Putin proves why the UK needs Europe more than ever

Just for once, Theresa May and her soon-to-be-ex counterparts in the European Council will be relieved that they won’t have to spoil their digestion by a yet another postprandial wrangle about Brexit. Flawed as it is, the draft transition deal is more or less settled (under the joint caveat that “nothing is agree until everything is agreed”), and the leaders’ summit meeting and traditional dinner will only be concerned with rubber stamping it

Instead they can, nuclear powers and microstates alike, turn their gaze upwards instead to geopolitics and constructing a common front towards Russian aggression. It is an interesting prototype or test case for the common security, defence and foreign policy provisions of the eventual EU-UK treaty, areas where both sides are, or appear to be, anxious to maintain and deepen cooperation, even as Britain leaves the European Union.

The auguries have been mixed. While France and Germany have been more or less supportive, there have been unusual splits within the EU bureaucracy itself. Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, inexplicably, sent a congratulatory note to Vladimir Putin after his election as President of the Russian Federation, yet the President of the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt and the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, refused to do so, and made their displeasure at Mr Juncker’s initiative known. When the lives of British subjects and residents in Salisbury have been endangered by a Russian nerve agent it was, at best, tactless, for Mr Juncker to tell Mr Putin that: “Our common objective should be to re-establish a cooperative pan-European security order. I hope that you will use your fourth term in office to pursue this goal. I will always be a partner in this endeavour.” Mr Juncker should be reminded that what happened in Wiltshire could also have happened in Luxemburg, his home state. So egregious was this faux pas that it has probably moved sentiment towards Britain, a perverse result that is nonetheless welcome.

Yet the undiplomatic diplomacy of Jean-Claude Juncker is not the only obstacle to a united European front. There are countries in the European Union – Sweden, Ireland, Finland, and Austria – who have a long and honourable history of neutrality. They are not members of Nato and, despite signing up to various commitments about European common defence and security policy, have no absolute treaty obligations to use force if one fellow member state finds themselves under attack. The EU does not yet have the “Article 5” obligation to assist in the Nato treaty. The fact that some neutrals are reviewing their neutrality in the light of Russian ambitions has not yet changed that formal stance. Then there are others, such as Greece and Hungary, who display much less hostility both towards Russia and towards President Putin’s brand of authoritarian leadership. On the other side though, we find nations, such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Poland, who have sound reason to fear Russian territorial ambitions. It is well within living memory, after all, that the three Baltic republics were integral parts of the Soviet Union. Poland, Finland and others have almost as long and just as bitter an experience of Russian or Soviet domination.

The upshot of this? An illustration of why the British need Europe – and why the Europeans need Britain. Whatever divisions there are within the European “family”, either homegrown or fomented by Russia, the UK is stronger with some European support than with none. The closer a working relationship with the EU27 that can be achieved in the future treaty the better: it will be decisively in the British national interest. One of the few hopeful developments in recent weeks has been this growing consensus around European security solidarity. Everyone in Brussels and London perhaps realises at the backs of their minds that America may not be as reliable an ally as once we assumed.

Meanwhile Sir Vince Cable, seemingly on freelance manoeuvres, claims that a number of European leaders would wish the UK to stay in the EU and would favour a second referendum on the Brexit terms. Officially they have scrambled to dismiss the idea. And yet it has sometimes openly acknowledged that the EU would be perfectly content to see Article 50 cancelled, and the British to stay and find a new arrangement with the EU, presumably based on the one David Cameron negotiated before he lost the 2016 referendum. That may be unrealistic, but the outlines of a final Brexit deal – comprising the exit terms, transition period and final trade agreement – could easily be presented to the British people in a final vote.

Given the difficulties surrounding the Irish border question and the inevitable economic damage that will be done even under the most favourable assumptions, the arguments for a second referendum are increasingly compelling. It is not only a democratic imperative to allow the people the last say on something they could not have foreseen two years ago; but also the balance of opinion in the Conservative parliamentary party – always in favour of Remain – may well be shifting towards seeking a final popular endorsement of what the Government agrees with the EU. None of that will emerge from this EU summit, but a new habit of working together may just be developing.