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6 - Moving beyond British Exceptionalism

from Part I - Milestones: Treaties and Treaty Changes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2023

By
N. Piers Ludlow
Edited by
Mathieu Segers  and
Steven Van Hecke
Mathieu Segers
Affiliation:
Universiteit Maastricht, Netherlands
Steven Van Hecke
Affiliation:
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
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Summary

It is tempting to interpret the convoluted narrative that led to Brexit as a story of British exceptionalism. The fit between European integration and the United Kingdom (UK) had never been easy – much less natural, it would appear, than for any other country in Europe. It was for this reason that the British initially stood aside from the process, spurning repeated chances to join the institutional precursors to the European Union (EU). When they did belatedly change their mind and join the European Economic Community (EEC), moreover, they did so amid sustained domestic controversy. The deep-seated mismatch between Britain and its European partners was to become a leitmotiv of the country’s forty-six years as an EC/EU member state. The UK was never at ease within the EC/EU, but instead at odds with important aspects of the process, divided internally on the necessity of membership and liable to see itself as an ‘awkward partner’, the malcontent within.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of the European Union , pp. 182 - 206
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Recommended Reading

Grey, C. Brexit Unfolded: How No One Got What They Want (and Why They Were Never Going to) (London, Biteback, 2021).Google Scholar
O’Rourke, K. H. A Short History of Brexit: From Brentry to Backstop (London, Penguin, 2019).Google Scholar
Reynolds, D. Island Stories: Britain and Its History in the Age of Brexit (London, William Collins, 2019).Google Scholar
Saunders, R. ‘Brexit and Empire: “Global Britain” and the Myth of Imperial Nostalgia’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 48, no. 6 (2020): 1140–74.Google Scholar
Shipman, T. All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class (London, William Collins, 2016).Google Scholar
Stephens, P. Britain Alone: The Path from Suez to Brexit (London, Faber and Faber, 2021).Google Scholar
Wall, S. Reluctant European: Britain and the European Union from 1945 to Brexit (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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