This week in Brexitland, March 4, 2022

Will Ukraine join the EU?

One of the most touching moments in world politics over the past several years occurred this week when Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president who has rightly become a global superstar, gave his speech to the European Parliament about the current horrors of the war, his people’s bravery in the face of it, and of course, his desire for Ukraine to become an EU member. Perhaps even more emotionally stirring for me was listening to the man who was translating Zelensky’s speech into English almost break down as he spoke the president’s words.

The topic of the EU and Ukraine contains a lot to unpack, so I will be spending the rest of this week’s article going over it all.

1. The practicalities

Given what is happening in Ukraine at the moment, pro-Ukrainian feeling runs high throughout the European Union. Emotionally speaking, the vast majority of pro-Europeans want to see Ukraine become an EU member. This is for several reasons, most of them related to the invasion - the country has been violated by an aggressive enemy and deserves both our sympathy and our empathy. It is a European country under attack, and that’s bound to make all of us who care about liberal democracy across our continent want to see the brave souls who are holding out against the Russians become part of the official club.

However, the practical realities are something different. For a start, gaining accession to the EU is a fairly tricky thing to do, just on the criteria alone. The EU wants to make sure during the accession process that the countries which are joining live up to as much of what they want the club to represent, particularly given the fact that the levers to get members to follow the rules once they are in are of short supply (see: Hungary). So, fast-tacking Ukraine’s accession process would only mean they are under a microscope - and further, they would have huge difficulty meeting the requirements at present, if only for the fact that they are currently under military attack.

Beyond even that, there is the worry about what happens if Ukraine are given EU membership out of solidarity with Zelensky and the people of the country, only to have Kyiv fall to the Russians, and for Putin to install one of his sock puppets as president. Rumours are high that he has the previous, pre-2014 revolution president Viktor Yanukovych in mind, which given Putin lacks any hint of originality in his thinking, is probably correct. What does the EU do then? Suddenly there is a member who is not only Putin friendly, but obviously a Putin stooge. Putin might as well be a member of the EU all by himself in that instance. I realise no one wants to really think about this possibility now, when there is serious hope that the Ukrainian government can hold out in a war of attrition, but the realpolitik of current events cannot be entirely ignored by the European Union.

I would love to see Ukraine as a member of the EU and I hope this becomes a genuine reality in the very near future. Hopefully, if it looks like Zelensky and his people really can keep hold of Kyiv, then it hovers into view.

2. The EU as seen through a post-Ukraine lens

The other way to look at all of this is to understand how so many across Europe see the European Union, which is as a beacon of hope and the promise of something better. Estonia, a former SSR like Ukraine, has a GDP per capita that is nine times higher than Zelensky’s country. It’s becoming clearer and clearer that if you want to be out of Russia’s orbit, ie Putin’s own little empire, you probably need to be in the EU, and NATO as well - and being in Russia’s orbit makes your people significantly poorer than they would be within those boundaries, as so many examples have proven.

This is an issue for British Brexiters for several reasons. One is that so much of their post-Brexit PR is based on the idea that the European Union is a repressive regime that is holding its members back. Penny Mordaunt, the minister of state for trade, made this the entire backdrop to a speech she gave in America recently, positing the EU as a sort of repressive dictatorship that the Britain had bounded free from. That looked ridiculous at the time - now, post-Ukraine invasion, it looks insane.

The reasoning behind such scene setting is clear, however - it is the only way that Brexit still makes any sort of sense. The sovereignty argument for leaving the EU is understandable if you see the world in these terms - if the European Union is a repressive regime that holds everyone in it back, then getting out of it, whatever the cost, makes sense. The problem with this notion is, it is difficult to look at the heroism of Zelensky, then consider the idea that he sees EU membership for his country as one of the key symbols of breaking free from the shadow of Putin, and not wonder even a little bit why he sees it that way when British Brexiters seem to view it in the precise opposite way.

Another reason Zelensky’s enthusiasm for Ukraine joining the EU is tricky for Brexiters is that it really demonstrates, more than anything else I can think of that’s happened recently, that the EU isn’t going anywhere in a hurry. A huge part of British Euroscepticism is underpinned by the firm belief that the EU is destined to fall apart sometime in the near future - it’s like their version of Marx’s end of capitalism, or perhaps more accurately, the Christian Rapture. The EU being cajoled into expanding again by the tides of history, due to it being seen by the vast majority of countries within the continent as being a safe space and indeed, the only route to true and lasting prosperity, puts post-Brexit Britain even more out in the cold. This is particularly true given the whole Five Eyes as a trading bloc idea has been proven to be the nonsense it always was, really because it involves four other countries, none of whom are remotely interested in such a thing.

This is in sharp contrast with the Ukraine, which even under heavy attack from the Russians, has their superstar leader address the European Parliament as an important point of order. The invasion of Ukraine has made European solidarity both seem, and in actuality, be more important than ever. Feeding Brexit into all of this, leaving the EU makes less sense than ever.

3. In conclusion

The truly great day for the EU will not be when Ukraine joins - although, that will be incredible in and of itself - but when a post-Putin Russia is able to join. That’s when the European Union will have established itself for generations to come at the very least. We’re miles away from that at the moment, which makes one wonder: if we look to a day when Russia joins the EU, will Britain still be outside of the Union at that point? Obviously impossible to say. But it does make one wonder. Particularly about the future of Brexit and how the attack on Ukraine has made the state of Brexit even less sustainable than it already was looking beforehand.

The European Union appears more and more like the future. And the fevered dreams of the Brexiters, wanting to hook up with the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to create a new world trading order to rival the EU despite none of those countries being into that idea, appears more and more to be a relic of a pre-2020 world, barely comprehensible to anyone outside of the Brexit faith.

There are signs already that the British government has been forced to live in the new reality created by Putin’s invasion. Liz Truss is joining a special meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council, called in the wake of the aggression in Ukraine. This is significant; the first time this government has admitted in action that if you want to handle the big stuff, you can’t pretend the European Union doesn’t exist. Further, although no one is going to say this bit out loud, particularly Truss who wants to stay friendly with Eurosceptic Tory members, perhaps the fact that the EU is there is a good thing after all.

Thanks for reading this week. Love goes out to the Ukrainian people, obviously - you are the front line on the fight for western civilisation, and those of us who care about that care about what happens to all of you. If you want to see my whole Substack site, or leave a comment, here is the link:

nicktyrone.substack.com

If you like what I write, here’s something else you might be interested in, particularly as it deals with a dystopian future, much like the one we have suddenly found ourselves in:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Patient-chilling-dystopian-suspense-filled/dp/1472287797

See you all next week and in the meantime, all hopes go out to President Zelensky and his brave stand against tyranny.