James Roth: Good evening. I'm James Roth, Deputy Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. On behalf of Alan Price, Director of the Library, and Steven Rothstein, Executive Director of the Foundation, and all of our Library and Foundation colleagues, thank you for coming this evening.
I would also like to acknowledge the generous support of our underwriters at the Kennedy Library Forums: lead sponsors Bank of America, the Lowell Institute; and our media sponsors, the Boston Globe, Xfinity, and WBUR.
I'm also delighted to welcome all of you who are watching tonight's program online.
And I'd like to take a little bit— a moment and please ask everyone to check your phones and make sure that you've silenced them tonight. Thank you very much for that. I should do it myself. [laughter]
The United States and the United Kingdom are often said to have a special relationship because of the many historical and cultural ties between the two nations. John F. Kennedy certainly had a special relationship with the United Kingdom from the time he spent living in and studying the country as a young man, to his visits there as President of the United States. We are so pleased to have this timely opportunity to explore the significant chapter in the United Kingdom's politics and international relations in depth this evening.
And now it's my pleasure to introduce tonight's panelists. Gerard Baker is editor-at-large at the Wall Street Journal. He is the former editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal. He served as editor-in-chief between 2013 and 2018 and was deputy editor-in-chief between 2009 and 2013. Previously, he was US editor and assistant editor of The Times of London, and in 1994 he joined the Financial Times as Tokyo correspondent, moving on to head the paper's Washington bureau and serving as the FT's chief US commentator. He also covered economics for the BBC and worked as an economist at the Bank of England and Lloyd's.
Ambassador Nicholas Burns is the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Professor Burns — excuse me . Professor Burns served in the United States government for 27 years. As a career foreign service officer, he served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2005 to 2008. He also served as US Ambassador to NATO, Ambassador to Greece, and on the National Security Council at the White House, among other assignments.
Dr. Karen Donfried is president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening transatlantic cooperation. She has previously served as the German Marshall Fund's senior director of policy programs and executive vice president, as well as special assistant to the President and senior director for European Affairs on the National Security Council at the White House, a national intelligence officer for Europe on the National Intelligence Council, European specialist at the Congressional Research Service, and on the State Department's policy planning staff.
I'm also pleased to introduce our moderator for this evening, Elaine Papoulias — I always mess up somebody’s names and tonight is yours — Papoulias. Elaine Papoulias is the executive director of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University. From 1991 to 2012, she served at the Harvard Kennedy School as director of the Kokkalis Program on Southeastern Europe, integrating this region into academic and executive education programs, as well as co-curricular initiatives across the University. Papoulias's professional experiences include advisory, public affairs, communications, and analytical work for government agencies, political candidates, and nonprofit institutions, as well as private companies across a multitude of sectors.
Please join me in welcoming our special guests. [applause]
Elaine Papoulias: Thank you for that warm introduction. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Thank you to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, not only for convening us tonight for this important discussion, but for being a constant source of inspiration and all of the knowledge that disseminates.
This morning as I fed my seven-month-old puppy, I thought about what was to come later in the day and a rather odd parallel arose in my mind. As my puppy scattered its food around the floor, a very witty British expression came to mind that not only fit that morning situation, but kind of fit my thought about Brexit – a dog's breakfast. And I hope there are enough Brits in the room that that resonates with. It means a chaotic mess. Well, our job tonight will be to dispel all of that chaotic mess from your mind and really straighten out that dog's breakfast. And I think our panelists here, we're very fortunate that they have so much knowledge and really will help us understand what seems to be a minute-by-minute changing situation.
In all seriousness, what we're witnessing in the UK are really momentous developments in a very short space of time. Especially in these last days of tumult when Parliament is shuttered, politicians are defecting by the hour and being sent out of their party. This has really been an unprecedent time— an unprecedented time in UK politics, so much so that my colleague at Harvard, renowned professor of history David Armitage, who also is of British descent, and who has characterized this as perhaps the greatest constitutional crisis in England since the 17th century.
So how did we get here? Gerry, maybe I can ask you to take us back a little bit to those days of the referendum in 2016. To those of us that were watching EU developments closely, it sort of reminded us of a referendum that took place maybe almost a year before that in 2015 in Greece. The situation was quite different, but that referendum was precipitated by a very unprecedented and momentous economic crisis. To my mind, the UK did not face such extreme pressures, so bring us up to speed, and please share with us your thoughts on how did we get to the referendum? And how ultimately did the British people choose to leave the EU?
Gerard Baker: We have about an hour-and-a-half for that answer. [laughter]
Elaine Papoulias: Yes.
Gerard Baker: It's a great pleasure to be here. Thank you very much, indeed, for inviting me. It's a real pleasure to be in Boston and to be at this very august institution, this Library, and a particular pleasure to see so many of you come out this evening and be prepared to listen to this discussion. I hope to answer some questions. I can only imagine that schadenfreude is a very powerful motivator. [laughter] As the only Englishman on the panel, I fully expect to receive the brunt of your contempt for what's been going on in Britain.
Well, Elaine, let me try to answer that. I think it's important to say, while the dog's breakfast is a very, very apt description of what's been going on in Britain – and certainly to any outsider used to the spectacle and the idea that the British are these very pragmatic, non-ideological people who figure out a way to just get things done without falling apart, without challenging historical constitutional procedures or norms too seriously – I mean this is after all a country that has had essentially at least 330 years of unbroken constitutional government and arguably 1000 years of history without fundamental interference or fundamental disruption over its history – so it is a pretty strange spectacle to see what's going on.
But there are a lot of misunderstandings. There is a lot of misinformation, especially, unfortunately, in the American media – you won't be surprised to hear that [laughter] – about what's going on in the UK, so let me try and give a little bit of context. And I'm not going to take an hour-and-a-half, but it might take a few minutes. And I'll try to give a little bit about historical context.
The first thing to remember when one thinks about the 2016 referendum and the British decision in that referendum to choose by a narrow margin – narrow, but decisive margin; 52 to 48%, on a high turnout by British electoral standards – the first thing to understand is that Britain's long been a very unenthusiastic member of the European Union. Britain, remember, initially, applied to join the European Union in the 1960s when just after the European Economic Community, as it was then, was founded, and was rebuffed. And then was very ambivalent about whether or not it really wanted even to be in the EU.
We joined the EU in the end – again, the European Economic Community as it was – in 1973. That was then put to a referendum, a confirmatory referendum, in 1975, and the British people voted by a large margin then to stay in the European Union. So that was a solid vote in favor. But it was a vote to join an institution that was – and it's important to remember this – an economic community. It was essentially– in fact, it was called the Common Market. It was a trading organization, a free trade area; six countries at the time and when Britain joined and two others joined at the same time, it became nine.
Britain joined a free trade area because we thought it was in our economic interest. At the time, Britain was not in very healthy condition in the mid-1970s and the rest of Europe looked to be much healthier. So Britain joined that.
And steadily, over the years, after 1973/'75, the European community grew, first of all; a lot more countries joined in steady stages of expansion. And as it grew, it became more integrated and it pursued a strategy of becoming not just simply an economic union or a free trade area, a common market, it developed significant political ambitions. It developed all of the paraphernalia, if you like, of a kind of supranational state. It developed a flag and an anthem. And it’s, most importantly, it developed a legal and political structure that required a high level of surrender of sovereignty by the nation states that joined it and that were members of it. Now, Britain went along with this reluctantly. But it went along with it because it thought there were still economic benefits to be gained from being part of the Union.
In the early 1990s– in the late 1980s actually, Britain joined the exchange rate mechanism, which was the precursor to the euro, very reluctantly joined, and immediately – almost immediately – fell out again as a result of an economic crisis in Britain at the time. Britain never joined the common free movement area, the so-called Schengen Area, because it didn't like the idea of not being able to demand passport checks and things like that, didn't want to be part of that.
Britain, of course, famously didn't join the euro when it was launched in 1997; it didn't believe that the British economy was in any way aligned with – sufficiently aligned with – the members of the euro area, so it didn't join the euro.
So all along Britain was a reluctant member, very much opposed to the idea of political union and constantly pushing back at every effort that there was to tighten the political integration of Europe, and remained largely outside many of the structures of the European Union.
Then what happened in the early 2000s is, there were some quite dramatic changes. The first thing was, a lot of countries joined from Eastern Europe – Poland in particular, Hungary, Czech Republic, others joined – and immediately, under the rules of the European Union, which had been established by the single market and the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s, there was movement – free immigration, free migration – within the European Union. So these countries joined from, particularly Eastern Europe, relatively low income countries, and their workers immediately had the opportunity, their families immediately had the opportunity to go and live anywhere in the European Union.
Now, at this time the British economy was actually very dynamic and very strong. A lot of people wanted to go and work in the UK. And sure enough, year after year after year, net migration into the UK from the rest of the European Union was very high; in fact, the largest for most of those years.
Then we had the financial crisis in the European Union in 2010/2011/2012, which looked as though the European Union was under tremendous strain, led to some of the tensions that Elaine talked about that led to the Greek referendum in 2015.
So Britain, you must understand, Britain having been a reluctant member of certainly a political union, then confronted with these additional pressures, particularly the pressure of immigration – Britain's population expanded dramatically after immigration from the rest of the European Union after 2004/2005 – British people were becoming steadily more disenchanted with the European Union. There was a strong anti-EU movement within Britain, sort of personalized in the rather larger-than-life personality of Nigel Farage and his UKIP party. They won significant numbers of votes in consecutive elections. In fact, in the 2014 European elections, they were the largest party in the UK; they got the most votes in the UK. And their policy was to get Britain out of Europe.
Confronted with that, the conservative government at the time, David Cameron, felt he had no choice but to deal with this long-running political sore in Britain than to put the decision to the vote of the British, to a vote of all the British people. The reason for this is that the two parties were themselves divided. So you had the conservatives were divided, mostly in favor of staying in the EU, but yet a significant number of Leavers. Labor was more in favor of staying in the EU, but had also a number of people who certainly supported it who wanted to leave.
So this wasn't something that could be resolved in the traditional way through an election. So David Cameron decided the right thing to do was to have a referendum. The referendum took place in 2016. And the referendum was passed.
So we'll come on to more of these issues as we go on, but it's very important to remember that Britain was far and away the most reluctant member of the European Union. There were other countries, too, that expressed doubts. And by the way, there were other referendums in the 1990s in other countries against some of the integration. The Netherlands voted famously against, Denmark voted against, Ireland voted against certain measures of integration. But Britain was the one, Britain was the drag, if you like, on this process of integration and the one that was constantly demanding opt-outs from this integration – partly because of our history, because of our culture, because of the fact that Britain has, frankly, an unbroken history of parliamentary democracy, which no other European country has. Britain had never been subjected to the ideological tyrannies of either fascism or communism, which every single other member of the European Union had been subjected to one or the other, or both. Britain had an unbroken political history of independence and a very different political culture.
So Britain had always been a reluctant member. Joined in a kind of reluctant way thinking that it will be in our economic interest to do so. And then as the Union took on more and more of a political form and less and less of an economic area, Britain became more and more reluctant. And in the end, it resulted in the referendum of 2016 and the vote to leave.
Elaine Papoulias: So the referendum took place in 2016. It was a non-binding referendum, we should remember. And in 2017, to make that referendum binding, politicians took the measure to invoke Article 50. So here we are in 2019. Another question that is seemingly a simple question but has a long answer – and I would open this up to any of our panel to answer – why is it taking so long?
Gerard Baker: Well, I'll tell you why it's taking so long. [laughter] It's taking so long because there is a division between the views of the people and the views of the people who govern them. There is the British people voted, 52% to 48%, to leave. Seventeen-and-a-half million people voted to leave the European Union. That is more people than have voted for anything in British history. No general election has ever seen a party gain that many votes in an election in Britain – 17-and-a-half million people voted to leave.
They did that despite the fact that the government was against leaving. The opposition was against leaving. Every single major political party was against leaving – with the exception of the UKIP as it was then. The British establishment, if you can call it that – the civil service, the judiciary, the City of London, business, the media, the academy – was strongly against leaving. Right to this day, the Parliament – we had an election in 2017 – two-thirds of members of Parliament still didn't favor leaving; they voted against; they voted to remain in the European Union.
And they really spent the last three-and-a-half years, almost three-and-a-half years, essentially, while they have paid lip service to the result of the referendum– you said it's a non-binding referendum, Elaine; that is constitutionally true, but every single politician who took part in that referendum back in 2016 went to the Britain people and said, "If you vote for this, we will implement it, we promise to implement it. This is a referendum. It's not legally binding but we politically tell you, we promise, solemnly promise to you that whichever you vote, we will acknowledge and honor the results of the referendum." The Conservatives said that, Labor said that, the Liberal Democrats said that. And they also said repeatedly– and by the way, don't think there's going to be another vote, don't think you're going to get another chance to do this. This is it. This will be one vote for a generation. You vote in, we stay in. You vote out, we're out." So it wasn't legally binding, but it had tremendous political legitimacy in a way that very few votes have in British politics.
The problem is, the large majority of members of Parliament didn't want to leave, and they have sought ways to stop leaving. The government of–. Theresa May, herself, remember, voted to stay in the European Union, campaigned to stay in the European Union. She did her best to negotiate a deal with the European Union to try to get the UK out. But it was always going to be somewhat challenging for someone, and for a government that was fundamentally in favor of staying in the European Union to negotiate any kind of a really, really effective deal that would take Britain out.
So the single answer, Elaine, as to why three years later, is because there has been a tremendous resistance from the political establishment in Britain to implementing the results of the referendum.
Elaine Papoulias: Karen?
Karen Donfried: If I could just jump in. Because I think you could look at it a different way as well. You had 52% of the British who took part in the referendum saying, "We want to leave the EU." And then it was over to government to implement that decision. I think the 52% that voted to leave were not voting for a no-deal Brexit. What they had been sold is that the government would negotiate a withdrawal agreement with the European Union and there would be a controlled, and therefore smooth, exit from the EU.
Now, we can agree or disagree about whether the former prime minister, Theresa May, negotiated an acceptable deal with the EU, but she put a withdrawal agreement in front of Parliament and it was turned down three times; in part because her own party didn't vote for it.
So you now are in a situation where you have a British prime minister in Boris Johnson who has not been elected. He has been selected by a majority of Conservative Party members. And I think the number of people who elected him represent about .2% of the British public. And he is now trying to push through a no-deal Brexit that, I think would be hard to argue, has the popular support of a majority of British citizens.
Gerard Baker: First of all, I think making inferences as to what the British people were voting for beyond simply voting to leave the European Union is a dangerous one. I don't know whether people were voting to leave without a deal, with a deal, whatever. The question on the ballot paper in 2016 was, "Do you want Britain to remain a member of the European Union, or leave the European Union?"
What then happened – and again, I don't want to get too much in the weeds here, but it is quite important – what then happened is, having voted for it, the British Parliament acknowledged the result of the referendum, passed legislation to exercise Article 50 of the European Treaties, which is the clause of the treaty that allows countries to leave the European Union, that legislation that was passed in Parliament in March of 2017 explicitly said, "We will– The British government will negotiate to get the best possible withdrawal agreement with the European Union under the terms of the treaty, but if we're unable to get that agreement, we will leave without an agreement, without a deal." That was in the law; that was there, it was a law that was passed by two-thirds of Parliament at the time.
So, and then you talk about Boris Johnson coming in and not being elected, well, that's not uncommon. It's happened several times that British prime ministers, due to a change in the course of Parliament, a prime minister doesn't have a mandate. What Boris Johnson has been trying to do since he became leader of the party six weeks ago – unsuccessfully, I think it's fair to say; I think we can all say that right now – is to try to, he wants to get a deal. Remember 31st of October is still the deadline by which Britain is supposed to leave the European Union. He wants to get a deal with the European Union which will give them – give the UK – a decent economic arrangement, what they think will be a healthy economic arrangement with the EU, won't result in suddenly tariffs going up and suddenly regulatory barriers going up. He's trying to get that deal.
He believes that in order to get that deal, he needs to have the threat of leaving without a deal because a no-deal would be very bad for the UK, but would also be very bad for the EU. And the problem is that you say the Conservatives blocked, and it's true, the deal. Theresa May's deal that she came up with in the summer and late in the fall of 2018 was a deal that, in many people's eyes, was just not acceptable – not just the Conservatives; a certain number of Labor MPs and others, too – because of the special arrangements it made for Ireland. It essentially put the UK in a position where Northern Island, which is, as you know, is still part of the United Kingdom, there would be no border between the north and the south, between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and that would, in order to maintain that frictionless arrangement, which everybody wanted, the whole of the UK would have to remain within the Customs Union of the EU; meaning, Britain could not conduct its own trade policy, which is one of the main reasons for leaving the EU, without the permission of the EU, without the permission, the authorization of all 27 countries in the European Union.
That was an impossible position, candidly, for any country to be in. It meant that over a significant part of its territory, the UK would be surrendering a large part of economic sovereignty to the EU, and could only get out of that arrangement by mutual agreement. In other words, with the approval of the EU. As somebody pointed out, it would actually be harder for Britain to get out of that arrangement than it is for Britain to get out of the European Union.
So it's completely understandable why that was unacceptable. And by the way, negotiations go on to this moment and are happening right at this moment to try and find a better solution so that Britain can leave the EU with a better arrangement, a fair arrangement, one that protects the sovereignty of the United Kingdom while maintaining the economic advantages of obviously what everybody wants to avoid, avoiding the risk of a hard border between the north and the south.
Nicholas Burns: Elaine, can I say a word? [laughter]
Elaine Papoulias: Absolutely.
Gerard Baker: Please. Please.
Nicholas Burns: First of all, I want to say thanks to all of you for being here. It's always an honor to be at the Kennedy Library. It's such a great institution, one of our best and greatest institutions in the city of Boston. And I think President Kennedy's legacy is so profound for us right now. One of my not so unique observations, but one that I've been thinking about at breakfast this morning and other times is how sad a moment this is – to see these two great democracies, the United Kingdom and the United States, both in the state of existential crisis; Britain because of Brexit, the United States – and forgive me for being a little bit partisan; I'm no longer in the US government – because of the disastrous policies, the divisive policies of Donald Trump.
And we're the countries – think of FDR and Churchill – who offered what a lot of people call the foundational document of the democratic West, the Atlantic Charter of 1941. We're the countries that led the Allied victory in World War II. And there has been a special relationship. I felt it as a diplomat. There's no question that, even to this day, Britain's our closest strategic partner in the world. We have more trust in the government of London, and probably the government of Canberra, and also the government in Ottawa, than any other governments in the world. For good reason – our intelligence relationship with the United Kingdom, our defense relationship in NATO. And I was Ambassador to NATO in the Bush administration and felt that closeness with Britain. It's second to none.
And so, what's the American interest here? Gerry's given a very good, both brilliant explanation of how you came to this, your country, and perhaps even a defense of the difficulty the British government has had in struggling with this. And I don't minimize that at all. What's in our interest? Our interest is not to see the United Kingdom in existential crisis, the United Kingdom fundamentally weakened by this conflict.
And if Britain does leave – and I think that's probably still the likeliest scenario; they'll leave without a deal, they'll leave with a deal, they'll leave because there's a new election and maybe Boris Johnson comes back in a different coalition, but they're likely to leave, I think, still at this point – that's not going to be good for the United States. Because, at least for a period of time, Britain may eventually recover from leaving the European Union, but it's not exactly clear what's going to happen economically. And over the short term, five or ten years, Britain could be weaker economically and politically, focused on itself, not focused as much on its responsibilities globally. That's not in the interest of the United States.
It's not in the interest of the United States to see Britain out of the EU. The European Union is one of the most important partners – Karen and I have both worked very closely with the EU as American diplomats – that we have in the world. If we want to get anything done on climate change – and we should do that in the coming years – it has to be with the European Union. We are the two largest global economies. The EU actually, all the EU countries combined, has a larger economic footprint than that of the United States. We are fundamentally trading competitors, but also trading partners. And on most issues that we really care about – human rights, the survival and growth of democracy around the world, containing Vladimir Putin – we can't get much done without the European Union.
Britain is the second-largest economy in the EU. It's the strongest military in the EU. In my judgment, by far, the most globally oriented country in the EU because of Britain's past, because of the Commonwealth. And to see Britain come out of the EU weakens our relationship with this fundamental partner.
So I think it's important that the United States has a view on this. I think if you polled the United States Senate and asked 100 Senators, "Is it positive that Britain would leave the EU," I think there might be three or four members of the Senate who would agree with President Trump, that Britain ought to leave. That's been the Trump position since the day after the EU vote in June of 2016. I think the overwhelming majority of Republican and Democratic Senators say this is a mistake from an American point of view. It's going to harm Britain and therefore harm the United States.
My final point would be to say this: We have a real stake in the survival and prosperity and future of the Republic of Ireland. After all, we are in the capitol of Irish America right here. [laughter] And this might be the epicenter of the capital of Irish America. [applause] And as I have two Irish immigrant grandparents – my dad's parents came here well over 100 years ago from Ireland – it is just remarkable to see the growth in the economy, in the self-confidence, in the standard of living of the Irish people, to see that the per capita income in Ireland exceeds that of the per capita income in the United Kingdom. It makes us as Irish Americans feel proud.
The last thing we should want is to see a Brexit deal that harms Ireland, that imposes perhaps again a border, a real border, a customs border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland that undercuts the brilliance of the Good Friday Agreement that Senator Mitchell, George Mitchell, had such a strong hand in the Clinton administration in bringing forward. And it's been very good to see the Taoiseach in Ireland, the head of the government in Ireland, be so firm in opposition to a reimposition of that border, a hard border. It's been great, I think, and advantageous for the United States to see the European Union in Brussels stand up for Ireland.
It may be unfair to the British government. I know the Conservative Party, that somehow they've got to deal with Britain staying in the Customs Union, but there may be a way out because the Ulster Unionist Party, the Democratic Union Party of Northern Ireland is no longer as important to the British government. Perhaps the deal would be that Northern Ireland stays in the EU Customs agreement; the rest of the United Kingdom does not. That could be one way to skin the cat. But it's in the American interest that the Ireland Republic of not be harmed. It's been so good to see my friend Congressman Joe Kennedy stand up and say that he would work with the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives to block any free trade agreement between a British government and an American government, President Trump, if in fact Ireland was harmed, that's what Speaker Pelosi has said, that's what Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader has said. The Democrats are united in the United States Congress that they will block a free trade agreement between the UK and US, if the consequence of that is that Ireland is harmed.
And so, that's a real interest of the United States, and I think the people of Boston who care about Ireland have in this process. [applause]
Elaine Papoulias: Absolutely. Karen, I'd like to turn to you to broaden the discussion a little bit more toward the other members of the European Union. How have they reacted to the prospects of Brexit? Have individual members different positions on Brexit? And I'd like to ask you specifically about Germany and what principles do you think have guided Germany's position on Brexit?
Karen Donfried: I think we can also all be inspired by the example of President Kennedy when we think about the US relationship to Europe more broadly, and also the relationship to the UK, given that his father was ambassador to the UK, and whether it's the relationship to Ireland or Europe more broadly. Certainly, President Kennedy had a very deep belief in the power of the transatlantic relationship. And when we think about the UK leaving the EU, and how the other 27 EU members are reacting to it, including Ireland, I have to say, I tend to think of the stages of grief. You know, Kübler-Ross has these five stages of grief and I would say, you mentioned sadness, I think the overwhelming sentiment in Europe was how deeply sad it is that the second-largest economy in the European Union, the UK, would decide on balance that it would rather be outside of the European Union.
The UK is also one of the most capable Foreign and Security Policy actors in the EU. So it's been a tremendously important member of the EU. And from an American perspective, because of the special relationship and the fact that American sensibilities are very similar to British sensibilities when you talk about trade relationships, the UK has been a major advocate of free trade in the EU, open markets, no protectionism. And also on the Foreign and Security Policy front, it's been a very close ally of the US.
And when you look at how the European countries have responded to the referendum, I mean there were these different stages of, you know, denial and negotiating and sadness, but I would say all 27 today have landed at acceptance.
So of course it is for Brits to decide whether their country should continue to be a member of the EU. The US has interests here, the other European countries have interests here. But it's for Brits to decide.
The sad bit of it is, whether they leave on October 31 with or without a deal, it is not going to end this issue. The issue of Britain's relationship to Europe will continue to vex Brits for the rest of history, I think.
I mean, as Gerry pointed out, they weren't a founding member of the EU. There's always been a challenging relationship between Britain and the continent. And that's not going to change when they leave the EU. Why? Because for Britain, these countries will continue to be their most important allies, along with the US. The other 27 members of the EU are Britain's most important trading partners.
So even if Britain, on October 31, leaves without a deal, guess what? They're going to have to negotiate a new relationship with the EU. So it doesn't mean this issue goes away; it means you start a new phase of Britain's relationship to the EU.
So I think the hope is that the UK exit in the least damaging way for the UK, and therefore also for the rest of Europe. But the rest of Europe, the other 27 members, are saying, "Well, this is going to be bad for us because the UK's a big, powerful economy." But it's going to be even worse for the UK because there are 440 million Europeans who are not British citizens who will continue to benefit from a single market, a customs union. It's the UK that will be outside of that. And I think that explains why the other 27 have accepted that this may be what happens.
But if the UK were to ask for an extension of this deadline – October 31 is already an extension of an earlier deadline – I don't think there would be one European Union member state that would deny Prime Minister Johnson, or any UK prime minister, that extension. Because they don't want to be responsible for UK crashing out of the EU. These are still deeply important allies and partners.
And just to remind that most members of the European Union are also members of NATO. So when we talk about security relationships, the UK will continue to be a member of NATO, even once it leaves the EU.
So these lines may be drawn as black and white, but the relationships will continue to be intertwined going forward and Britain will have to define a new relationship to these countries, even when it's outside of the EU, and will have to define a new relationship to the European Union as an organization.
Elaine Papoulias: And on Germany, can you tell us a little bit about what Germany– what were the principles driving Germany's negotiations stance? And to push it a little bit further, will the UK's eventual exit from the EU increase the expectation that Germany will take more of a leadership position of Europe?
Karen Donfried: So Germany is Britain's most important trading partner in the EU. So Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands are the UK's biggest trading partners in the EU. Chancellor Merkel, Germany's chancellor, has been quite soft on the UK leaving the EU in terms of wanting to have this be as seamless a process as possible. So she's always been an advocate of giving extensions to the negotiating process. And part of that could be because of the economic relationship. Part of it is because for Germany – I think you can make the case – that of all EU member states, it is Germany that values the European Union the most. Because the European Union was the organization through which Germany remade itself after World War II. And it was the way that Germany rebuilt its relations to its European neighbors. So there are lots of reasons why the EU is extremely important to Germany.
And in April, when former prime minister Theresa May asked for an extension of the negotiating process, Angela Merkel was ready to give her a year. There were some other member states that said, "Well, let's go to the end of 2019." It was France that was driving the push to limit the time of the extension. And Macron, the French president's view was, "This has dragged on far too long. It is hijacking every other issue that the European Union needs to deal with, and there are a lot of big issues the EU needs to deal with. So we just need to move on. And if the Brits want to leave, let them leave, whether it's with a deal, without a deal."
But at the end of the day, Macron also didn't want to be responsible for the UK crashing out. So there was a consensus that Merkel was a very important part of, about how to manage the process.
Germany, a German-led EU, Germany doesn't want that. That's also why Germany doesn't want the UK to leave. Germany is much more comfortable in an EU that has three big member states – Germany, the UK and France – because of German history. France would be very happy to leave the EU. And Macron arguably today is actually the most powerful figure in the EU; he's really seized the moment and tried to provide leadership. Merkel also is at the end of her tenure, so we know that her term of office will end in 2021; it could end earlier depending on politics in Germany.
But I would point out that in every EU country, you see the rise of populism, and you see citizens unhappy with how they're being governed. The rest of the EU has actually seen support for membership in the EU increase because of what they see as a negative example of how this process of leaving has impacted the UK. But this disgruntlement with how citizens are being governed you see in every EU member state, whether it's Germany, whether it's the UK, whether it's France, whether it's Italy, whether it is Poland.
So there are larger issues at play here that are reshaping the political landscape in every European country.
Nicholas Burns: Elaine, if I could say one thing, maybe. If I were in the audience and was listening to the three of us, I think we're dealing with really dual challenges here. I think Gerry's major point that I heard him make, to me, is quite compelling. Britain's a democracy. They had a referendum. There was a clear vote to leave. Very difficult in a democracy to say if you're in government "we don't like what the British people said, so we're just going to ignore it or countermand it." The British people voted to leave. And until there's another referendum that might countermand that, and no one can predict what the results of another referendum would be, it does seem reasonable that the British government would figure out a way to leave.
From an American perspective, this has gone on for so long. It's been so injurious to Britain. I think what we can best hope for is some kind of decision, even if it's the decision to leave, that would inflict the least or the most minimal permanent damage on the United Kingdom. I think that's one point that I have.
The second point that goes along with that, Gerry and Karen, would be to say, but we're really going to miss Britain in the European Union, which is Karen's point. Because in a way, the British translated the United States into Brussels and translated the European Union back to us. When I was Under Secretary of State and we had 1000 fires to put out every day, I was kind of the daily diplomatic manager for the State Department, I would invariably call my British counterpart, John Sawers, whom you know, who was the senior career officer in the Foreign Office. And John understood better than I did how we could affect change in the EU, get our message across to the EU, and he often was able to give us some good insights into how to deal with the EU. That British voice very likely will be missing.
So can the United States find another country that could replace the United Kingdom? Not easily. Not easily because Germany is weakening right now, both economically I think under Merkel. And France, despite our alliance and despite our good feelings towards the French, the French don't see the world the way that Britain and the United States do.
So this is going to harm the United States. And that's why I think so many Americans, our leaders – with the exception of President Trump – so many people like us are anguished by this decision.
Gerard Baker: Can I just say one word about the broader European context? Because I do think that's one element of the discussion and the debate in the UK, and the broader debate in Europe that really gets underplayed in America, and to some extent, unfortunately, was underplayed, has been underplayed in the United Kingdom, too, another fact set, another important reason why the British people voted to leave, which is that far from this kind of iconic model of prosperity and harmony and growth and rising in significant importance in the world, Europe is actually facing tremendous challenges. Karen touched on this a little bit; so did Nick.
Europe faces huge economic challenges. The European Union has had chronically weak growth for 20 years. Some countries, Italy, the third-largest economy as it will be in the European Union, has had basically no growth at all in the 21st century. Unemployment is extraordinarily high. You go to Italy – I spend a lot of time in Italy, thankfully; it's a beautiful country – depopulation is an extraordinary phenomenon. Demographic trends are terrible for them. Germany currently, which has had a pretty strong economy, Germany is almost certainly now in recession. The rest of Europe has had notoriously sluggish growth.
We now have a financial situation in Europe where the growth has been so weak, despite tremendous monetary stimulus for the last seven years, that you have this remarkable situation of negative interest rates throughout most of Europe, actually. So many, many countries in Europe now, companies, when they borrow money from the public, they're in the situation of a negative interest rate. Which means the people who are lending them the money are actually paying them for the privilege of lending them money. They're not receiving any interest; they're paying interest to lend governments, corporations money. This is not a sign of economic health. It is a sign of profound economic weakness and really structural economic weakness that is not going away.
So you have these deep-seated economic problems. On top of this, you have this enormous political problem. European Union's approach all through, every single time there has been any resistance to the integration that I talked about, the political union, the creation of the political union that European Union's leaders want to achieve, their response, every time there's been any pushback against that in the form of referendums, is just to double down and to go further and to do more political integration, to do more union. And you've just seen it, remarkably. The European Commission is about to take office on November the 1st, and the new president of the European Commission is a German woman, a former defense minister, called Ursula von der Leyen, and she gave her big speech just last week, a week or so ago, in which she laid out what her plans are for the European Union. And guess what? It's more. It's more Europe. They want closer economic union. They want a banking union. She talked about a defense, about a strength and defense capability for the European Union.
The British have always been outliers on this. I accept it. As I said in my opening remarks, the British have always been most reluctant. But almost all other countries have significant numbers of people who are very unhappy with this.
In the European parliamentary elections that we had in May, of the six largest countries in the European Union – the UK, Italy, France, Poland, Germany and Spain – in four of those countries, anti-EU parties actually won the largest share of the vote. In the UK, in Italy, in Poland and in France, the anti-EU party won the large share of the vote. Now, it wasn't a majority and in the end the populists, as they're called, didn't get a majority or close to majority in the European Parliament, but it shows you the level of dissatisfaction that there is in those countries with this continued headlong rush that the European Union has had towards close the union. You are seeing in Eastern Europe tremendous push, Eastern and Central Europe – Poland, Hungary in particular – pushback, tremendous pushback against the European Union centralizing attempts. Poland is in tremendous dispute right now over the constitutionality of some of the changes that it's made to its judiciary.
There is– I do want to challenge this notion that the European Union is this wonderful model of prosperity, harmony, political union, economic union. And Britain is making some astonishingly, extraordinary, incomprehensible acts of self-harm by deciding to extricate itself from it. It's really not the picture. I'm not saying the European Union is doomed or in some way headed for the rocks, but it has tremendous internal political challenges. And I think that for all the advantages that the economic union has undoubtedly brought, the political challenges that it stored up, the political opposition, the resentments that it stored up are rising. And I think anybody who thinks that it's just the Brits who have just sort of somehow had enough of this is making a very grave mistake.
And you will see, and especially if the new Commission under Ms von der Leyen presses ahead and if the new, whoever turns out to be the new German chancellor– it won't be the handpicked chancellor that Chancellor Merkel thought she was going to get. Who knows, it might actually be Chancellor Merkel for several more years. And if Emmanuel Macron of France, who has an approval rating, by the way, of 27%, according to the latest opinion polls– makes Donald Trump look like George Washington. [laughter]
Nicholas Burns: I'd never make that comparison.
Gerard Baker: A risky one, I accept, especially here. But these are going to be– this is not a settled, stable, prosperous, dynamic European Union. It's quite the opposite.
Nicholas Burns: Everything that Gerry just said is true. The EU has tremendous problems. No one knows that better than Karen, who was President Obama's advisor on the EU. Everything he said is true.
Here's what's also true. It's in the American interest that the European Union survive and succeed. Every American President – from Harry Truman responding to the Coal and Steel Community that brought France and Germany together; to Eisenhower with the Treaty of Rome; to John F. Kennedy, President Kennedy, with the Common Market; to President Bush, George HW Bush, with Maastricht and the single currency – every President until President Trump has thought that it's imperfect, it's beset by contradictions, it hasn't reached its truest potential. But it ended the hundreds of years' rivalry between France and Germany. It ended after 1871 the Franco-Prussian War, the 16 million dead of the First World War, the 60, six-zero, million dead of the Second World War. It ended these divisive hatreds between France and Germany. It's lifted 500 million Europeans to be the wealthiest place on earth, the place probably with the best standard of living in the world.
And it's been a great partner of the United States. Sometimes a competitor; sure, on trade issues. But when we have a tough fight around the world, particularly when it comes to the survival of democracy, what we can do to oppose authoritarian regimes, they're with us.
And so, it really pains me when President Trump describes the European Union as a competitor of the United States when he sees it only in terms of automobile exports affecting the wealth of American automobile companies, exports from Germany to the United States. That's all, in his transactional state of mind, he seems to see. I think most of us who served in government see the EU in its fuller dimension. It's a pivotal ally.
And so, Gerry's right. Lots of problems ahead for the EU, but, boy, we should be rooting for the EU to survive.
My last point: I just came from Greece last night. Spent five days there. Greece is the poorest country in the EU. It's had a troubled relationship with the EU. But Greek public opinion in the middle of all these problems is now supporting at a higher level the European Union because they don't want to disappear. And we're beginning to see that all over Europe. The European people don't want to have a centralized Brussels telling them what to do every day. But they don't want Brussels to disappear either.
And so, I think from the American perspective, we should hope this experiment succeeds.
Gerard Baker: Americans should be rooting for the EU, but for an EU of nation states. Because if the EU continues to push a federal union and try to create a single nation state, which is fundamentally its goal – some people, Ursula von der Leyen, in particular, but other leaders, too, make no secret of that – they are just going to store up deeper and deeper trouble. And that will lead to tension, and that will lead to much more friction. And that will not lead to the healthy, dynamic, coherent European Union that I agree the United States needs.
Karen Donfried: And I agree with Gerry that the European Union is not some utopia, and there are many issues and problems, and there's a great need for reform. I agree with Nick that it is in the interest of this country that the European Union succeed. But I would also say it is in the interest of Britain that the European Union succeed. And geography is destiny. You are not on the continent, but you are of Europe. And the decision that when your economic wellbeing, your political wellbeing is so connected to these 27 other countries, that it is more in Britain's interest to leave and not try to help steer the future to that European Union, that's the piece that I can't follow logically. The UK in its decades in the EU has had an enormous impact on how the EU has developed.
Gerard Baker: It's been a Franco-German project from the start. Britain has had minor influence at the margins. The idea that Britain, one country among 28, which has never been central to the European project, could fundamentally drive the direction of the European Union I think is one of the myths that the British people were sold for years and years and years by successive governments, which they finally wised up to.
Nicholas Burns: Gerry, I would say, in agreement with Karen, that your version and your description of the EU you wanted, a union of states, has been possible until now because Britain and the EU, operates by consensus, has blocked the more centralizing proposals and has kept a lot of power in national parliaments. And with Britain not there, I think the EU is going to be weaker and perhaps your vision, your fear of a more centralized Europe, might be more likely to occur.
Gerard Baker: Well, they didn't stop the most centralizing and the most federalizing project that the European Union has attempted in its history, which is the euro. And that has not been a resounding success economically. Certainly it's been a great success with Germany, we can all acknowledge that. But it's not all about Germany. Many other countries have suffered as a result of the constraints imposed by a single currency.
Elaine Papoulias: I will restrain myself from weighing in on this debate that I feel so passionate about, but I invite all of you in the audience and our panelists to join us any day of the week at the Center for the European Studies, my home base, where we debate these issues day in and day out.
But before we turn to our audience, I want to ask the panelists a final question. I think we all agree that it is really impossible to predict what will happen between now and the 31st of October and how Britain really will ultimately leave the EU. However, what will you be watching in the coming weeks to really give you clues about how things actually may develop between now and the time the UK exits?
Gerard Baker: I mean, the main thing to watch– again, without boring you with too much of the parliamentary detail, the situation as it stands is that Britain is due to leave the EU on the 31st of October. Parliament passed into law actually on Monday, was signed into law on Monday, which requires Boris Johnson to go to Brussels to try to negotiate a deal before the 31st of October so that Britain can leave the EU on the 31st of October without a deal. But which states explicitly and requires him to state if he doesn't get a deal that there will be an extension of the deadline, another extension of the deadline – it's like being a journalist actually, I have to say, constant deadlines that keep being dissolved and reemerging somewhere later down the road – another can-kicking exercise until the 31st of January.
Boris Johnson has said he won't do that, he won't ask for an extension. This is an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. Under the law, he does have to do that. We're going to have to see whether they find some legal loophole so he doesn't do that.
The main thing to watch though, more importantly, is whether he is able to negotiate in the seven weeks that remain some kind of a deal, which will revolve around this issue we talked about, the Northern Irish, the Irish backstop, the Northern Irish backstop. As exactly as Nick said, there is some interest I think in the possibility of something which, rather than keeping the whole of the United Kingdom in the Customs Union during this period of uncertainty, would only keep Northern Ireland within the Customs Union during that period of uncertainty. There is some interest in that. And it's not impossible, I think, that Boris Johnson would sign up to that.
But that's what we've got to watch for the next seven weeks, six or seven weeks, until there's an European Council meeting on October the 17th, I think, and 18th. So in the six weeks or whatever it is till then, whether Boris Johnson can somehow negotiate something with the rest of the Europeans, particularly involving Ireland, which will, he will then be able to take back to Parliament when Parliament resumes sitting in the middle of October, and say, "I have a deal. I know you've rejected the previous deal three times. This is a better deal. Vote for it and we'll leave the European Union on 31st of October."
I think there's a 50/50 chance that will happen. If it doesn't, I think we'll see a general election in Britain in probably late November/early December. And then we'll have a new Parliament and we'll have to see where the new Parliament is. But Boris Johnson's hope is that he wins that election, gets a majority, Britain is able to leave on the 31st of January with or without a deal. The opposition's hope is that, frankly, they win a majority somehow between them and they're able to negotiate a separate deal, legislate for a second referendum, all of those kind of things.
But for the immediate future, watch whether or not Boris Johnson is able and his government is able to negotiate some improvement, even some minor improvement on the deal that Theresa May got.
Elaine Papoulias: Nick?
Nicholas Burns: I'd just say Gerry has so much more at stake than the three of us.
Gerard Baker: I live in America!
Nicholas Burns: But you're a Brit.
Gerard Baker: I grew up in England.
Nicholas Burns: But you’re a Brit. There are three or four scenarios here of what could happen in the next couple of months. Prime Minister Johnson's had one of the worst starts of any prime minister in recent history. He's lost five major votes, consecutively, in the Parliament. It's been remarkable to see the Parliament block him at every turn.
So it's possible that Britain could leave by October 31st with a deal, and this compromise on Ireland being the crucial impact. I think as an American, I'd want to see that the Irish government was supporting it before I could support it.
It is also possible that this may be leading to new elections. And this is going to be difficult for Americans who care about Britain and who care about NATO and who care about our relationship because if Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labor Party, if Labor came in, either on its own or in a coalition, you would have a British prime minister who is fundamentally opposed to the European Union, but also fundamentally opposed to NATO, and who would be the most anti-American by ideology leader that Britain has ever had. At least since George III. [laughter]
And so, that cannot be in the interest of the United States.
Gerard Baker: He did support the IRA, though, I should say.
Nicholas Burns: And that's another problem.
Gerard Baker: I think so.
Nicholas Burns: Well, you look at all the Irish American leaders – I'm thinking of Senator Ted Kennedy and of course Hugh Carey and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, our very own Tip O'Neill, they all opposed the IRA and opposed those politicians that supported the IRA. So the prospect that Jeremy Corbyn, a Labor leader, could become prime minister is not in the American interest. But fundamentally, because we believe in democracy, I would think this is leading to a new election.
Watch the Liberal Democratic Party. Watch perhaps their rise as a third party and the possible coalition, perhaps of a conservative and liberal democratic government that could take Britain forward.
I think our greatest interest is in, what is the outcome that will harm Britain the least, that will have the least probability of leading to the breakup of the United Kingdom. We haven't even talked about that yet, that if Britain does come crashing out, does that then increase the probability that the Scots could decide to make another attempt to leave? Does it increase the possibility over the next 10 to 15 or 20 years of a united Ireland, given demographic rates in the northern part of Ireland where the Catholics are outpacing the Protestants? We could be looking at the dissolution of the United Kingdom, which was formed in 1707. And could your country become the United Kingdom of England and Wales? I don't think anyone wishes that. No one wishes to see Britain weakened. It's been such a great force in politics and a great friend to the United States.
So there's a lot at stake here.
Karen Donfried: I think the options on the table are the ones that have been articulated. It's possible that Boris Johnson could negotiate some amendment to the withdrawal agreement on October 17 and 18 when he meets with his EU counterparts. It is possible that absent such a deal, he asks for an extension, even though he has said, "I would rather be dead in a ditch than ask for an extension," one of the many colorful quotes we could give from the past week. It is also possible that he decides to resign – since he has said, "I would rather be dead in a ditch than ask for an extension." And there's a caretaker government that actually is the one that puts in place an extension that then leads you to an election in November.
I would say watch that election in November. I mean, as Nick has just illustrated, the choice is a complicated one for British voters. I mean, you have a lot of British voters who are uncomfortable with a no-deal Brexit because the IMF, for example, has said there would be an 8% decline in British GDP were there to be a no-deal Brexit. There's likely to be a real economic, negative economic impact on the UK. And even this government's own reporting suggests that there could be food and medicine shortages in the UK if there's a no-deal Brexit.
So there's some apprehension about voting for Boris Johnson. There's apprehension about voting for the Labor Party under Jeremy Corbyn, for the reasons that Nick suggested. Might you see other parties like the Liberal Democrats do well in an election? I think all bets are off; we just don't know.
And just one final point. Ireland has come up quite a bit, and Northern Ireland has come up quite a bit. And there are many negative things we can say about the EU or understand why Brits would be frustrated with the EU, but I do think, just to take one example, that the reason we have peace in Northern Ireland today is in part because the UK and the Republic of Ireland are members of the European Union. And that shared membership allowed those countries to take an age-old dispute and resolve it in a different way.
So yes, there's much we can malign about the EU, but let's not forget the history that all of these countries have traveled. And let's not turn our backs on really powerful good benefits that European integration has brought to Europe. It's easy to criticize and see the bad, but sometimes we can miss what have been positive developments that wouldn't have been possible either without the British role in those European developments, without US support for it. And I would just hope that we keep the holistic view of what the European Union means in our minds.
Elaine Papoulias: Thank you, Karen. So we'd really like to hear from the audience now. As you can see, there are two microphones set up right here at the front of the room. If you could step to the microphone and introduce yourself, and I know this audience will do a much better job than our audiences at Harvard who rarely put a question mark at the end of their question. [laughter] So I think you were first.
Q: Hello, I'm Ray, and I wanted to thank you for educating us about Brexit and about the EU as well. I'm curious, again from an American perspective, should we hope for a deal? We keep talking about a deal. Should we hope for that? And what would it look like? And I was curious just to have short input from each of the three of you as to what that would look like.
Nicholas Burns: I think the American interest here, as I see it, would be for Britain to stay in. But that scenario is probably, as Gerry says, the minority scenario. And so, if it's inevitable or highly probable that Britain is going to leave, leaving with an agreement with the EU might do the least damage to Britain, to its economy in the short term.
Karen has pointed out, Britain's going to have to retain a relationship in that scenario with the EU. We'll still have Britain in NATO. If Britain has to leave, that's what I'd favor, because I want to see the United Kingdom strong, not weakened. And I fear, but maybe I'm wrong about this, but I fear that Britain leaving without a deal has unforeseeable consequences, particularly on its economy. And I wouldn't want to see Britain have to go through that.
Gerard Baker: I think it would be preferable, probably, for the US if Britain secured a deal. I think the risks of no-deal have been massively overstated, and Britain has made a lot of preparations as has Ireland now and the rest of the European Union for no-deal. I don't think the disruption will be quite as bad. I don't think we're going to face starving– you're not going to see images of starving British people on the streets as a result of no-deal. It won't be good; no one's going to pretend, no one should pretend that it will be good; it will not be good. But it will not be disastrous.
Let me put one sort of slightly cynical theoretical proposition to you. If Britain does leave without a deal, I think it will absolutely increase the pressure in the UK to do other trade deals. Boris Johnson has made this very clear, that he wants trade deals as quickly as possible with other countries as soon as the UK leaves the EU. If Britain leaves without a deal, there will be some economic damage. Britain will look very quickly for a deal, and President Trump has said that he would be open to one, notwithstanding what Nick said about what Congress has done or said, what Democratic members of Congress have said. And actually, it could work out quite well for the US. The US could get a very good deal with the UK, on a trade deal, which after all the UK is a very significant trading partner for the US. Currently, the US has a small surplus with the UK; that could presumably be expanded quite dramatically if there were a deal.
So I'm not advocating it and I don't think it's likely to happen. But you could take a slightly cynical view and say, well, the cleaner the break with the EU and the cleaner the opportunity, the clearer the opportunity that Britain has to do trade deals, that could work out quite well for the US.
Elaine Papoulias: Karen, would you like to answer?
Karen Donfried: I agree with that. I just think it's exactly right to keep in mind what Gerry said, that unless there's a clean break, the UK cannot make trade deals with other countries because there's a transition period. So remember, this no-deal is about leaving without a withdrawal agreement, the terms of departure. When Britain does that, it still has to negotiate its new relationship to the EU. And in that transition period, it's not free to negotiate other free trade agreements.
So this is why it's quite a complicated process. So I just want to make sure everyone's following Gerry's point, that if you had a no-deal Brexit, it would mean the next day the UK could start negotiating with a Trump administration on a free trade agreement. But I certainly think it's preferable for the US if the UK leaves with a deal; I think it's better all around. I think it's better for the UK, and better for Europe. But we just don't know if that's going to be possible.
Elaine Papoulias: I see many people lining up here, so I'd like to ask that each questioner address their question to one member of the panel.
Karen Donfried: Or one of us will volunteer to answer it.
Q: I have to say I was really quite shocked when I first heard that Boris Johnson could close Parliament. And based on that, my questions are: Would that be similar if the United States President tried to close Congress? And why would the Queen approve, give Boris Johnson approval to do this?
Gerard Baker: I'm happy to take that. The prime minister closes Parliament usually every year. Actually it's been an unusually long Parliament, it's lasted longer than a year. Prime Minister under constitutional precedent convention asks the Queen to prorogue, as it's called, which means to suspend Parliament; so at the end of one sitting of Parliament pending the start of a new session of Parliament. It happens every year, generally. It hasn't happened for the last almost two years now.
It's a somewhat longer period, it's true that the prime minister has asked for this year, the longest period actually since 1945, and that's what's got everybody upset. But there is also, at the same time, in addition to a prorogation of Parliament, which is the formal suspension of Parliament, where Parliament doesn't sit, there is also a period when Parliament doesn't sit, even when it's not prorogued, which is around this time of year, when the parties hold their own conferences, their annual conferences, which is a three-week period, too.
So the total amount of time that this prime minister has suspended Parliament for is about three or four days longer than is typical. So there's been a lot of typically sort of hyperventilating US press coverage about this, which is probably why you got alarmed. And there is obviously no constitutional comparison with the United States because the UK is a parliamentary democracy where we don't have the separation of powers. The President has no power whatsoever under the Constitution to close the Congress; he just couldn't do it.
Q: I didn't know that they did that on a regular basis.
Gerard Baker: It happens every year.
Elaine Papoulias: Can I push you a little bit on that? So why has the closure of Parliament, then, created such, not only an outpour in US media, but also in the UK itself? We see protestors with signs saying "stop the coup." We see members of Boris Johnson's own Parliament really lamenting the fact that as someone who has taken up the mantle of ensuring that Brexit happens at all costs to restore the sovereignty of the UK and presumably of the UK's Parliament, shuttering it for debate at such a critical time.
Gerard Baker: So, part of the answer is I think the debates– the temperature in the UK has become so febrile that every single thing that happens on one side or the other is interpreted as the most drastic, desperate, devastating thing that's ever happened in British history. Whether it's the prorogation of Parliament, whether it is the idea of leaving the European Union itself without a deal, whether it is some of the minor constitutional provisions that have been envisaged, there is an incredibly hyperventilated atmosphere in the UK at the moment.
And what happened is that Boris Johnson announced this plan to prorogue Parliament two weeks ago at a point where nobody quite knew what was going to happen. Now, he said he did it purely as a routine thing to prepare for the next session of Parliament; everybody knows that's not really true, that he was trying to limit the amount of time that Parliament had to consider efforts to stop him from getting a no-deal.
As it happened, I think actually in political terms, that backfired. Because what happened was the opposition parties, knowing they only had a limited amount of time to do what they wanted to do, came together very quickly and were able to stop him from getting a no-deal.
So the same prime minister who has supposedly carried out a coup against his own country has been trying for the last week to dissolve Parliament to get a general election, to ask the people to vote for a new Parliament, and the opposition has been denying him that opportunity. So a prime minister who's supposedly so un-democratic that he can't work with Parliament is being stopped from actually getting the people to vote in a new one.
Elaine Papoulias: Let's go here.
Q: Something I've been confused about, and maybe you could just clarify for me, making good decisions in a democracy involves good information.
Gerard Baker: I’m sorry?
Q: Good information. And for some reason, I had the impression that during the Brexit campaign before the referendum, there was indications of some bad information and perhaps interference. And maybe I'm wrong. But I guess I would like clarification on that. And also, if there is a new election, how confident can we be that there will not be more bad information and possible interference? Are you confident that that might happen?
Gerard Baker: Let me just say, I’ll answer, if we decided to ignore the results of elections because we thought people were given bad information during the election, I don't think any single election that I've ever witnessed in my life would ever be allowed to stand. I mean, the idea there was something uniquely malevolent about what happened in the 2016 referendum, because politicians made exaggerated claims about what may happen, politicians earn their living by making exaggerated claims [laughter] to the population. There was a particular complaint that the Leave campaign claimed that the UK would save 350 million pounds a week. It was an exaggeration, but it was an exaggeration that's typical. At the same time, the Remain campaign made the most extraordinary assertions about what would happen if Britain voted to leave the European Union, which have not been borne out, and absolutely have no basis in fact.
Look, I agree with you. In an ideal world, we would have wonderful, perfect information. On the whole, we're fortunate in this country and in the UK and in most of our Western democracies that we do get good information. It gets mixed up sometimes with some bad information. We have to do what we can to try and make sure that people understand and are educated to know what is good information. But I think the idea that we can challenge a result we didn't like on the grounds that people were told lies in a campaign, I think that's something that we, again, would just invalidate every election that there's ever been.
Nicholas Burns: This is an important question. I think that Boris Johnson's brother, Jo Johnson, just resigned from the cabinet in the last few days. He wrote an article in a competitor paper of the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, back in November, saying, to your point, when the British voted on 16th-
Gerard Baker: June 23, 2016.
Nicholas Burns: Yes, thank you. June 23, 2016, they could not have possibly known what we know now three years later, the consequences for an exit, a Brexit from the European. He felt at the time – this is just this past November – that there ought to be a second referendum. Not because he wanted to fundamentally question the first. He said we know so much more. We're so much better informed as a population as to what the consequences are, three years later, in a democratic system he thought there ought to be a second referendum.
It's another way of answering your question – are voters well enough informed? The British people certainly know more now about the consequences, pro or con, than they did when they voted on June 23rd, three years ago.
Elaine Papoulias: Yes sir?
Q: So, I want to address my question to Mr. Burns. Speaking of Brexit and even on a larger scale the United States' relation with EU in the near future, politically what negative role Russia can play? And economically, what positive role China might play?
Nicholas Burns: Play in– in what context would the play?
Q: In constructing new relationship between United States and with this new EU.
Nicholas Burns: Well, I mean, certainly the European Union is one of the most significant economic powers in the world, so therefore when you think about China and Russia, the United States, the EU is a heavyweight, much stronger than Russia. But from another perspective, I value the EU because I'm opposed to authoritarianism in China. Certainly opposed to authoritarianism rule in Russia. Opposed to what the Chinese and Russians are doing to send an ideological message that their system is somehow superior to the democratic system. Certainly opposed to what Putin is doing in his invasion and occupation of Crimea and his annexation of Crimea. So I value the EU as a power that could help us check and limit the power of both Russia and China in the world today.
I think there's a worldwide battle for democracy and its future under way. Gerry and Karen have both spoken to elements of it. Our partnership is really with the democratic West, with the NATO countries who are also in large part the EU countries, rather than with Russia and China. So I don't see Russia and China having positive influence in Europe that would actually accentuate the interests of the United States. I think the reverse is true.
Elaine Papoulias: On this side?
Q: Hi, I'm Peter Metz from Needham. First, I want to thank you because I just learned in the past hour far more than I could have ever learned by reading hours of the New York Times or watching hours of television, even if it's the PBS News Hour. So thank you.
If I heard correctly, you said that the primary grievance that the British public had was that they were losing sovereignty. So my question is, then why do you need to bust out of this arrangement? Why not fix it? Why not fix the sovereignty part instead of disrupting all of the economic parts and the trading parts, and all that sort of stuff?
Gerard Baker: Because Britain is one country among 28. And under the terms of the various treaties that have created the European Union, there is a system of voting. Some votes are conducted by what's called qualified majority voting. But essentially you need a majority, you need to get a majority of people on your side. Britain has come close on occasions and has actually succeeded on occasions.
But in terms of facing down the overall project of Ever Closer Union, which is the Union's raison d'etre, if you like, Britain has not been able to do that because, again, partly because Britain has such a different political culture and has always had a different political approach, and certainly a different attitude and a different view of the functionality and of the purpose of the European Union.
So Britain's always, in that respect, been in a minority. It comes to a point, I think, in the end, where you have to say, can we continue in this organization whose aims we actually are fundamentally at variance with? Or would it be better, despite all the costs and all the concerns that my colleagues have very ably laid out, would it better actually just to get out? And the British people decided it would be better to get out.
Karen Donfried: If I can just make one small comment because we have talked a lot about sovereignty. The Brexit campaign was very successful with their slogan of "taking back control." But I think most EU member states would argue that they haven't surrendered sovereignty to Brussels, that what the EU is about is pooling sovereignty. And what they mean by that is that you as a sovereign nation would say, for example, I, as the UK, or Germany, or Luxembourg am going to be more powerful negotiating a free trade agreement with, for example, the United States as one of 28 than as the UK and the US.
And I know there's concern in the UK about what the quality of a free trade agreement with the US will be, because the UK is the much weaker partner in that negotiation. So the other 27 member states feel, on balance, they are gaining power by negotiating as one of 27 or 28 EU members.
So these concepts of sovereignty– and I don't want to debate them here, but I think it's important to not just look at this through the prism of surrendering sovereignty, that actually you could be more powerful as one of many than on your own.
Elaine Papoulias: As we seem to be getting close to the end of our time, why don't we take two questions from this side before we take the final one from this side?
Q: My name is Katie Schiller, and I'm from Wellesley and I'd like Gerry to answer this question. I've heard a lot about sovereignty and all these different things, and I've talked to some Harvard economist about why the British should or should not leave the EU. So I'd like to hear your opinion of why the British voted to leave.
Gerard Baker: As I said at the beginning, it is about sovereignty. Let me put it like this. And I always do this with my American friends who say to me, "Why on earth did Britain leave the EU? It's a great organization. Why would you possibly think of doing that? It's achieved such great things." And I don't deny that it has achieved many good things. I'm not one of those people who thinks it's been a disaster.
And I always say to them, Think about this, think about the situation in North America. The United States helped to create in the early 1990s NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, about to become USMCA, I think. But it created a free trade area where tariffs would be removed on large numbers of goods and the economies of North America, Canada and Mexico and the United States would all benefit. And sure enough, it did; it was absolutely right. That's what Britain joined in 1973, a free trade area.
But then imagine you Americans, imagine if, instead of it being a free trade area, it became the North American Union. And under the rules of the North American Union, the first thing is, there will be no borders between Canada and the United States, no effective borders. You'd have freedom of movement. So anybody who wanted to from Mexico or from Canada could come and live in the United States, could send their children to public schools in the United States, could use public health facilities insofar as they exist, could get jobs in the United States, could get public benefits in the United States, could live wherever they want. As many as they wanted, no limits, no immigration controls whatsoever because that's the law. Imagine if you had that.
And imagine if on top of that, the Supreme Court in Washington was no longer the Supreme Court of the United States, but instead you had a North American Supreme Court which sat maybe in Ottawa, let's say. And the Supreme Court of the United States and the Congress of the United States was subject to the authority of the North American Supreme Court. Imagine how you would think about that. Would you like that?
That's the situation that Europe has, that's literally the situation Europe has. No borders. No rights to control immigration whatsoever. If anybody wants to anywhere in the European Union can come and live in the UK, get public benefits, send their children to public schools, live, work, have every right that a UK citizen has, except for the right to vote. Even then in some circumstances they're allowed to vote.
And the UK Supreme Court, as it is now, the UK legal system and the Parliament is answerable to ultimately, and has been repeatedly been overruled by, the European Court of Justice. That is no longer, in other words, it is no longer the British sovereign legal system. British law is no longer sovereign within Britain. European law is sovereign within Britain.
This is something Britain tolerated for a long time with growing dissatisfaction, but in the end just wasn't prepared to tolerate it any longer, especially with the immigration issue because that became such a practical concern as opposed to sometimes the rather abstract concerns of law.
So I just ask you, think about that. That's what the European Union represents. And it's achieved, as I said, many great benefits for people as a result of that, but that's what sovereignty means. It means you no longer are essentially an independent country with your own sovereign rights and your control over your own laws and your own Parliament and your own leaders.
Nicholas Burns: And it's that system that has brought peace to Europe–
Gerard Baker: It's NATO that's brought peace to Europe, Nick, I think you know that very well.
Nicholas Burns: That has brought peace to Europe along with NATO. Because the two of them––
Gerard Baker: If it hadn't been for NATO, the Soviet Union would have invaded Western Europe and we'd all be speaking Russian.
Nicholas Burns: I was ambassador, I know something about it.
Gerard Baker: I know you do.
Nicholas Burns: Let me just complete the thought. It's that system that's brought peace to France and Germany into Europe.
Gerard Baker: It really isn't.
Nicholas Burns: It's that system that's lifted a thousand boats, that has made Europe more stable and peaceful and united. It's different for Britain because Britain was never fully in, it wasn't in at the beginning. And so I understand this tension inside Britain. But I wouldn't just, with a broad swath, paint this as some kind of failure because if you're from Luxembourg or Belgium or Greece or Germany or France or the Netherlands or Denmark, Italy, it's an unqualified better life. It's a safer place. It's more socially just. It's wealthier. It's more peaceful than Europe was before the Coal and Steel Community of 1948.
So it's one thing to argue what's best for Britain, but I wouldn't say what's best for Britain means that the EU has been a failure. I just reject that intellectually; it's wrong.
Gerard Baker: The United States kept the peace in Europe after 1945.
Nicholas Burns: We were a decisive factor. And I'm not running away from that.
Gerard Baker: Do you honestly think, given the economic and political condition in 1945, if the European Union hadn't been founded and if NATO had been founded, that somehow France and Germany would have gone to war at any point in the next 30 years? It's just inconceivable. It's absolutely inconceivable.
Nicholas Burns: So the United States has been a central factor in the peace of Europe through NATO. I know that because I served–
Gerard Baker: And now the Europeans reject that very security blanket under which they've lived for 50 years.
Nicholas Burns: –in the alliance and the Europeans are not rejecting NATO. Do you know that every European country went into Afghanistan with us, Gerry, after 9/11?
Gerard Baker: But they're not making contributions that are necessary to [simultaneous conversation]
Nicholas Burns: That they suffered 1000 combat deaths?
Gerard Baker: Sure.
Nicholas Burns: Just look at the data. I went to Afghanistan with my European colleagues, visited our troops there. They all went in to Afghanistan with us after 9/11. They have stayed there to this very day. I understand that Britain has had doubts about the EU, but I think it's quite wrong then to somehow damn the European Union as a failed experiment when it's been a success for the great majority of Europeans.
Gerard Baker: I didn't say it's been a failure. I said it's succeeded by removing sovereignty from nation states. And ultimately that's something you can do for a while; I don't think you can do it indefinitely.
Nicholas Burns: And not even in all respects because the European peoples in every country enjoy full sovereignty on some matters. They've devolved sovereignty, or pooled, as Karen said, on other matters. It's complicated.
Elaine Papoulias: It's hard to be the chair and stifle great debate, but I also have been asked to keep time. So I'm going to ask for these two last questions. Let's collect them as the final two, and then go to our speakers.
Q: I've got a question for Gerry. I, first of all, just very, very quickly want to say that as someone who wouldn't have been alive if my ancestors hadn't been able to come to Britain before we had any immigration laws, I just, as a British person, want to sincerely disagree with your overwhelmingly negative characterization of immigration to Britain. [applause] But that's not my question.
Gerard Baker: I'm totally in favor of immigration. I'm an immigrant myself to this country. I think countries should be able to determine, however– and I don't know what your ancestors were, but I suspect that the government was able to determine whether or not your ancestors were able to come to Britain. I think that’s a perfectly normal
Q: They came just came before the first immigration [simultaneous conversation]
Gerard Baker: It's one of these ridiculous canards, I'm afraid–
Q: But that’s not my question.
Gerard Baker: That is continually presented, that we are somehow xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner. It's completely unfair and completely untrue. The UK had very high levels of immigration before we joined the European Union. We had very high levels of immigration before the European Union introduced the notion of complete freedom of movement. It's just the question of whether or not a country can control the number of people who come within its borders. It's not being anti-immigrant.
Q: The question I want to ask you is, do you not agree that a significant political lesson we need to learn from this is that a prime minister should not call a referendum unless they're willing to pin their name to the recourse for change? You belittled politicians making exaggerations, but arguably if the prime minister who called the referendum had supported the recourse for change, the British public would have known who the negotiator was before we went to the vote. Journalists would have been able to hold that negotiator to account and asked them specific questions about how they were going to carry out the negotiation process, and we would have had many more answers than we would have done if David Cameron hadn't used the referendum as a political gamble when he was actually hoping that it resulted in no change whatsoever.
Elaine Papoulias: Okay. Thank you. And last question?
Q: My name is Audran [phonetic], and I'm an international exchange student from Germany. And my question is particularly addressed to the American gentleman in the center because you claim that – but also to Britain – because you claim that the United States is devoted to human rights and so on, how can you make this claim in the background that is not only this administration but also the Obama administration and throughout all history backs autocratic dictatorships, sends arms and weapons to them, like the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, which is slaughtering people in Yemen, and I mean slaughtering not killing because they're slaughtered. And I have to include Germany because we don't do enough against it, too. And also in background that so many people are drowning in the Mediterranean and are basically not allowed to embark on the coast, and so many people are dying in the Sonoran Desert. So how can you make this claim that the United States and also Britain and I include Germany because I don't want to be a hypocrite, is devoted to human rights?
Elaine Papoulias: Okay, we've got it, thank you.
Nicholas Burns: Thank you very much for your question. I would just say simply this is a very big subject. It would require a lot of conversation between you and me to get to the bottom of it. The creation of the United States, around one idea, of human freedom and human equality, was a revolutionary idea in 1775 and '6. And it is today. And we don't claim to be perfect, but the existence of our country, the promise of the Declaration of Independence, particularly the promise of the Constitution, to afford people individual rights, is one of the greatest ideas in the history of humanity. And our country represents that.
And I would extend that argument by saying our country and the United Kingdom have been the greatest defenders of human rights in the creation of the United Nations, in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Yes, we have sometimes during the Cold War, for example, aligned ourselves – not allied but aligned ourselves – with dictatorships and authoritarian governments. We have friendly relations with the United Arab Emirates and with Saudi Arabia, and both of those countries are human rights violators.
But in the main, we are the defenders of democracy and human rights in the world, compared to the other great powers, China and Russia. And that's why we're here tonight, to talk about the future of this great democratic space in Europe, the European Union, as well as the NATO countries.
And so, I don't agree, respectfully, with your question and the foundation of it, that somehow we should be ashamed in our country of our policy, our foreign policy. I'm not. I think we’re still– Lincoln said we're the last best hope of mankind. And I think given our power in the world, we have to be front and center doing what we have to do to live up to our ideals. Thank you very much. [applause]
Gerard Baker: On that I do agree with Nick. Just very quickly on the issue of negotiation. David Cameron did try to negotiate. The whole process, again, without boring you too much with detail, 2015, after David Cameron was elected prime minister with a majority, he went to Brussels and said, "Look, we promised a referendum because we think it's important because the country's divided and I need to settle this issue for the long term. And I can't settle it in the existing parliamentary arrangement so we need a referendum. What I need from you is some concessions so that we can win that referendum so we can stay in the European Union."
He went to Brussels. He tried to get some concessions. They weren't interested in giving him any concessions. And you can argue the pros and cons of that. I think they could have given him more, and he might have ended up winning the referendum. But he did negotiate. And those negotiations were central to the referendum argument, to the referendum campaign. He went and said, "Look, I managed to achieve, this, this, this," and the people said, "That's not really enough, we want bigger changes."
Let me just very quickly say, and I'll let Karen have the last word, but I want to go back to this point. I'm very concerned, and I do really want to try to correct the impression that anyone may have that anybody who wanted to leave the European Union is anti-immigrant. The United Kingdom, just like the United States, has benefited enormously from significant inward flows of migrants. It's an enormously beneficial thing for an economy to absorb immigrants, to welcome immigrants. It improves a country's prosperity. It enriches the cultural life. It's enormously improved the standard of living. The British people have been open, very, very open.
And by the way, just so you– the European Union conducts polls routinely and asks people in different countries what they think about immigration. Over the summer they conducted a poll of all 28 countries in the European Union, including the UK, and asked people whether they have a positive or negative view of immigrants. Guess which country had the most positive view of immigrants in the whole of the European Union? The United Kingdom.
The United Kingdom is open to immigrants. We appreciate them. The only question is whether a country should be allowed to decide who comes into its country or whether you have open borders and say, Anybody can come in, anybody from the 500 million people who live in the European Union. I don't think that is practical. I don't think it's wise. And I don't think it's sensible.
But to caricature that as some kind of xenophobia and to say that it's anti-immigrant and that it's anti-foreigner is one of the reasons, frankly, that the Remain campaign lost the referendum. Because people could see through that. They knew it wasn't true. They know Britain is very pro-immigration. Millions, ten million immigrants live in the UK. Half the population of London was actually– over 40% of the population was not born in the UK. It's a very open country. It's very open to immigration. People who voted for Leave are very open to immigration. They just want to be able to control, to determine the levels of immigration and what the rules are that allow people to come into the country.
Elaine Papoulias: Karen?
Karen Donfried: So I will give a closing word about Brexit, which is to say, of course it is for Brits to decide what they want their relationship with the European Union to be. I am struck by how that issue, of the UK's relationship to the European Union, today, seems to be the defining issue of British politics. A year before the Brexit referendum, I think it was in the teens, the number of Brits that said this is the most important issue facing us. A year after, 42% of Brits said this is the key issue. I don't know what the numbers are today.
But whatever happens on October 31, or January 31, it is not going to resolve this issue because it has so polarized Britain. And I think all of us can share a hope that Britain comes to terms with this because it is patently in the interest of this country, the United States, that we have a strong UK, for all of the reasons we've discussed. Whether in or out, the UK will remain a very important partner for this country.
So I'm just going to leave with a hope that whatever happens in the ensuing months, it can lead to a bridging, within British society, of a better understanding of a path forward, that there will be a relationship with the rest of Europe that is constructive, and that the US hopefully can play a pragmatic and helpful role as all this plays out.
But thank you to the Kennedy Library and thank you to all of you for coming. [applause]
Elaine Papoulias: Thank you, all. Thank you for joining us. And thank you, speakers, for presenting such a diversity of lively views.
Nicholas Burns: Thank you. Thanks Elaine.
[applause]
END