Brexit and Britain’s Political Future

Syed Kamall is a professor of International Relations at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham, London. He was a member of the European Parliament representing London from 2005-19.

FABIO ROJAS (FR): Tell me a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and how you got into public service.

SYED KAMAL (SK): I grew up in north London. My parents came to the United Kingdom from a country called Guyana which is in South America, but culturally it’s considered part of the West Indies. I grew up in a family through their three kids and studied to get into grammar school. My first degree was electronic engineering and did a master’s at the London School of Economics and then did a PhD in organizational change in post transition economies, or post-communist economies of Central-Eastern Europe.

How I got into politics is a bit strange because I always found myself being elected to things when I was at school. I found myself sitting more with the Conservatives on the Student Council I found, and so then when I left university, I joined the Conservative Party. I started putting myself forward for different electoral posts. I ran for local municipalities twice. I ran for the London Assembly once. I ran for the British Parliament once. I ran for European Parliament. In fact, I lost five elections before I got elected, and then I finally got elected in 2005 as a member of the European Parliament for London.

ALISHA KIRCHOFF (AK): For our American readers, how does the European Parliament differ from the British Parliament?

SK: First, the British Parliament elects Members of Parliament for the United Kingdom, so you have one Member of Parliament for the different constituencies. I think there are just over 600 constituencies in the United Kingdom at the moment. What happens in the European Parliament is that every country of the European Union sends parliamentarians. So, it’s a multi-member constituency, and the total European Parliament consisted of 751 members.

FR: What authority or jurisdiction does the European Parliament have?

SK: The European Union can decide legislation and decide laws in several areas; the most notable are environmental, employment, and legislation relating to or the trade policy. Now within the European Union there are three main institutions: one is the European Commission, which is the civil service, but it also had the power of initiation. Then when the Commission initiates a piece of legislation, it passes that paper to two organizations. One is called the European Council, which is basically the body representing the 28, now 27, Member States of the EU. The other is the European Parliament and the European Parliament amends that legislation and then you have three pieces of paper. The initial Commission proposal, the Council, the Parliament position, and then we get into a room for three institutions, and we bash out a compromise and that process is called a trialogue. That’s the European Union and legislation has equal power with the 28 governments of the EU.

Syed Kamall is a professor of International Relations at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham, London.

Wikimedia commons

FR: When did you first hear about Brexit and what is your opinion of it?

SK: My first week in the European Parliament which was around May 2005. It was a fascinating time because they had just had two referendums in France and the Netherlands on something called the European Constitution. It’s supposed to be a constitution for Europe, clearly taking the EU further down the road towards political integration.

I remember being in a room and hearing a very senior German politician say that nothing must be allowed to get in the way of European political integration. I turned to my colleagues and said, “that’s not what the British believe.” We talk about it as a trade area not as a political project. My colleagues from other countries turned to me and said, “Read the history of the European Union! It’s always been about political integration!” There and then, I realized that there was a massive misalignment between the understandings of the EU. Many people saw it as a political project, whereas in the UK we saw it in transactional terms. I realized that, at some stage, there was going to be a day of reckoning. I knew that many of my constituents did not see the EU as a political project in any way.

FR: How did your colleagues in the European Parliament react to the Brexit referendum that triggered this long chain of events? Were they surprised?

SK: Yes, I think maybe many people were surprised. I remember the day that the morning after the election when I was being interviewed outside Westminster by a number of media outlets from across the world, and one of the questions they asked me was, “you’ve voted and your government’s been elected, are you really going to have a referendum about leaving the EU?” I said yes, that it was in our manifesto.

I think there was a bit of disbelief, and then after that, when we voted to leave, I still had a number of colleagues saying to me, “I don’t believe you’re going to leave.” Even right up to the end, I remember only so many of my friends from different countries in the European Union who didn’t want us to leave because they really worried about what the EU would be like without the United Kingdom for various reasons. But when Boris Johnson won the election with a pledge to finally deliver Brexit, they knew it was all over

AK: So now that Brexit is a done deal, exactly what does that mean? What exactly does it mean for people on the ground?

SK: I mean, for some people it won’t actually make that much difference. Now it will be the British Parliament who initiates the laws and the British Parliament that passes these laws and the laws won’t initially have started life in the European Union. When we were part of the European Union, the EU passed the law and then it would have to be transposed into UK law. So what it means is, yeah, at the moment we are very much aligned with the European Union in much legislation.

But what it might mean in future years is that we might have divergent areas that we disagree with the EU and the other main thing, probably in terms of economics, is that now the United Kingdom will be free to sign its own trade agreements.

It also means a lot in terms of international institutions. There was pressure on the United Kingdom to give up its seat on the Security Council. The UK represents itself now on a lot of international bodies like the World Trade Organization and other international organizations. The British people want to do things like this on their own terms as opposed to law coming from the European Union.

FR: Is there any signal or a movement in the direction of more egalitarian immigration policy in the UK after Brexit?

SK: We still have the same immigration policy where we give priority to mostly white people from Europe over mostly nonwhite, non-Europeans. We do have passport discrimination now. There have been proposals and we’re looking at issues. For example, such as a point system. I think that the point system effectively will be very similar to past times where we had a policy to fill in for skill shortages. We’ll give priority to those immigrants. I suspect that’s where we’re moving, there have been proposals for a point system.

AK: Now that you’ve done all this public service and you’re now back in a role as a teacher and a scholar. What experiences do you bring from the public service side back into the classroom?

SK: One of the things I think I bring in is understanding what messages politicians are receptive to, given all the other challenges they face and the demands on their time. For example, when the think tank has a paper, or the university wants to get its message across to the politicians, I can help them shape that message to what I think is the best approach. Those sort of techniques or ways of getting your message across, are gained from years of being in public service myself.

FR: And then finally, what are your roles at the Institute for Economic Affairs?

“Many people saw it as a political project, whereas in the UK we saw it in transactional terms. I realized that, at some stage, there was going to be a day of reckoning.”

SK: The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is a free-market think tank founded in 1955, the UK’s oldest free-market classical liberal think tank. My main role at the Institute of Economic Affairs is really as a thought leader. The organization had glory days in the 80s and 90s when a number of politicians were inspired by our work and one of the things I want to do is rebuild our academic network to bring in younger academics from around the world to write for us, to take part in events and build that global academic network of free market classical, liberal minded thinkers. I’ve also gone back to academia, so I spend my days at IEA and at Saint Mary’s University in Twickenham, where I was appointed a professor of politics and international relations.