such as re-entering the single market akin to how countries like Norway and Switzerland interact with the EU, remains off the table.<\/p>\n Given the long list of possible points of cooperation, defence talks could serve as a door-opener, as they are \u201cgetting people back talking to each other,\u201d Faull said.<\/p>\n Starmer’s core interest is helping his country’s post-Brexit economy, which saw a \u00a327 billion (\u20ac36.5 billion) loss in goods exports in 2022, according<\/a> to a study by the London School of Economics, due to Brexit-related trading restrictions to the EU. That accounted for more than 6% of that type of UK trade.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody wants to go back to the chaos of the Brexit years,\u201d Maguire said. \u201cBut I think the vast majority<\/a> of people want the new government to take pragmatic steps to help boost the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n