Did the British ever understand Europe?

Brexit is a mistake, a failed promise to the British people. I am sad about Brexit – but not surprised about it, not anymore. Brexit was inevitable after years of missed opportunities, by successive UK governments, to understand what the European Union is about and to explain this to the British people.

The EU is so much more than just trade, regulating the labelling of fertilisers and sorting out the costs of roaming. Just look at the history.

My hometown in Germany is Osnabrück, former headquarters of the British army in northern Germany. I am a child of the Cold War. At home I got used to British tanks on our streets “to protect us from the Russians”, we were told as children.

When walking home from school, the sound of British fighter jets crashing through the sound barrier was a sign of summer and good weather.

The fear of war was real. I remember one day when my father suddenly told us over lunch: “If something happens and we cannot communicate anymore, each of us has to try to find his way to France, to our holiday home in the south. We will then meet there.”

It was clear what he meant. He did not want to experience another war. He had been in the Second World War as a child soldier at 15 years old. His own father eventually died because of his injuries and illnesses, after he had been shot in France in the First World War at the age of just 17.

Early lessons

I learned at school what horrific consequences a dictatorship can have and how vital democracy and power-sharing is. Germany had to start from scratch after its dark history. For us, the EU was always a success story of the willingness of all member states to work, trade and live peacefully together.

Most member states of the EU are constantly making a new effort, every day, to find compromises, to adhere to common rules, to have this block of friendly nations growing together to stop the danger of conflict, hate and war. The scars of the two world wars – and the Cold War – are too deep.

This willingness to stick together is the foundation of the EU. It is why the British government failed in dividing the opinion of the EU member states when negotiating Brexit.

Meet the British

Throughout my 25 years in Britain I have always felt that for most British people the EU is irrelevant.

There is even a certain arrogance when I am told that the UK does not need a peace project. The UK was a peaceful nation anyway, and a better democracy too.

Britain easily sheds the responsibility for its mistakes (for example, Iraq or Libya), rejecting the refugees of its wars with an audible sigh: “So good we are an island.”

I have reported from the UK as an economic and financial correspondent for more than 25 years. During this time sentiment towards Brussels was often ignorant, sometimes even hostile, stirred up not only by most of the British press, but also by successive UK governments.

Norman Lamont, chancellor under John Major, lamented that the UK crashing out of the European exchange rate mechanism (ERM) was the mistake of the German Bundesbank. Major stirred the sentiment against the EU with his “non-cooperation policy” because of mad cow disease – Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

The British people are told that the EU is “undemocratic” (it is not) and a bunch of too many countries that never can agree on anything sensible (it was the UK who insisted on ever more member states coming into the EU), and that “Brussels is inventing irrelevant and burdensome regulations” (not true) without any say of the UK (never mind the powerful influence of the British in Brussels).

I have never witnessed a UK government even trying to explain some of the thousands of EU laws and regulations that make trade and life across its borders easier than anywhere else in the world.

EU as the scapegoat

After years of failed domestic economic politics, the UK government uses the EU as a cheap scapegoat for the failings of successive governments – except that the EU has nothing to do with it.

For many years the UK has suffered from a lack of funding and investment in schools, vocational training of the young, apprenticeships and state-funded universities (the £9,000-plus fees per year are an insult to British young people and prevents social mobility at an early age).

The systematic lack of productivity in UK manufacturing, the lack of infrastructure in the country, lack of funding of local authorities bleeding from many years of austerity and the lack of funding for the NHS have nothing to do with the EU.

The lack of proper long-term economic policies for the neglected north of England, the outright poverty of socially weak people, the lack of funding of care for the elderly and low pensions are the mistakes of the short-term policies of successive British governments, not the EU.

Not enough is done with a long-term view. This undermines the economy and leaves a growing part of the population frustrated.

But instead of tackling these failings with a redirection of policies, more investment, more long-term sustainable policies, British politics turned on Brussels and EU migrants as scapegoats and targets.

More moderate voices were drowned out or pushed aside – the most shocking experience of all my years here in Britain.

When I moved to London in 1991, I was impressed by the openness of British society, by the ease of how all cultures and religions could peacefully and successfully live and work together. But my impression was superficial. I was deeply worried when I saw how quickly Brexit shattered this innocent coexistence.

Suddenly British politicians chose to pick Brussels and EU migrants as scapegoat for their own failed politics. They were convenient targets of course, as neither Brussels nor EU migrants could vote in the referendum.

Suddenly questions were asked that I thought belonged to the ugly past. Where do you come from? How long have you been here? Do you just want “our” benefits? Do you just exploit “our” NHS? Are you undercutting our wages? Suddenly we were not welcome anymore.

I have lived in this country more than 25 years. I have paid UK tax during these years, never accepting a penny of benefits. I have private health insurance; I sent my girls to private schools; I employed my nanny legally. I dutifully filled out dozens of pages, provided documents and paid fees to get British passports, just to be on the safe side. All the while listening to Nigel Farage ranting about immigrants.

What Britain gains from the EU

Too many people believed in the populism of Farage, Boris Johnson, David Davis, Michel Gove and Jacob Rees-Mogg. They told the British people that their lives would be better outside the EU and enough people did vote for Brexit, but they had no clue about the difference between the EU, the single market, the customs union, the European Economic Area, Schengen and the monetary union (EMU).

The UK does not need to leave the EU to export and trade successfully, to get free trade agreements (the EU has more than 50), to get its borders back (the UK is not in Schengen) or to be able to devalue the pound (as it is not in the EMU).

The UK does not need to fear the European Court of Justice (no other country has so many cases decided in favour of its position).

On the contrary, membership of the EU allowed the City of London to grow as the powerful gateway to the financial markets of Europe; membership of the EU fuelled inward investment in manufacturing as a bridge into European markets; and being a member of the EU gave Britain a powerful seat at the table whenever anything was negotiated and decided by Brussels.

And immigration? In 2004, the Blair government opened the UK labour market to 10 new EU countries even before the UK was forced to do so. And the “vast” amount of money the UK pays to Brussels (remember the rebate) is a tiny fraction of the whole budget.

Yet during more than two years of negotiations with Brussels, the UK government was at pains not to explain any of this to the British public.

Behind the scenes, in the small print of negotiations, the UK government tries to secure as much of the EU market access as possible, swallowing EU regulations as a future rule-taker.

Look at the technical papers about preparations for a no deal. It is a list of dozens of regulations the UK government will adhere to just to prevent serious economic damage.

Will Brexit succeed?

Brexit will be a failure. Of course, the UK will make its way outside the EU – no doubt about it. Brussels and the UK will replicate enough of the small print in a free trade agreement to succeed economically.

But it will be a failure for the British people. The British public will eventually realise that Brexit will not change their lives a bit and it will not help with all the failures of domestic politics.

But the scars of Brexit will go deep – for a generation to come.