As usual, Yes Minister put it best. For 500 years Britain had pursued a single policy towards its Continental neighbours, Sir Humphrey noted to his baffled minister in an episode from 1980. The aim? “To create a disunited Europe.” Britain’s fondness for playing off one European government against another kept it out of the antecedents to the European Union for years; Konrad Adenauer and, in particular, Charles de Gaulle did not want to give Britain a chance to play “the old game”.
Once inside the club, Britain proved the old statesmen correct. In 2004, for instance, Tony Blair saw off the candidacy of Guy Verhofstadt, a floppy-haired federalist who is now the European Parliament’s Brexit pointman, for the post of president of the European Commission, marshalling resistance against a usually irresistible Franco-German consensus. Contrary to claims by the more rabid Brexiteers, Britain rather often got its way in Brussels.
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