David Frost on Brexit: It was only when we picked up our coat and waved goodbye that people said ‘Oh, are you going?’

Lord Curzon said that without India England would be a greater Belgium. A greater Belgium sounds to me very like modern Europe.

David Frost was a senior British diplomat and expert on trade. He was originally an enthusiast for the European project (like me) but became disillusioned the more he saw of the EU. He left the Diplomatic Service and, in the referendum, voted to Leave. He was  Boris Johnson’s adviser while he was Foreign Secretary and became his adviser on Europe when he became Prime Minister in July. Mr Frost leads the unit negotiating the trade agreement with the E.U. 

He gave a speech at the Université Libre de Bruxelles on Monday evening where he said some very interesting things, which you should read.

Tonight I want to give you some reflections on the revolutions, plural, in Europe – because I actually think we are looking at not one revolution but two revolutions, both in government and simultaneously.

So, the first is the creation of the European Union itself – the greatest revolution in European governance since 1648. A new governmental system overlaid on an old one, purportedly a Europe of nation states, but in reality the paradigm of a new system of transnational collective governance.

The second revolution is of course the reaction to the first – the reappearance on the political scene not just of national feeling but also of the wish for
national decision-making and the revival of the nation state. Brexit is the most obvious example for that, but who can deny that we see something a bit like it in different forms across the whole continent of Europe? I don’t think it is right to dismiss this just as a reaction to austerity or economic problems or a passing phase, or something to be ‘seen off’ over time. I believe it is something deeper. Actually, I don’t find it surprising – if you can’t change policies by voting, as you increasingly can’t in this situation – then opposition becomes expressed as opposition to the system itself.


Brexit was surely above all a revolt against a system – against, as it were, an ‘authorised version’ of European politics, against a system in which there is only one way to do politics and one policy choice to be made in many cases and against a politics in which the key texts are as hard to read for the average citizen as the Latin Bible was at the time of Charles the Bold.

So, I want to explain why I moved in my own lifetime, my own professional experience, from supporting the first revolution that I talked about to moving to support the second.

I want to begin my explanation by turning back to Burke. He had a very particular attitude to government. In ‘Reflections’ he wrote:

‘The state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, It is to be looked on with reverence… It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection.’

This is of course exactly how the EU began in a way – ‘a partnership agreement in a trade … or some other such low concern’, not of pepper and coffee, but coal and steel, and then much more.

The question is – did it make the shift, did the EU make that shift to being ‘looked on with reverence… a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection?’

Well, I think in much of Europe it arguably did, in a way. Coal and steel were the engines of war; and the sources of power and resource. Managing them collectively meant that, on the European continent, doing this had more profound political implications straight away. It was a noble project.

And post-war British leaders such as Attlee and Churchill certainly understood this but didn’t feel the same moral force behind it as people in France and Germany.

But in Britain, I think the answer is different – it didn’t, the EU for most, make that shift. I think Burke understood why. Burke’s argument was essentially that the abstract foundations of the French Revolution ignored the complexities of human nature and of human society. The state, to Burke, was more of an organic creation, entwined with custom, of tradition and spirit.

I think in Britain the EU’s institutions, to be honest, never felt like that. They were more abstract, they were more technocratic, they were more disconnected from or indeed actively hostile to national feeling. So in a country like Britain where institutions just evolved and where governance is pretty deep-rooted in historical precedent, it was always going to feel a bit unnatural to a lot of people to be governed by an organisation whose institutions seemed created by design not than by evolution, and which vested authority outside the country elsewhere. I think that is why the slogan of the Leave campaign in 2016 ‘Take Back Control’ became such a powerful slogan and had such resonance .

Now if I am honest, much of this still does not seem to me to be understood here in Brussels and in large parts of the EU. I think one of the reasons why people here failed to see Brexit coming and often still see it as some kind of horrific, unforeseeable natural disaster is that – like the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs – is at root, they were unable to take British euroscepticism seriously, but saw it as some kind of irrational false consciousness and fundamentally wrong way of looking at the world.

I think that is also why so many commentators seem to find it odd for someone of my background to support Brexit. I recognise I am unusual in doing that. Media profiles regularly say I am ‘one of the few Brexit-voting diplomats’. (Actually, there are a few more of us, but it’s not for me to identify who they are!)

My doubts about British membership of the EU came principally from the fact that I could see Britain was never going to be genuinely committed to the project of turning the EU from a ‘partnership agreement in trade’ to an ‘object of reverence’. Indeed, not only were the EU’s institutions abstract and distant in Britain, we were never really in my view committed to the same goals at all.

Some people try to question this now, and argue that Britain had in many way found the sweet spot in the Union – the ideal mix between economic integration and political absenteeism – only to then carelessly cast it aside in 2016 without really thinking about it. I don’t think this is entirely realistic or entirely fair. Instead, I think Britain was more like a guest who has had enough of a party and wants to find a way of slipping out. By 2016 we had already found our way to the hallway without anyone really noticing at the party. It was only when we picked up our coat and waved goodbye that it felt like people said ‘Oh, are you going?’ as if they hadn’t realised what had been happening.

People in all European countries will come to recognise and chafe at the lack of democracy in the EU, but continental Europe has suffered in many wars and has been ruled by oppressive occupiers. The EU's noble purpose makes sense on the Continent, except in Spain, Portugal and possibly Switzerland. Unlike Europe north of the Pyrenees, Great Britain has fought wars in Europe not because she was ever attacked but to preserve the continental balance of power, which is a very different thing. 

Countries like Germany, Italy and all the countries of central and eastern Europe are recent creations with short parliamentary traditions. That makes a huge difference too.

The history and intellectual traditions of continental Europe are so far from those of Great Britain, or at least of England. The English tradition is pragmatic, empirical and flourishes in our great creation the Common Law. (By the way, Common Law was created while the English were Catholics, so do not link it to Protestantism, though Protestantism had an important part to play in the emergence of Parliamentary government.)

Society, or at least British society, is an organic thing. The attempt to reorganise it around abstract principles is bound to end badly. We see the same thing in many other areas, including the current desire to impose diversity on society. 

Joseph de Maistre bemoaned the profound idiocy of those who believed that laws are paper and nations could be made with ink. He was a reactionary and absolute opponent of the French revolution, who was right about many things. He still reads well.