Could Britain rejoin a much-improved EU?

The EU desperately needs wholesale reform. If it gets it, there is no reason why the UK shouldn’t join the new version at some point in the future, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

170602-eu-b

Could the UK and the EU kiss and make up?
(Image credit: 2017 Getty Images)

It isn't often that I agree with George Soros, but on the EU I mostly do. We both think it is dysfunctional; that it is facing an existential crisis of which Brexit is a symptom rather than a cause; and that there are two possible outcomes from here either it will collapse or it will "transform itself into an organisation that other countries like Britain will want to join".

To do the latter (which would be great!) it needs to abandon the idea of ever closer union and move to a loose system of union with lots of different membership models. It needs to remember, as Soros told the Brussels Economic Forum this week, that "the European Union was meant to be a voluntary association of like-minded states that were willing to surrender part of their sovereignty for the common good".

However, after the financial crisis the EU became something else: "a creditor/debtor relationship where the debtor countries couldn't meet their obligations and the creditor countries dictated the terms that the debtors had to meet." The net result was "neither voluntary nor equal."

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Sign up

This has to be addressed, as do the various problems of free movement, democratic distance and country-inappropriate regulation across the EU. We need, says Soros, not ever closer union or even a multi-speed EU (which suggests anyway that the final destination is ever closer union) but a multi-track Europe one that gives its members genuine choices and allows them to retain genuine sovereignty.

And as Soros notes, the UK is an exceptionally well functioning parliamentary democracy. If the EU fully reforms (not likely but possible!) there is no reason why we shouldn't vote to join the new version at some point in the future using (hopefully) one of many membership models.

An awful lot of the people who voted Brexit (me included) would like to be in some sort of union with the EU just not the one currently on offer.

Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.