Only a few weeks old, one of the emerging priorities for Starmer’s Labour government is to fix what his EU Chief, Nick Thomas-Symonds, called the UK’s ‘tarnished’ image in Europe following what many consider the Tories’ Brexit fiasco. Starmer’s EU summit earlier this week intended to do precisely this, to re-establish working relationships with Europe and to unify against the ‘storm that gathers over our continent’: Russia. In his own words, gathered with European leaders at the birthplace of Winston Churchill (Blenheim Palace), Starmer optimistically stated that it was time to “reset” Europe-UK relations in order to urgently unify in our fight against the Eastern threat.
But what exactly is meant by “reset”? What point in time of ‘European unity’ would Starmer rewind to? The unfortunate fact is that Europe has never been unified in the sense that is required of it now. The history of Europe is one of internal conflict. Starmer’s Churchillian references and tributes may portend a push to return to the unity of Europe during WWII (or indeed WWI).
But what are these two wars but profound ruptures in European unity?
After all, not only was it European nations (Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire) that precipitated these hitherto unparalleled levels of destruction, but even the Allies were characterised by significant disunity and tension. Hitler’s rise to power was in part due to the inability of the Allies to act cohesively, and even after the War had started, major players such as France and Britain often found themselves in serious disagreement.
The attack on Mers-el-Kébir on 3 July 1940 was one such example: the British navy pre-emptively destroyed French naval ships stationed near Oran, French Algeria. The intention of the attack was to prevent the capture of French naval fleets by Germany, yet the attack’s lack of Allied approval led to widespread anti-British sentiment in France, threatening their collective opposition to Nazi Germany during one of the War’s most critical moments.
The breakaway collaborationist government of Vichy France, formed on 10 July following the Mers-el-Kébir attack, further ruptured the ideal of a steadfast and unquestionable Allied unity. For two years to follow, British forces under Churchill’s direction invaded Vichy-controlled territories, forcing them to surrender territories in mainland Africa and Madagascar. Even towards the end of the war, Churchill forced French troops to retreat at gunpoint – and to ‘fire if necessary’ – following their violent occupation of Syria, known as the Levant Crisis, which itself threatened to break out into direct British-French conflict.
A glance at the moment of unity that Starmer refers to instead reveals a panoply of volatile alliances. Starmer’s choice of words – to “reset” European relations to an earlier point – are questionable, suggesting a wish to return to a moment of European unity which in fact never existed in our idealised, retrospective form. The responsibility for the destructiveness of WWI and WWII lies in part with the sincere absence of any protracted European unity.
The allied stance against the Axis in WWII was undeniably commendable, yet we should recognise that European ‘unity’ was often precisely the ingredient most lacking. If unified strength is what we want against Russia – and it should be – then a reset to an idealised imaginary is not enough. Putin is a new type of threat, and to deal with it Europe needs an entirely new type of unity. It is not a matter of resetting to the tense and fragmented semblance of unity which Europe has embodied in the past, but of forging a new collective European unity.
Image: Laura Hurley / No10 Downing Street
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