“We hope to reach again a Europe in which men will be proud to say, ‘I am a European.’ We hope to see a Europe where men of every country will think as much of being a European as of belonging to their native land – and that without lessening any of their love and loyalty to their home and birthplace. We hope that wherever they go in this wide domain, to which we set no limits in the European continent, they will truly feel – Here I am at home, I am a citizen of this country too.” (Winston Churchill, Amsterdam, 1948)

The words of the above quotation come from Dr Denis MacShane’s book Brexit, No Exit: Why (in the end) Britain Won’t Leave Europe (I.B. Taurus, 2017). Sad to say but, presently, the answer to this statement remains in the balance.

I am writing these words on the day the self-styled reincarnation of Winston Churchill, that narcissistic, bombastic, duplicitous and opportunistic Old Etonian and presently the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is attempting to get his withdrawal deal with the European Union through the British House of Commons. If passed, the deal will take the UK out of the European Union. The ramifications of this deal are frightening to contemplate.

Clearly, Boris Johnson does not know his Churchill quite as intimately as he seemingly feels he does.

Dr Denis MacShane was a Labour MP serving in Tony Blair’s government as Minister for Europe. He was first elected as MP for Rotherham in 1994 and served until his resignation in 2012. MacShane studied at Oxford and London Universities. He was and remains a prominent commentator on European issues. He is well qualified for this task having lived and worked in different European countries, speaks a range of European languages, and is reported to have “a contact book of politicians and journalists in most European member states.”

Dr MacShane’s book Brexit, No Exit: Why (in the end) Britain Won’t Leave Europe (see the above reference), is the second of a trilogy of books on the theme of Brexit. The trilogy began with Brexit: How Britain Will Leave Europe (I.B. Taurus, 2015) and concluded with the recent publication of Brexiternity: The Uncertain Fate of Britain (I.B. Taurus, 2019).

In the first book Brexit: How Britain Will Leave Europe, Dr MacShane examines the issue of whether Britain will leave the EU. He indicates that the question of Brexit – a British exit from the EU – was high on the political agenda in the UK. This situation followed the Conservative victory in the 2015 General Election and the mounting pressure from within the Conservative Party for the UK to exit the EU. MacShane looks at the history of Britain’s fraught relationship with Europe and shows how “the possibility of Brexit had become increasingly more likely.”

He looks at the “key personalities who had shaped Britain’s European policy – from Churchill to Wilson and Heath to Thatcher, Blair and Cameron” – and “the key issues of immigration and the economy” which had heightened Eurosceptic feeling in the UK. In so doing, MacShane touches on one of the “most divisive political issues of our times” as the nation moved towards a referendum on Europe and considered its future place in the world.

In the second book Brexit, No Exit: Why (in the end) Britain Won’t Leave Europe, Dr MacShane discusses the UK’s Brexit vote in 2016 and the inconclusive election just twelve months later. He asserts that both events “unleashed a wave of chaos and uncertainty.” He argues that “Brexit will not mean full rupture with Europe and that British business will overcome the right-wing forces of the Conservative back-benches and UKIP.” In consequence, both forces were weakened due to the ill-fated election gamble of June 2017 by the former Prime Minister, Theresa May.

Denis MacShane correctly predicts that British negotiations with the EU in the post-Referendum period “will prove to be excruciating.” He considers that Britain cannot and will not divorce itself from the continent of Europe, “Indeed, the European question will remain the defining political issue of our time.”

He further considers that public and political opinion in both the UK and EU member states has never confronted such an issue before – namely “A decision by one of the world’s largest economies and democracies to withdraw from the world’s biggest open-border trading bloc, which has managed to secure peace and the sharing of laws and democracy between more than 30 nations, …as well as those seeking to join.”

Rather alarmingly, MacShane sees Brexit as just “the first step in a bigger nationalist campaign aimed at destroying the EU and returning to a Europe of rival nation states behind closed borders.” To reach this conclusion Dr MacShane first examines the impact of Brexit – in the UK, the EU, with reference also to Donald Trump and the U.S.A, before dissecting why Brexit happened.

Following this, Dr MacShane provides evidence as to why Brexit disrupts Britain from within and will cut off the UK with respect to its near and far neighbours. Finally, he shows how Brexit will change Europe in terms of the requirement for a new politics. His “Afterword” discusses how the UK stays in Europe.

Brigid Loffan (Director, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies) says that the third book in MacShane’s Brexit trilogy Brexiternity: The Uncertain Fate of Britain, spells out why “Brexit will morph into a Brexiternity.” Loffan is of the view that Denis MacShane’s book rightly argues that the English politics that gave rise to Brexit will result in “years and years of Brexit issues in Britain but also in Ireland (I might add Scotland) and the rest of Europe as well.”

Indeed, as MacShane explains, “Brexit will affect the lives of future generations, deal or no deal, and even threatens the integrity of the United Kingdom itself.” Even as this article is being written two days after the British government has made a deal with the EU, it is clear, as Denis Macshane outlines, that “No matter what happens, a ‘Brexiternity’ of negotiations and internal political wrangling in Britain lies ahead.”

The Guardian newspaper’s Polly Toynbee has said that, “Brexit is far from over. It is a Gordian knot that requires new and strong political leadership in order to be cut.” Referring to the last book in the Denis MacShane trilogy, Jon Snow, the journalist and presenter of the Channel 4 News, considers that “Leavers and Remainers alike will learn from this book as we face a decade in which Brexit will dominate our national life.”

Toynbee and Snow are among a veritable celebrity line-up of journalists, commentators, writers and politicians, amongst others, who have lauded the above trilogy of books about Brexit by Dr Denis MacShane. This writer is no exception.

RSC