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Going anywhere nice this summer?
No, me neither, judging by the warning from the Ryanair boss, Michael O’Leary, that a global shortage of jet fuel caused by the Iran war may soon lead to cancelled flights. Suddenly a week in Cornwall looks a safer bet, though even that will be a stretch for some families as the cost of long car journeys heads through the roof. When the representatives of more than 40 countries held talks in London earlier this week to discuss unblocking the strait of Hormuz, they convened virtually, not in person. This is no time to be seen boarding a private jet.
As Donald Trump prepares to walk away from the hornets’ nest he so recklessly poked, the rest of the world is now bracing to inevitably get stung. Keir Starmer opened an unusually downbeat local election campaign this week by warning that the coming months won’t be easy, which would be an almost comical understatement except there’s nothing remotely funny about the prospect of American hubris in the Gulf triggering a global economic crisis. Yet the one shaft of sunlight in the gloom was Starmer’s argument – echoing that made recently by Rachel Reeves – that volatile times mean a closer partnership with Europe is firmly in Britain’s national interest. Real patriotism, in other words, isn’t about stringing union jacks from lamp-posts, but defending your country from the mounting threats it faces, in a world grown too dangerous to indulge the isolationists’ fantasies any longer.
It’s 10 years this June since Britain voted to leave the EU, though it feels longer: 10 years since Brexit was Brexit and we were going to make a success of it, a line that now makes its architects visibly squirm. (When was the last time you heard Nigel Farage mention Brexit?) It’s remainers, sensing the tide turning finally in their favour, who want to make a big deal of an anniversary that leavers would seemingly rather forget.
If there were a referendum tomorrow, 63% of Britons would vote to rejoin the EU, according to recent YouGov polling. Since rejoin would probably win an even bigger landslide in many of the urban seats up for election in May, a cynic might say Starmer had his reasons for suddenly warming to Brussels and cooling on Washington. But at Easter, let’s not be churlish about this minor miracle, not least as it’s not confined to Britain.
Like a tyrannical father who can’t understand why his adult children are no longer talking to him, Donald Trump seemingly blames everyone but himself for the US’s growing isolation in this war. But he is the one who pushed his country’s closest friends away, despite their best efforts to stay close. The playground insults openly flying across the Atlantic, with Trump taunting Emmanuel Macron over his marriage and mocking Starmer’s refusal to send Britain’s supposedly “old, broken down aircraft carriers” to the Gulf, are a symptom, not a cause, of a broken relationship. What kind of ally publicly rubbishes their defence partner’s kit, advertising weakness to their enemies? The kind, of course, who attempted to annex Greenland in January and now threatens to walk away from Nato altogether. Though Britain still hasn’t given up entirely on the relationship, with the king facing an increasingly awkward-looking state visit to Washington this month, you can’t keep building bridges for ever to someone who keeps setting fire to them. Even Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, once seen as the closest European leader to Trump, declined US requests this week to use a Sicilian airbase.
The Greenland crisis taught European leaders that not only is the US unlikely to save them in a crisis, but increasingly it may be the crisis, encouraging them to huddle closer to each other for protection and blurring the lines between EU and non-EU members with a shared interest in defence. Now the threat of a destabilising recession made in Washington is only likely to encourage further circling of the wagons.
Back in Britain, all this comes just as Downing Street is finally beginning to realise that it can never be tough enough on immigration to please Reform UK voters, and that all it’s achieved by trying is to boost the Greens. Though the idea of winning people back instead by tackling the cost of living looks almost impossible in the short term, in the long term Labour’s best hope is almost certainly unwinding a hard Brexit thought to have knocked up to 8% off GDP and a whopping 18% off investment. The one good thing about having voted to repeatedly bang your head against a brick wall, it turns out, is that it’s within your power to stop.
Starmer’s close ally Nick Thomas-Symonds has accordingly spent months negotiating a deal that skirts tactfully around Labour’s manifesto commitment not to bring back freedom of movement, the last real remaining live rail of Brexit politics. But the idea of a youth mobility scheme giving the under-25s a taste of work and study abroad is now popular even with leave voters, while this week’s news that closer alignment with EU rules on food and drink might mean the relabelling of marmalade – the kind of thing that once reliably enraged Brexiters – barely elicits a shrug any more. Who cares about jam, after all we’ve been through? Little by little, month by month, Britain and Europe are sidling closer.
It isn’t all going to be plain sailing. Though partners in defence, we are still sometimes rivals in trade, each seeking a competitive edge. If the Gulf remains blocked then countries around the world may soon be competing for frighteningly scarce resources, from oil to medicines, and anyone who watched shoppers fighting over loo roll on the eve of lockdown knows that rarely brings out the best in anyone. But as every family finds out, a crisis can either bring you closer together or push you further apart, and so far Europe seems to be choosing unity.
Sadly, Britain isn’t going to rejoin the EU tomorrow: the union as we left it no longer even exists, having moved on without us. But the idea of building something new, at speed, no longer seems unrealistic. The will is there, if not yet the way; what’s needed is a little political courage. Like a cheating partner who regrets the affair the minute they’re caught, Britain has learned the hard way that we were fools to take this relationship for granted. If the stars have aligned to give us a second chance, we can’t afford to throw it away.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here
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