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British European Policy and the 2024 General Election: Normal Service Has Been Resumed

La politique européenne du Royaume-Uni et les élections générales de 2024: retour à la normale
Simon Usherwood

Abstracts

It is tempting to place British European policy at the heart of any discussion of recent British instability: the 2016 referendum unleashed a wave of disruption and systemic effects that continue to the present. This article argues that while the immediate destabilisation of Brexit has been contained and moderated, the 2024 General Election highlighted a longer-term source of instability, running throughout the post-1945 period as consequence of a failure (or inability) to resolve the fundamental purpose of relations with ‘the Continent’. Starting from the General Election campaign, the article also considers the first months of the Labour government before using primary and secondary data to explore the notion that policy is mainly driven by domestic considerations and incentives, resulting in over-inflating expectations, a lack of constructive engagement with European counterparts and a subsequent disillusionment. European policy is likely to continue to be a site of unstable policy outcomes, given the reactive managerial approach, even as there is a degree of stability created by the European Union’s caution about upsetting the hard-won agreements on British withdrawal and on the basic architecture of the future relationship.

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Author's notes

Funding
This paper is based on research conducted under ESRC Research Fellowship ES/X005607/1 “Strategic development of the UK-EU relationship: can neighbours become good friends?”.

Full text

Introduction

1More than any other issue this century, the question of European policy has reshaped the British state. The 2016 referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) produced not only a fundamental shift in the country’s international relations, but also very significant constitutional, political, economic and social effects. All of which makes the effective absence of the matter from the 2024 General Election seem more surprising.

2This article argues that this is the result of a reversion to the long-run British model of managing its European policy (that is, its policy towards the post-war process of European integration, primarily through the EU); namely through a reactive and managerial approach, without clear strategic objectives, resulting from a non-internalisation of the processes and logics of deep inter-state entanglement and a determination of policy choices on predominantly domestic grounds. That such an approach was itself responsible for the stumbling into the referendum itself and for the troubled handling of the subsequent negotiations of the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) and the Trade & Cooperation Agreement (TCA) appears not to have produced any basic change, as seen in the policy choices of the Labour government under Keir Starmer. The policy area therefore represents a simultaneous return to a more stable form of policy-making after the Johnson premiership and a continuation of intrinsically unstable policy choices, made on a contingent basis with minimal consideration of wider structural or strategic requirements.

3Central to this is a persistent inability or failure of British politicians to internalise the presence or significance of European integration into their domestic political order. As highly-interlinked economies, with millions of citizens on each other’s territories and with very similar geopolitical situations, the EU and UK cannot properly function without at least recognition of the other: even without an institutionalised close relationship, the effects of each on the other are multiple and manifest, as recent years have repeatedly shown. While the tribal identities of Leave and Remain have softened somewhat since 2016, the General Election showcases both a broad discontent with aspects of the current relationship and an unwillingness to invest much political capital in changing it.

4By working through the an evaluation of the longer-term pattern of British European policy-making, followed by the (non-)appearance of the EU in the election campaign and the early months of the Labour government, the article sets out the parameters of how we might better understand any potential future instability. It asks how much there has been a return to the long-run mode of European policy making and how that might shape future UK-EU relations.

2024 as a return to traditional British European policy

5Seen in the context of post-1945 British European policy, 2024 looks much closer to the long-run trend than does 2019. While not completely absent from the political agenda and debate, Europe was a marginal concern, before, during and after the General Election, as will be explored in the second half of this article. That similarity invites us to consider what have been the structural logics and features of British European policy.

  • 1 See Stephen Wall, Reluctant European: Britain and the European Union from 1945 to Brexit (Oxford: O (...)
  • 2 See Hugo Young, This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (London: Macmillan, 1 (...)
  • 3 Anand Menon and John-Paul Salter, "Britain's influence in the EU," National Institute Economic Revi (...)
  • 4 Anthony Forster, Euroscepticism in contemporary British politics: opposition to Europe in the Conse (...)
  • 5 Stephen George, An Awkward Partner: Britain in the European Community (New York: Oxford University (...)

6At the core of British European policy is a persistent lack of constructive strategic objectives.1 At best, there has been an approach that builds on the balancing of power model used in previous centuries, wherein the UK steps in to stop any other European power becoming too dominant, but this says nothing about what is valued except non-hegemony and also doesn’t really work for a consensus-driven model like the European Union.2 Absent a national mission of the kind found in many other member states (post-conflict reconciliation, a ‘return to Europe’) the UK has operated on a primarily reactive basis (albeit one that produced notable achievements3). Even the single market programme of the 1980s – often ascribed to Margaret Thatcher’s influence and support and perhaps the major contribution of the UK to the EU – was undertaken without proper consideration of what further steps to integration it would lead to, ultimately leading to the Maastricht opt-out on the single currency.4 Much more common was the identification of an area of discontent or crisis, to which the UK would respond, George’s ‘awkward partner’ set more on limiting or blocking than on leading and developing.5

  • 6 David Baker and Pauline Schnapper, Britain and the Crisis of the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgr (...)
  • 7 See Sarah Wolff and Agathe Piquet, "Post-Brexit Europeanization: Re-thinking the continuum of Briti (...)
  • 8 See Michael Sutton, France and the construction of Europe, 1944-2007: the geopolitical imperative ( (...)

7In part, this has been due to persistently low levels of knowledge about European integration among British politicians.6 With substantial interest in and exchange with American political circles, the space and motivation to develop European links and networks has remained relatively low in compromise to other European states.7 As a result, the EU remained external to the British political system; a place (‘Brussels’) where battles were to be fought to defend the UK against the undemocratic desires or whims of ‘eurocrats’. The contrast with the French model of using the EU to advance French interests and to make the most of the institutionalised voice and vote that the country holds is quite marked, as reflected in the greater degree of movement of politicians and bureaucrats between the European and national systems.8

  • 9 Andrew Moravcsik, The choice for Europe: Social purpose and state power from Messina to Maastricht (...)
  • 10 See Piret Ehin and Liisa Talving. "Still second-order? European elections in the era of populism, e (...)
  • 11 Simon Usherwood and Nick Startin. "Euroscepticism as a persistent phenomenon." JCMS: Journal of Com (...)

8All of this only serves to reinforce the pan-European tendency for states to treat the European stage as an arena for the securing of domestic priorities. To follow Moravcsik’s model, domestic preference accumulation is central to setting up member states for European negotiation: while that has resulted in the formation of an extensive and substantial set of institutions at that higher level, it remains beholden in considerable extent to national control, at both the constitutional and the political level of analysis.9 The persistence of second-order voting in European elections is thus simply a reflection of a wider utilisation of European opportunities for more local objectives.10 The structural weakness of the EU to defend itself against any consequent scapegoating only serves to reinforce the effect.11

  • 12 Also see Allan McConnell and Simon Tormey. "Explanations for the Brexit policy fiasco: near-impossi (...)

9All of these elements have persisted after the 2016 referendum.12 While the fundamental position of the UK has switched back to being outside the organisation, there remains clear evidence that the same basic parameters for discussing, and acting upon, the EU remain in place.

  • 13 Oliver Daddow, "Performing Euroscepticism: the UK press and Cameron’s Bloomberg speech." In Karine (...)
  • 14 See Tim Shipman, All out war: The full story of how Brexit sank Britain’s political class (London: (...)
  • 15 Samuel Bennett, "Values as tools of legitimation in EU and UK Brexit discourses." In Discourses of (...)

10The referendum itself was perhaps the clearest example in the post-war period of the extent to which British European policy rests on managing rather than planning. David Cameron’s 2013 commitment to holding a referendum was made without prior consultation and was widely understood (and presented in the press) as being driven by a desire to placate Conservative backbenchers rather than a function of building strategic policy.13 Similarly, Cameron’s decision in the run-up to the vote itself to stop civil servants preparing for a possible vote to leave was driven by his desire to avoid looking at all concerned about losing: that there was also no clear planning for the securing of a remain majority speaks to the lack of critical engagement by senior British politicians with the ramifications either way, even though both outcomes would require an active programme of work.14 The outcome was that the following months and years were a struggle between different factions of the Conservative party (and the political system more generally) to own the meaning of decision, trying to set it within other policy objectives. Among all those factions, it was striking that while there was an abundance of values in discourse, this did not translate cleanly into a clear strategic vision of next steps.15

  • 16 And much of her authority. Meg Russell, "Brexit and parliament: The anatomy of a perfect storm." Pa (...)
  • 17 Michel Barnier, La grande illusion. Journal secret du Brexit (2016-2020) (Paris: Gallimard, 2022). (...)
  • 18 See Meg Russell and Lisa James, The parliamentary battle over Brexit (Oxford: Oxford University Pre (...)

11That no one was able to achieve the creation of any such consensus helps to explain the difficulties of the Article 50 negotiations, where the UK had not identified its own priorities or objectives from the process, leaving the EU to take the lead on suggesting options. Such difficulties were only compounded by the 2017 General Election and the collapse of Theresa May’s Parliamentary majority.16 EU lead negotiator Michel Barnier’s memoir of this period notes problems this caused, as domestic struggles to find local compromises repeatedly produced outcomes that were not viable for the EU itself: the key case of Northern Ireland was exemplified by the persistence of British ideas that born no relation to either EU requirements or even the practical situation on the ground.17 The buyer’s remorse that many Tory backbenchers seemed to suffer after the conclusion of both treaties likewise speaks to the weakness of substantial Parliamentary scrutiny of the provisions and the primacy of getting a deal – any deal – before achieving more concrete policy objectives.18

  • 19 Sara B. Hobolt, Thomas J. Leeper, and James Tilley. "Divided by the vote: Affective polarization in (...)

12The bitterness of the Brexit debate further weakened the capacity and desire of politicians to return to the subject once the negotiations had finished, making it hard for those few with constructive approaches to developing post-membership relations with the EU to secure any interest.19 As before, the motors of developing policy in this field continue to be domestic concerns, either positively – as an aid for economic growth – or negatively – fear of a media backlash: absent is much discussion of what the EU might want to achieve.

  • 20 Tobias Wille and Benjamin Martill, "Trust and calculation in international negotiations: how trust (...)

13The collapsing of trust during the negotiations following Johnson’s moves on the Northern Ireland Protocol also will shape relations for the foreseeable future.20 The questioning in the EU of whether the UK can be relied upon to follow through on any form of relationship will weigh on matters at least until the successor to the current Labour government comes to power: electoral volatility comes with a price of governmental stability. European caution thus might serve to reinforce British indecision on any future negotiation of relations.

European policy and the 2024 General Election

14At first glance the 2024 General Election could not have been move different from its previous instance in 2019. Then, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, installed earlier that year through the comprehensive failure of Theresa May to secure a Parliamentary majority for the Withdrawal Agreement, hung his campaign around the theme of ‘Get Brexit Done’. The resultant majority gave him the pathway to ratification and a way out of the political impasse of the previous two and half years. The concerns of both opposition parties and elements within Johnson’s own party of trying to leave the EU without any agreement (the ‘no deal’ scenario) had been highly prominent through his first months in office and much of the campaigning turned on the question of what course the UK might pursue in its European relations.

  • 21 Monika Brusenbauch Meislova, “The (non-)issue of Brexit in the 2024 UK election campaign”, The Loop(...)
  • 22 Simon Usherwood, “Does ‘make Brexit work’ work?”, UK in a Changing Europe, 2022, https://ukandeu.ac (...)

15In stark contrast, the campaign of 2024 was marked by an almost complete absence of debate and discussion on the question of European policy, either from Brexiteers or pro-Europeans. This was most evident during 5 televised debates between national party leaders, where only one question was asked about European policy and the responses given were sufficiently uninteresting to spark any significant media interest.21 Labour’s line of ‘Make Brexit work’ echoed Johnson’s earlier line, both in its desire to make it a technical process of limited concern and in its reassurance that there was to be no reopening of the basic decisions already made.22

  • 23 Conservatives, “Clear plan, bold action, secure future”, 2024 General Election manifesto, 2024, htt (...)
  • 24 Reform, “Our Contract with you”, 2024 General Election manifesto, 2024, https://assets.nationbuilde (...)

16Analysis of party manifestoes gives more depth to this. No party put the topic as the lead item in their proposals and only three parties mentioned it at all in their top priorities. Even this is somewhat misleading, in that one of them, the Conservatives, wrote only about “seiz[ing] the benefits of Brexit” in their top priorities; no more indication of what future UK-EU relations might involve was provided.23 Reform likewise had a significant section in the middle of their ‘Contract’ on steps needed to make the most of leaving the EU – largely involving collapsing the WA and TCA – with nothing more than “prepare for renegotiations” on the TCA as a position on the future.24

17The other two parties with mention of European policy in their top lines were the Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP). Their sole focus on developing much more comprehensive and substantial relations with the EU – with no language about making Brexit work – was typical of the other non-antagonistic parties’ positions, albeit stated in stronger terms.25 However, only the SNP made European policy a prominent policy overall in their manifesto: both the Liberal Democrats and Labour moved the topic to the backs of their documents.26 As such, the manifestoes reflected the desire of all parties to move beyond Brexit, by subsuming it into a broader programme of national development (in eurosceptic parties), or by working to improve relations for improve the economy and security (for pro-Europeans).

  • 27 Alexander Horne, “The Windsor Framework: A new hope or a great betrayal?”, UK in a Changing Europe, (...)
  • 28 Jannike Wachowiak, “The Starmer government’s EU policy”, UK in a Changing Europe, 2025, https://uka (...)
  • 29 Alex Prior, "Starmer’s Foreign Policy Narrative: The Special Relationship or European Integration?. (...)

18The run-up to the General Election had been similarly devoid of EU-related activity. Following Rishi Sunak’s defusing of the Northern Ireland standoff with his conclusion of the Windsor Framework in early 2023 and – more significantly – the bringing of the parliamentary Conservative party on-board to good faith implementation of the legal agreements, there appeared to be no pressing need for an active policy, excepting the relatively minor matter of UK participation in the Horizon research programme.27 Labour’s position under Kier Starmer had long been clear: strict red lines against British involvement in the EU’s Customs Union or Single Market, and anything that might constitute a return to free movement of people.28 While a desire for a more constructive engagement with the EU was regularly mentioned, details of developing a new security partnership remained under-specified. In part, this reflects Starmer’s broader focus on domestic policy, producing a lack of strong foreign policy objectives and a desire to avoid having to make divisive choices between relations with the EU and with the US, especially under the Trump presidency.29

  • 30 Oliver Heath, Christopher Prosser, Humphrey Southall and Paula Aucott, "The 2024 General Election a (...)
  • 31 Eoghan Kelly, "Dawn of the post-Paisley era? The 2024 UK General Election in Northern Ireland," Iri (...)

19Aside from the two major parties, similar deflections from putting European policy front and centre could be seen time and again. Reform was now focused on the failure of the Conservatives to limit illegal immigration or to deliver public services, while the Liberal Democrats had returned to their historical successful strategy of campaigning on hyper-local issues within constituencies.30 In neither case was there any change of substantive policy position towards the EU from five years earlier, but the salience of the topic was sharply reduced. It was only in Northern Ireland itself that the sharp division over the Protocol kept the EU in a prominent position, albeit mostly as a means for the insurgent Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) to attack their unionist counterparts the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) as sell-outs for signing up to the Windsor Framework.31

20As Figure 1 shows, the high level of public interest in the EU as a political issue in 2019 had been an aberration, and one readily understandable as a function of the wild drama of the preceding years. By 2024, the percentage of people rating it as an ‘important’ issue had dropped back to the long-run average of roughly 10%, far below the bread-and-butter issues such as the economy and public service provision.

Figure 1: Percentage of people seeing EU/Europe/Brexit as the most/other important issue facing Britain today, 1997-2024.

Figure 1: Percentage of people seeing EU/Europe/Brexit as the most/other important issue facing Britain today, 1997-2024.

Source, IPSOS 2025.

21The reasons for this shift appear to be three-fold, reflecting on the situation of the parties, their understanding of voters’ attitudes and of the media environment.

  • 32 See Richard Hayton, "Brexit and party change: The Conservatives and Labour at Westminster," Interna (...)
  • 33 Michael Kenny and Jack Sheldon, "When planets collide: The British Conservative Party and the disco (...)
  • 34 Eunice Goes, "The Labour party under Keir Starmer:‘Thanks, but no “isms” please!’," The Political Q (...)

22Firstly, the European issue remained one that was imperfectly aligned with the parties themselves: excepting Reform and the Liberal Democrats, it was possible to find varying degrees of internal division on policy.32 The Conservative’s splits had been very publicly and forcefully exposed by the process of withdrawal and the negotiation of the Withdrawal Agreement and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement: while Johnson’s purging of more moderate one-nation Tories, there remained substantial shades of difference between the inflexibility of hard Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg and the more pragmatic approach of Sunak and Liz Truss.33. Meanwhile, Labour had only been purged of its Corbynite elements with Starmer’s elevation and it was possible to find a full range of views from relatively hard Brexiteers (Graham Stringer, chair of Labour Leave) through pragmatists (Starmer himself) to enthusiastic pro-Europeans (such as Stella Creasy, chair of Labour Movement for Europe ).34 For both parties, talking ‘Europe’ risked irritating old wounds and compromising public perceptions of party unity, typically seen as highly important in the British first-past-the-post system.

  • 35 Robert Ford, Tim Bale, Will Jennings and Paula Surridge, The British general election of 2019 (Cham (...)
  • 36 James Tilley and Sara B. Hobolt, "Brexit as an identity: Political identities and policy norms," PS (...)
  • 37 See Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford. Brexitland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) for (...)

23Secondly, the lack of apparent voter interest in the topic was a strong disincentive to parties to offer it up as a central policy focus. This was not a new phenomenon: part of the attraction in 2019 to ‘Get Brexit Done’ was the implicit message that voting Conservative to stop having to think about Brexit anymore.35 Voter identities as Leavers/Remainers from 2016 remained relatively strong – stronger indeed that party allegiances – and the long-term shift towards regular majorities for Remain in a hypothetical second referendum were driven by the previously undecided breaking strongly for that side, rather than switching away from Leaver.36 With Labour very concerned to reconnect with ‘Red Wall’ voters in traditional heartlands, who had switched to the Conservatives in 2019, there was no interest in harking back to a question that seemed central in the sense of liberal cosmopolitanism’s disinterest in areas that had been left behind by modernisation.37 Labour’s very strong polling lead had been built up from 2022 without any prominent European policy, so why risk upsetting that by changing that?

  • 38 Marino De Luca, "From opponents to enemies? How the British press framed the EU–UK relationship in (...)
  • 39 Oliver Schmidtke, "The ‘will of the people’: The populist challenge to democracy in the name of pop (...)
  • 40 David Smith, David Deacon and John Downey, "Inside out: The UK press, Brexit and strategic populist (...)

24Finally, the 2016 referendum and its aftermath had seen an extremely critical media environment. The willingness of right-wing outlets such as the Daily Mail, Daily Express and even the usually more measured Daily Telegraph to use highly inflammatory language and imagery to attack both Remainers and all but the hardest Leavers undoubtedly raised the perceived costs of talking about relations with the EU.38 Their continuing influence on shaping the public discourse was visible in the persistence of ideas such as “the will of the people”, with its populist reification of the referendum as somehow eternal and unanswerable, regardless of its incompatibility with the actual British constitutional order.39 Johnson’s willingness to engage in highly questionable actions on proroguing Parliament in 2019 or on working to unilateral disapply sections of the Northern Ireland Protocol in 2020 only served to shift the window of apparently acceptable political debate, making it that much harder for the more moderates of both Labour and Sunak’s Conservatives to secure even a non-combative hearing for any new initiatives.40

  • 41 For example, see Michael Savage, “Starmer should end UK’s ‘cycle of hesitation’ with EU, says Neil (...)

25As was to become quickly evident after the General Election, these three factors did not disappear and continued to shape much of what followed. Notwithstanding a historical victory and a very large majority in the Commons, Labour continued to keep European policy very much out of the limelight, prioritising economic growth and the improvement of public services instead. While there has been a significant and sustained building of personal relationships by Starmer and other senior government figures with European counterparts in the period since June 2024, what substantive movement that has occurred has been on the bilateral levels, with the security agreement with Germany most important among these: The unwillingness (or inability) to offer a plan of work for specifically EU relations has become a growing source of frustration in Brussels and various national capitals.41

  • 42 European Commission, “A renewed agenda for European Union-United Kingdom cooperation: Common Unders (...)
  • 43 Jannike Wachowiak and Anand Menon, “What did the UK-EU summit achieve?”, UK in a Changing Europe, 2 (...)
  • 44 Catherine Barnard, “It ain’t free movement: an EU-UK youth mobility scheme?”, UK in a Changing Euro (...)
  • 45 Aletha Adu, “UK-EU youth mobility scheme key to better EU relations, says top diplomat”, Guardian, (...)
  • 46 UK in a Changing Europe, “The Starmer government and Europe: Resetting relations in turbulent times (...)

26This was most clearly demonstrated at the inaugural ‘reset’ UK-EU summit in May 2025, where a Common Understanding set out a new programme of negotiations between the two sides.42 While the scope was very broad, it did not produce much substantial progress on closing positions on each of the elements, partly a reflection of a lack of clarity around priorities on the British side.43 Emblematic of these tensions has been the idea of a youth mobility scheme. Ironically, this originated in British attempts under Sunak to conclude bilateral deals on this with a small number of member states, which then referred the matter back to the Commission, which then produced an EU-wide version. However both Sunak and Labour rejected outright the idea, mostly because of how it might be seen as a step towards a return to free movement of people, which it very clearly is not.44 With this in mind, the Commission pushed back and made it a sine qua non for the Security and Defence Partnership negotiations, a position to which the UK ultimately acquiesced.45 While basic differences remain over duration, volume and scope, the inability or unwillingness of the Labour government to discuss publicly the costs and benefits of this or any of the other elements of the ‘reset’ suggests that European policy remains a low priority to which they will respond reactively.46

Conclusion

27This special issue has focused on the question of whether the UK has returned to some form of stability. European policy offers a somewhat confusing response to that. On the one hand, there appears to be a resumption of the long-run form of British European policy-making, suggesting that structural factors of reactivity and weak internalisation are reasserting themselves. On the other hand, those structural factors produce an inherently unstable set of policy outcomes, including the process that led to both the 2016 referendum and the hard Brexit that followed: absent a defined objective or an understanding of the extent of British entanglement with the EU, domestic agendas can drive radical shifts in relations. While the EU is no longer front-page news, nor of importance to more than a small part of the electorate, the negative construction of policy, of knowing only what is unacceptable, has meant that the historic tendency to conduct policy in a defensive and reactive fashion will prevail in the coming years.

28Ironically, the major constraint on any imminent return to an erratic British policy is likely to come from the EU itself. The caution of member states and the Commission will be marked, given both their securing of all their main priorities during the WA & TCA negotiations and their lasting concerns over the reliability of the UK’s good faith in international commitments. While the shift of rhetoric since the 2024 General Election has been warmly welcomed by European capitals and the demonstrations of meaningful implementation of treaties have started to lay the groundwork for better relations, the absence of any clear plan from the Labour government around the 2025 ‘reset’ has risked creating a new cycle of disillusionment on both sides. Whether that will produce more instability in relations remains to be seen, especially in the context of an increasingly uncertain transatlantic environment, but even with its minimal remit any collapse of the WA/TCA architecture would have significant negative consequences for the UK, both politically and economically. Even with the experience of similar costs following withdrawal from the EU, the persistence of radical policy preferences – ending the operation of the Northern Ireland Protocol, leaving the European Convention on Human Rights – on the right of British political discourses should suggest that whatever moderation that is currently being enjoyed cannot be taken as a given for the future.

29The continuing failure to internalise European integration into British political life therefore represents a key point of instability. The referendum and its aftermath could have been an opportunity for national debate and strategizing on this matter, but as quickly as it had risen up the political agenda so it fell back down. While this might make sense within the Westminster system, it evidently does not fit with the continuing need (on both sides of the relationship) for an active and engaged interaction with the EU. The UK remains no better placed than before 2016 to engage and respond to this, suggesting that Britain’s complicated management is likely to create problems of one sort or another for the foreseeable future.

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Russell, Meg and Lisa James, The parliamentary battle over Brexit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023).

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Savage, Michael, “Starmer should end UK’s ‘cycle of hesitation’ with EU, says Neil Kinnock”, Guardian, 2 February 2025.

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Wille, Tobias and Benjamin Martill, "Trust and calculation in international negotiations: how trust was lost after Brexit," International Affairs 99: 6, 2023, pp. 2405-2422.

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Notes

1 See Stephen Wall, Reluctant European: Britain and the European Union from 1945 to Brexit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).

2 See Hugo Young, This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (London: Macmillan, 1998) for an overview; David Gowland, Britain and the European Union (London: Routledge, 2022); Andrew Geddes, Britain and the European Union (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013).

3 Anand Menon and John-Paul Salter, "Britain's influence in the EU," National Institute Economic Review 236: 1, 2016, pp. 7-13.

4 Anthony Forster, Euroscepticism in contemporary British politics: opposition to Europe in the Conservative and Labour parties since 1945 (London: Routledge, 2003); see Andrew Glencross, "Why a British referendum on EU membership will not solve the Europe question." International Affairs 91: 2, 2015, pp. 303-317 for a thoughtful discussion.

5 Stephen George, An Awkward Partner: Britain in the European Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

6 David Baker and Pauline Schnapper, Britain and the Crisis of the European Union (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

7 See Sarah Wolff and Agathe Piquet, "Post-Brexit Europeanization: Re-thinking the continuum of British policies, polity, and politics trajectories." Comparative European Politics 20: 5, 2022, pp. 513-526.

8 See Michael Sutton, France and the construction of Europe, 1944-2007: the geopolitical imperative (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2022); Gérard Bossuat, Faire l'Europe sans défaire la France: 60 ans de politique d'unité européenne des gouvernements et des présidents de la République française (1943-2003) (Lausanne: Peter Lang, 2005); plus Richard Davis, Britain, France and the Battle for the Leadership of Europe, 1957-2007 (London: Routledge, 2023) for a comparative analysis.

9 Andrew Moravcsik, The choice for Europe: Social purpose and state power from Messina to Maastricht (London: Routledge, 2013).

10 See Piret Ehin and Liisa Talving. "Still second-order? European elections in the era of populism, extremism, and Euroscepticism." Politics 41: 4, 2021, pp. 467-485.

11 Simon Usherwood and Nick Startin. "Euroscepticism as a persistent phenomenon." JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 51: 1, 2013, pp. 1-16.

12 Also see Allan McConnell and Simon Tormey. "Explanations for the Brexit policy fiasco: near-impossible challenge, leadership failure or Westminster pathology?," In The Brexit Policy Fiasco (London: Routledge, 2021), pp. 37-54.

13 Oliver Daddow, "Performing Euroscepticism: the UK press and Cameron’s Bloomberg speech." In Karine Tournier-Sol and Christopher Gifford (eds.), The UK Challenge to Europeanization: The Persistence of British Euroscepticism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp. 151-171.

14 See Tim Shipman, All out war: The full story of how Brexit sank Britain’s political class (London: HarperCollins, 2016) for the most detailed account of this period.

15 Samuel Bennett, "Values as tools of legitimation in EU and UK Brexit discourses." In Discourses of Brexit (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 17-31.

16 And much of her authority. Meg Russell, "Brexit and parliament: The anatomy of a perfect storm." Parliamentary Affairs 74: 2, 2021, pp. 443-463; Federico Fabbrini, "The Brexit negotiations and the May government." European journal of legal studies, 2019, pp. 1-22.

17 Michel Barnier, La grande illusion. Journal secret du Brexit (2016-2020) (Paris: Gallimard, 2022). David Phinnemore, "UK withdrawal from EU membership: the quest for cake," In The Proliferation of Privileged Partnerships between the European Union and its Neighbours (London: Routeldge, 2019), pp. 157-174.

18 See Meg Russell and Lisa James, The parliamentary battle over Brexit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023); Ruike Xu and Yulin Lu, "Intra-party dissent over Brexit in the British Conservative Party," British Politics 17:1, 2022, pp. 274-297.

19 Sara B. Hobolt, Thomas J. Leeper, and James Tilley. "Divided by the vote: Affective polarization in the wake of the Brexit referendum." British Journal of Political Science 51: 4, 2021, pp. 1476-1493; James L. Newell, The UK's Road Back to Europe: Actors, Resources, Mechanisms (Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2025) is an example from the more integrationist end of the spectrum.

20 Tobias Wille and Benjamin Martill, "Trust and calculation in international negotiations: how trust was lost after Brexit," International Affairs 99: 6, 2023, pp. 2405-2422; Benjamin Farrand and Helena Farrand Carrapico, "‘People like that cannot be trusted’: populist and technocratic political styles, legitimacy, and distrust in the context of Brexit negotiations," Journal of Contemporary European Research 17: 2, 2021, pp. 148-165.

21 Monika Brusenbauch Meislova, “The (non-)issue of Brexit in the 2024 UK election campaign”, The Loop blog, 2024, https://theloop.ecpr.eu/the-non-issue-of-brexit-in-the-2024-uk-election-campaign/, consulted 11 February 2025.

22 Simon Usherwood, “Does ‘make Brexit work’ work?”, UK in a Changing Europe, 2022, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/does-make-brexit-work-work/, consulted 27 June 2025.

23 Conservatives, “Clear plan, bold action, secure future”, 2024 General Election manifesto, 2024, https://public.conservatives.com/publicweb/GE2024/Accessible-Manifesto/Accessible-PDF-Conservative-Manifesto-2024.pdf, consulted 11 February 2025.

24 Reform, “Our Contract with you”, 2024 General Election manifesto, 2024, https://assets.nationbuilder.com/reformuk/pages/253/attachments/original/1718625371/Reform_UK_Our_Contract_with_You.pdf?1718625371, consulted 11 February 2025.

25 Liberal Democrats, “For a fair deal”, 2024 General Election manifesto, 2024, https://www.libdems.org.uk/manifesto, consulted 11 February 2025; SNP“A future made in Scotland”, 2024 General Election manifesto, 2024, https://www.snp.org/manifesto/, consulted 11 February 2025.

26 Labour, “Change”, 2024 General Election manifesto, 2024, https://labour.org.uk/change/, consulted 11 February 2025.

27 Alexander Horne, “The Windsor Framework: A new hope or a great betrayal?”, UK in a Changing Europe, 2023, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/the-windsor-framework-a-new-hope-or-a-great-betrayal/, consulted 11 February 2025. Jill Rutter, “Despite Horizon, Brexit will continue to haunt Rishi Sunak”, Institute for Government, 2023, https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/horizon-brexit-sunak, consulted 11 February 2025.

28 Jannike Wachowiak, “The Starmer government’s EU policy”, UK in a Changing Europe, 2025, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/the-starmer-governments-eu-policy/, consulted 11 February 2025.

29 Alex Prior, "Starmer’s Foreign Policy Narrative: The Special Relationship or European Integration?." Political Insight 16: 2, 2025, pp. 36-39; Patrick Diamond, David Richards and Sam Warner, "Change and Continuity in British Politics: Can the Starmer Government's Approach to Governance Resolve the Crisis in the British State without Radical Reform?," The Political Quarterly 96: 1, 2025, pp. 140-148.

30 Oliver Heath, Christopher Prosser, Humphrey Southall and Paula Aucott, "The 2024 General Election and the Rise of Reform UK," The Political Quarterly 96: 1, 2024, pp. 91-101; Sophie Church, “How the Lib Dems rose from the ashes”, Politics Home, 2024, https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/how-lib-dems-rose-from-the-ashes, consulted 11 February 2025.

31 Eoghan Kelly, "Dawn of the post-Paisley era? The 2024 UK General Election in Northern Ireland," Irish Political Studies 39: 3, 2024, pp. 463-478.

32 See Richard Hayton, "Brexit and party change: The Conservatives and Labour at Westminster," International Political Science Review 43: 3, 2022, pp. 345-358.

33 Michael Kenny and Jack Sheldon, "When planets collide: The British Conservative Party and the discordant goals of delivering Brexit and preserving the domestic union, 2016–2019," Political Studies 69: 4, 2021, pp. 965-984; Christopher Prosser, "The end of the EU affair: the UK general election of 2019," West European Politics 44: 2, 2021, pp. 450-461.

34 Eunice Goes, "The Labour party under Keir Starmer:‘Thanks, but no “isms” please!’," The Political Quarterly 92: 2, 2021, pp. 176-183.

35 Robert Ford, Tim Bale, Will Jennings and Paula Surridge, The British general election of 2019 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

36 James Tilley and Sara B. Hobolt, "Brexit as an identity: Political identities and policy norms," PS: Political Science & Politics 56: 4, 2023, pp. 546-552; John Curtice, “Five years on: Why have public attitudes to Brexit changed?”, What EU thinks, 2025, https://www.whatukthinks.org/eu/2025/01/31/five-years-on-why-have-public-attitudes-to-brexit-changed/, consulted 11 February 2025.

37 See Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford. Brexitland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) for the most useful analysis of this wider issue.

38 Marino De Luca, "From opponents to enemies? How the British press framed the EU–UK relationship in Brexit news,” Communication Research and Practice 11: 1, 2025, pp. 113-132; Julia Rone, "“Enemies of the people”? Diverging discourses on sovereignty in media coverage of Brexit," British Politics 18: 4, 2023, pp. 519-537.

39 Oliver Schmidtke, "The ‘will of the people’: The populist challenge to democracy in the name of popular sovereignty," Social & Legal Studies 32: 6, 2023, pp. 911-929; Kathryn Simpson and Nick Startin, "Tabloid tales: how the British tabloid press shaped the Brexit vote," JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 61: 2, 2023, pp. 302-322.

40 David Smith, David Deacon and John Downey, "Inside out: The UK press, Brexit and strategic populist ventriloquism," European Journal of Communication 36: 1, 2021, pp. 21-37.

41 For example, see Michael Savage, “Starmer should end UK’s ‘cycle of hesitation’ with EU, says Neil Kinnock”, Guardian, 2 February 2025.

42 European Commission, “A renewed agenda for European Union-United Kingdom cooperation: Common Understanding”, 2025, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_25_1267, consulted 27 June 2025.

43 Jannike Wachowiak and Anand Menon, “What did the UK-EU summit achieve?”, UK in a Changing Europe, 2025, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/what-did-the-uk-eu-summit-achieve/, access 27 June 2025; Peter Foster, George Parker and Andy Bounds, “Brussels rebuffs UK bid to prise open access to EU single market”, Financial Times, 25 April 2025.

44 Catherine Barnard, “It ain’t free movement: an EU-UK youth mobility scheme?”, UK in a Changing Europe, 2025, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/it-aint-free-movement-an-eu-uk-youth-mobility-scheme/, consulted 27 June 2025. Nicholas Wallace, “Why an EU-UK ‘youth mobility’ deal is hard – and how it could work”, Euractiv, 17 January 2025, https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/why-an-eu-uk-youth-mobility-deal-is-so-hard-and-how-it-could-work/, consulted 11 February 2025.

45 Aletha Adu, “UK-EU youth mobility scheme key to better EU relations, says top diplomat”, Guardian, 5 January 2025.

46 UK in a Changing Europe, “The Starmer government and Europe: Resetting relations in turbulent times”, 2025, https://ukandeu.ac.uk/other-publication/the-starmer-government-and-europe-resetting-relations-in-turbulent-times/, consulted 27 June 2025.

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List of illustrations

Title Figure 1: Percentage of people seeing EU/Europe/Brexit as the most/other important issue facing Britain today, 1997-2024.
Credits Source, IPSOS 2025.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/docannexe/image/14610/img-1.png
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References

Electronic reference

Simon Usherwood, “British European Policy and the 2024 General Election: Normal Service Has Been Resumed ”Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique [Online], XXX-3 | 2025, Online since 15 September 2025, connection on 16 December 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/14610; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/14qkl

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About the author

Simon Usherwood

Open University, UK
Simon.usherwood[at]open.ac.uk

Simon Usherwood is Professor of Politics & International Studies at the Open University, UK, and Senior Fellow of the UK in a Changing Europe initiative. His research focuses on UK-EU relations post-withdrawal and on Euroscepticism.

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