The One Who Got Away

The U.K. was never comfortable in the EU. But did the bloc really know how to make it feel at home?

- Ian Wishart

The European Union’s leaders looked anxiously at their watches and asked where the British prime minister was. They’d gathered in a 500-year-old monastery in Lisbon for a special ceremony to sign a landmark treaty, and it wasn’t really the done thing for one of their number not to turn up. It was December 2007, and Gordon Brown was the PM. “We need Gordon,” then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy was heard to say in English at one point, but when the leaders picked up their pens, Gordon was still in London.

If ever you wanted an example of Britain’s not-quite-sure about-all-this attitude to the EU, that was it. Brown’s no-show wasn’t because he opposed the treaty. In fact, his plan was to get it ratified by Parliament as soon as he could. He just didn’t want TV pictures of him celebrating with European counterparts as they made the bloc more powerful. So he arrived three and a half hours late and awkwardly signed the document in a small room, while on the other side of the door the other 26 EU leaders were already shuffling out of lunch.

The episode shines a light on the U.K.’s uneasy relationship with the union of countries it joined in 1973. With one foot inside and one foot out, it was never sure which way to turn—and the bloc never seemed to know how to make it more comfortable. Finally, given a chance to have a say in a referendum in 2016, 52% of U.K. voters opted to leave. That triggered three years of complicated, bad-tempered, and at times chaotic negotiations with the EU over the terms of the country’s withdrawal and contortions in Parliament that split parties, ended political careers, and led to two general elections. Finally it will all be over: The U.K. departs on Jan. 31.