The Long Disenchantment: Reassessing Uk-EU Relations from Accession to Brexit (1969-2016)

This book seeks to replace a comforting European narrative of British missed opportunities with a chronicle of the complexity of UK/EC-EU relations. After nearly a decade of Brexit (2016), it revisits the historical evolution of the relationship between Britain and Europe since the 1970s. Building on an in-depth study of primary and secondary sources, the author sheds new light on the intricacies of that relationship.

The book is structured in six chapters, the first of which reflects on the causes of the UK’s lack of engagement in the early and crucial developments of the European Community. The second chapter revisits ten years of stop-go diplomacy of accession, and the meaning of the first enlargement for Britain and its partners. The third chapter argues that in the early years, entry represented for Britain an opportunity to deliver change, working with France and Germany inside the EC; and, as an EC member, building new relationships with countries outside, including in the Commonwealth. The fourth chapter focuses on the dawning realisation that EC membership meant for Britain joining its partners on a journey towards an unknown destination in search of whatever-closer Union would mean. The Fifth chapter concentrates on the 1980s, when, on the one hand, the British government was to the fore in the creation of a single market; while on the other it openly challenged an agreed-upon narrative, among the continental member states. This narrative was one which sought to reshape European values and relationships, together with its culture, geography and history, round a commitment to greater integration. The final chapter is an epilogue that examines the political decisions of the last four British prime ministers: Major, Brown, Blair and Cameron, in confronting and reacting to the reality of European Union, from the Maastricht Treaty (1992) onward. This examination suggests that, rather than political continuity, discontinuity, led the UK, through Prime Minister David Cameron’s efforts at renegotiation in the EU, to Brexit, and his instant resignation.

This book invites readers to rethink, refine, and challenge the dominant narrative of Britain as a predictable, permanent outsider condemned to irrelevance in the EC/EU. It will appeal to scholars of international relations and political history, as well as political decision-makers, both in Britain and the EU.

Ilaria Poggiolini is a Professor of History of International Relations and History of European Integration at the University of Pavia (Italy). She is a member of the teaching staff of the Doctorate Program in History at the University of Pavia and of the Committee on Publication of Italian Diplomatic Documents (MAECI, Rome). She has previously served as Pro-Chancellor for International Relations (University of Pavia, 2013-2019), Visiting Fulbright Scholar (USA), NATO Fellow, Visiting Fellow at the Center of International Studies and Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton (USA) and as an Associate of the Transatlantic Relations Programme at LSE IDEAS, LSE, London (UK). Her present research is focused on the UK’s accession to the EEC, British European policies and Ostpolitik in the 1970s and 1980s, and the UK’s international role in the decade leading to the end of the Cold War in Europe and to German reunification.