Trading Relationships with Europe — House of Commons, 2015-03-10
Topic: International Affairs
James Gordon Brown (Labour, Centre-left): I have given way once, and I have to get through this There is no doubt that millions of our fellow citizens now feel more insecure than ever because of the bewildering pace and destructiveness of what seems to them to be an out-of-control and uncontrollable global economy. They are looking for someone or something to shelter, insulate, protect and cushion them from these bewildering and often alien forces that are on occasion taking their livelihoods from them. They are looking for someone to hold responsible, and they are now being urged to turn what started off as an economic protest, rather than cultural prejudice, into a culture war whose main weapon is to blame foreigners, target immigrants and engender a siege mentality against the outsider. In this culture war, arid statistics on exports and investment from well-meaning, London establishment-led, corporate-financed campaigns by the great and the good, who will be accused of being elites who do not understand Britain, will appear to many to be no match for the cultural charge from the right that Britain has ceased to be the Britain that they know and love. We cannot win in a culture war which asserts that Britain is no longer a country we recognise just with factsheets about the percentage rises and falls in business investment. Technical arguments are not enough to trump cultural grievances. When we are fighting back in a culture war that others have started, we must take on one strongly felt set of beliefs with another strongly felt set of beliefs If we are to win hearts as well as minds, our core message must be bigger than the business case and bigger even than the principled case for engagement in Europe. We must tell the British people not just about our patriotism and our historic role at the hinges of history but about how, through putting our enduring progressive British values to work, we will lead in, and shape the future of, this continent. The Britain that has consistently championed toleration, liberty and social responsibility before any other country in Europe—and that, as far back as the days of Adam Smith, invented the idea of civic society and mutual obligation, influencing Europe massively in the process—is ready once again to lead a progressive movement mobilising Europe towards the greatest challenge we face: to make the global economy and global change work for people by tackling their injustices, their inequities and their unfairnesses, and by giving globalisation what it most needs now—a human face Let no one tell us that the Britain that changed the world in every century in modern times is today some powerless, hapless victim unable to wield power in Europe for good. And let no sceptic tell us that we need to be an impotent bystander when we are, by our history, our values and our temperament, the country that is best equipped to lead Europe forward So let us deal confidently with the argument that the European single market somehow hobbles our trade with the rest of the world and undermines London. Let us show that London’s unique role, essentially one of bringing together financial services for the continent, could not now so easily be performed outside the European Union. Let us in championing European reform avoid another trap of representing pro-Europeans as the status quo and anti-Europeans as change. Let us be honest with the British people that those who say that if we exit we can retain the benefits and ditch the burdens have not thought through the alternatives, including the folly of the Switzerland or Norwegian alternatives to membership— even the Norwegians warn against the Norwegian option—which leave us subject to European rules but with no vote in shaping them. To rephrase the aphorism, we would be out of Europe but still run by Europe Let me end by saying that positioning ourselves half in, half out, as a Britain that is somehow semi-detached and disengaged, the Britain of the empty chair even when we are in the room, is already making us weaker than we have been before. We have been irrelevant on the Greek crisis, a fringe player on climate change and a mere spectator in the debate that could have shaped a European growth policy. We are marginal on Ukraine, with Ministers looking faintly ludicrous as, in one and the same breath, they say, "Russia must be confronted with a more united Europe," and, "By the way, we are thinking of leaving Europe." In a few years’ time, as the German population falls, Britain can once again become Europe’s biggest and most powerful economy. It would be a terrible irony if, just at the moment we are in an even stronger position to lead in this more interdependent world, Britain were to opt out, leaving Europe divided, Russia empowered, the United States bypassing us for a French-German axis and Scotland threatening to leave a non-European UK. An England that glories in isolation is not the England that I know and love Instead we must stand up for a Britain leading Europe, not leaving Europe, and for a Britain that has always seen the English channel not as a moat but as a highway and the North sea not as a defence against engagement in the world but as the route to it. In doing so, we have shaped the destiny of Europe and the world and it is only those defeatists who claim to be championing a patriotic future but who have, in fact, given up on British leadership in Europe who will say that we cannot make leading rather than leaving Europe our mission again I stand for Britain in Europe because just as I came into this House believing in Britain, I leave it believing in a Britain that can lead in Europe. I will never stop believing in that vision of Britain’s future.