During talks in 1960s, as today, there remained hope in Downing Street in defiance of emerging facts on the ground

The British prime minister had entered the negotiations full of bluster, putting aside private anxiety about the country’s place in the world, to warn that the UK regarded a no-deal scenario as better than a bad deal. If the terms weren’t right, Britain, with its global horizons, would walk away from the talks with Europe.

At the halfway point there had been agreement on the terms of a transition period but after a laborious schedule of talks dictated by Brussels there was no shared vision of the future relationship.

The French president had instructed his representatives “that they should negotiate toughly on the basis of the Treaty of Rome, making the minimum of concessions for the transitional period”, wrote Pierson Dixon, the British ambassador to France, a leading light in the British negotiating team.

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A 28-page account penned by the UK delegation in Brussels and Luxembourg – marked “secret” – warned Downing Street that their counterparts had “insisted that our position was that of the demandeur” and the “existing rules must in principle be regarded as sacrosanct”.

It would, the UK officials told their political masters, “have been helpful if we could have formed a clearer view as to what would be negotiable” rather than put forward “proposals … which in the event proved quite unnegotiable”.

It is a description that will be sharply familiar to those who have followed the first 12 months of Britain’s tortuous Brexit negotiations – the EU’s first ever secession talks.

These lessons, however, were first learned in Whitehall 55 years ago in what was the fledging EU’s first accession talks, beginning in 1961 and coming to a dramatic end with Gen De Gaulle’s “Non” to the UK’s entry at a press conference in 1963.

Thousands of pages of confidential-stamped documents, notes for ministers, prime ministerial reflections and diplomatic cables stored in the national archives tell the story of a country being propelled by a political crisis – Suez and the decline of British industry – into talks with the European Economic Community, later to become the European Union, but without clear strategic goals or an understanding of the rigid, legal nature of the organisation with which they were seeking to strike a deal.

The parallels come thick and fast. UK officials despaired of their attempts to keep anything secret. “It was impossible to circulate a document or make a statement unless we were ready to see its substance published at once,” the Brussels delegation wrote.

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In Germany, “the chancellor was more interested in making progress over European political union than in the negotiations in Brussels”, the UK’s ambassador, Sir Christopher Steel, told the foreign secretary.

At home, the prime minister, Harold MacMillan, felt forced to give disproportionate attention to 30 to 40 Eurosceptic Tory backbenchers who insisted there could be no deal without special dispensation for Commonwealth exports from tariffs.

Yet, as today, in defiance of the emerging facts on the ground, there remained hope in Downing Street: the prize of the UK playing a part in the grand enterprise would convince their European interlocutors to rewrite the rules.

In 2018, the UK is not seeking a tailored membership of the EU, of course, something it finally achieved in 1973, but a souped-up non-membership for when it withdraws on 29 March 2019 – a year on Thursday. But all the same errors are in play, says Jonathan Faull, who retired as one of the UK’s most senior officials in the European commission in 2017.

“It is a mistake that a self-confident Britain in the 1960s might have made, but it should not keep making it now,” Faull said. “Britain has underestimated the role of law and lawyers and rules in Brussels and sometimes approached Brussels as you would some sort of general diplomatic issue where both sides have considerable leeway. The EU is a more complicated animal. It is not a sovereign government, it is a rules-based organisation built on its ‘acquis’, the rules that have accumulated since its inception.

Brexit phrasebook: acquis communautaire The entire body of European laws: all the treaties, regulations and directives passed by the EU’s institutions, plus all the rulings of the European court of justice (see below). Every member state has incorporated the acquis into their legal system. See our full Brexit phrasebook.

“That is its history. It is not kings, queens, constitutions and revolutions, its history is one of treaties and rules.”

London appears to believe there will be a better deal offered by national leaders “who are after all the real politicians and will understand the real politics”, Faull said. “This is all going to be put to the test in the next 12 months. Some in Britain will hope that national interests will come to the fore and the EU position will begin to break. We will see.”

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The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, deploys the Gaullist language of the British being “le demandeur” . The French have been cajoling fellow member states to take a strict line on financial services post-Brexit, among much else. But the EU is a different beast to the six-member EEC. Greatly enlarged, mainly on the insistence of the UK, English is the working language of the 27 diplomats drafting the EU’s negotiating positions. The French delegate was recently called out after trying to use his mother tongue in private discussions. Perhaps the strategy that failed in the 1960s could work today?

Andrew Duff, a former MEP and now visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre, proposes a different way forward: reach back into the history books.



“The British should propose a comprehensive association agreement – and there is precedent for it,” he said. “Churchill and [French political and economic adviser Jean] Monnet agreed on one in 1954. Brussels likes to follow precedent and deliver neat and tidy packages.”

Under such a model – as struck with Ukraine – the UK could enjoy comprehensive market access, even for its financial services sector, along with customs cooperation, in return for aligning its domestic laws to EU law and accepting the jurisdiction of a joint court. It would not suit every Brexiter. But Guy Verhofstadt, the former prime minister of Belgium who is the European parliament’s Brexit coordinator, believes “a UK request for an association agreement could be a gamechanger”.

“History repeats itself, but never in the same way,” he said.