How Sir Robert Menzies Foresaw Brexit

With the outcome of the June 23 Brexit referendum eliciting reactions of surprise, delight, angst and despair across Britain, Europe and indeed the world, it is timely to take the long historical perspective to understand some of the reasons why a majority of British voters chose to leave the EU. Some of the roots of the British public’s present discontent with the European juggernaut were identified by Sir Robert Menzies in 1970. His prescient insights will be explored in detail later.

Amidst the attempts of some commentators to oversimplify the historic vote as a “peasant revolt against the London elites”, or xenophobia, or nostalgia for the “Rule Britannia” days of old, there have been some welcome attempts to appreciate the nuances behind the Leave cause. In her column for the Australian on June 29, Janet Albrechtsen noted that “as tempting as it is to buttonhole the Brexit vote into a single cause, there were myriad reasons for why 17.4 million people decided Britain should leave the European Union”. One of the salient reasons she cited was the observation of the British public over four decades that the European common market established under the Treaty of Rome in 1957 had “morphed into a supranational behemoth that has treated the voters of nation states with disdain”.

When Britain entered the European common market in 1973 under the Conservative prime ministership of Edward Heath, it did so in the good faith that it would be forging an amicable and fruitful trading partnership with its European neighbours. The judgment of the Heath administration was vindicated in a 1975 referendum when the British people voted overwhelmingly (67 per cent) to continue in the common market. The people voted in the confidence that their country would prosper economically and culturally from close diplomatic and trade ties with their region.

It was by no means an unreasonable assumption, either then or now, that Britain could nourish strong relations with its European neighbours without compromising its centuries-old tradition of sturdy independence and distinctive national identity. The unfolding of the European project since the 1970s, however, with progressive layers of European bureaucracy and regulations encroaching on myriad aspects of daily life without the assent of the people, convinced a majority of British voters to rethink their membership of the EU. Great swathes of voters would have filed through polling booths with heavy hearts that the otherwise attractive benefits of continuing EU membership would come at too great a cost to their personal liberties and the self-determination of their own country. If the EU had functioned pragmatically as a facilitator for intra-European trade and co-operation, rather than dreaming of becoming a supranational polity, the Remain cause would probably have triumphed.

A potted history of the European project is sufficient to show that the laudable post-war aspiration to forge regional peace and co-operation, in a continent torn asunder by centuries of strife and war, progressively gave way to an almost utopian vision to subsume the national sovereignty of each European member into a supranational state. Following the Treaty of Rome in 1957, the 1965 Treaty of Brussels enabled the establishment of Europe’s central governing body, the Commission of the European Communities. The project towards the federation of Europe continued apace with the agreement to open borders without passport controls under the 1985 Schengen Agreement, the adoption of a flag and the signing of the Single European Act in 1986, the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht consolidating the European Economic Community into an even more firmly-structured European Union, the circulation of a common currency in 2002, and the establishment of a permanent President of the European Council following the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon. After six decades of centralisation, today’s European Union is virtually unrecognisable from Robert Schuman’s modest European Coal and Steel Community of 1952.

The steady trajectory towards a European federation was noticed from afar by Australia’s longest-serving prime minister, Sir Robert Menzies. As Menzies penned his second volume of memoirs, The Measure of the Years (1970), he shared some of his reflections on recent developments in foreign affairs. For Menzies, one of these salient developments was of course Britain’s entry into the European “Common Market”. As Menzies regarded Britain as Australia’s most important ally, the future of Britain and its place in Europe was of acute interest to him. In these memoirs, Menzies pondered the implications of Britain’s accession to the 1957 Treaty of Rome and offered some prescient observations of how this momentous decision could affect Britain’s status as a sovereign nation. From his experiences as a barrister and parliamentarian, Menzies was astute in the art of constitutional interpretation and familiar with the character and operation of federal entities such as the Australian Commonwealth. He was able to bring a critical eye to the Treaty of Rome and its vision for a European federation. Menzies examined some of the provisions in the treaty and observed that their future construction and application would be likely to erode the national sovereignty of member states.

Decades before the modern European Union eventually came into being after the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht, Menzies was able to foresee that Britain would be subject to the laws of the European Commission with respect to trade policy, immigration control and judicial power. Menzies offered some prophetic predictions about the direction in which an evolving European entity would take Britain. First, he envisioned that the British resolve to jealously guard its tradition of responsible government would be placed on a collision course with the aspiration of the European project to override national sovereignty by setting up a centralised governing authority:

I think that there are deep-seated instincts and a sort of patriotic insularity which combine to make the Englishman distrust the idea of subordinating his interests and his political rights to any institution established in Europe, empowered to give him orders but not responsible to him … Britain is the home of responsible government, of the supremacy of Parliament, and of the rule of the law, the law involved being British.

Far from operating like a British-style parliament with direct accountability to the voting public, this institution to be established in Europe would be “a completely bureaucratic body”. Menzies maintained that, as a full-time, appointed body of civil servants, it would in no sense be a “responsible government” which the British people would have the liberty to elect at their will.

Menzies warned that with the establishment of this Commission of the European Communities, pursuant to the 1965 Treaty of Brussels, there would be a large transfer of power from Westminster to Brussels:

British accession to the Treaty of Rome must, in relation to many affairs which are now British domestic affairs, take these out of the control of the Parliament of Westminster and the ministers responsible to it … Once a member state becomes bound by the treaty, which is expressed to be concluded for an unlimited period and therefore has permanency, the consent of all the contracting parties being needed for a change, the British Parliament would not appear to have any choice about the matter. It could not amend “the law” except by consent, and the British legislation incorporating the law in the body of legislation in Britain would not be exercising its own judgment or the judgment of the electors, but would be carrying out its duty to the European community.

Indeed, it was this deep sense of powerlessness amongst the British people, unable to elect or remove the officials of the European Commission, which led many to sever their country’s executive ties with the EU. For a people steeped in the tradition of responsible government, it was infinitely preferable for greater power to reside in the elected representatives of Westminster than the unelected civil servants of Brussels.

Menzies also predicted that the initial European economic trading block established by the Treaty of Rome could inexorably morph into a “European federation”, whereby nations such as Britain would have to cede a great degree of their national sovereignty to become member states:

If, as I believe and have said, Great Britain forgoes some of her own sovereignty to become a European member of a European organism, she clearly will not be any longer an autonomous country like Australia … As time goes on and the politically uniting elements of the Treaty of Rome, in spite of the lessons of modern European history, become more established, it is conceivable, on the basis of other associations of nations we have seen, that it may develop into a European federation.

Aware of the optimism that abounded in Britain for the European project in the late 1960s, Menzies respectfully pointed out that some of his old friends in Britain were perhaps oblivious to the centralising trajectory that a future European community would take:

I know this is warmly denied by my friends in Britain and I firmly believe that they do not desire it. But in every confederation or association of nations with institutions which can give domestic orders to all of its members, history has justified Lord Bryce’s famous observation that two forces begin to operate; the centripetal and the centrifugal. There will either be an accumulation of central power and the emergence of a federation on the normal pattern, or there will be pressures to disintegrate and return to the status quo ante.

The ensuing direction of the European project from the 1970s vindicated Menzies’s judgment as the European Union consolidated its power base in Brussels with the development of the European Parliament and European Commission following the 2009 Lisbon Treaty. The Brexit vote, however, may be a sign that the centripetal trend of the EU has finally peaked, and that Britain’s decision to exit the EU represents the first of the centrifugal impulses towards disintegration and a return to the original national sovereignty of European states. Again, Menzies appears to be proven correct in his prediction that if the centripetal direction of Europe stalled at some point in the future, Europe would be likely to revert to devolving power back to its member states.

Returning to the case of Britain, Menzies foresaw that a centralising European federation would inevitably result in a diminution of Britain’s national sovereignty:

Of course it is clear that should Britain, contrary to current intentions, become a state in a European federation, its sovereignty in the full sense would disappear; for, in a federation, no state is sovereign but merely exercises some sovereignty in a limited field, the sovereignty of the federation as a whole becoming the dominant factor.

Foreshadowing many of the grievances voiced by those campaigning for Britain’s exit from the EU in 2016, Menzies argued that Britain’s autonomy over its trade and immigration policies, together with its centuries-old judicial system, could be severely circumscribed if it were to become a member of a future European federation. The executive, legislative and judicial arms of British government in Westminster could become answerable to a European commission on the continent:

British control over its own immigration policies, now giving rise to acute and sometimes bitter controversy in England, will therefore be sharply limited, and her present problems may well be intensified.

This desire for Britain to reclaim control over its sovereign borders, fishing rights and trade practices, which had been ceded to the jurisdiction of the EU, represented one of the compelling reasons why a majority voted to leave the European block.

Finally, as a constitutional lawyer, Menzies appreciated that the legal apparatus of an evolving European federation would encroach on the judicial sovereignty of Britain. The highest court of appeal would no longer be the House of Lords (or the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom since 2009) but the European Courts of Justice:

The normal function of the judiciary in Britain would also have limitations imposed upon it: because the Treaty of Rome provides for the establishment of a Court of Justice which is to be set up to “ensure observance of the treaty” … When one considers the wide scope of the treaty and the obligations it imposes on member states, to only a few of which I have referred, it will be seen that the power of this non-British court will be very extensive.

For Menzies, the practical implications of this new judicial arrangement would be that where questions of law in a case were typically raised before a domestic court or tribunal empowered to give a final decision, such a court or tribunal would now be required to refer the matter to the new European Court of Justice. The growing public resentment at this usurping of Britain’s judicial sovereignty by legal institutions outside the UK provided yet another reason why the British public have now turned their backs on the EU.

Although Menzies’s reflections on Britain’s relationship with Europe were penned some forty-six years ago, they are worth revisiting today as they provide remarkably prescient insights into the problems Britain were likely to encounter if it became part of a future “European federation”. The conundrum Menzies foresaw in 1970 has come to the forefront with the Brexit referendum. Menzies’s foreknowledge of the matters vexing Britain’s present-day relationship with the EU arose not so much from a clairvoyant-like faculty, but rather from an acute sense of history coupled with his powers of deductive reasoning from past developments.