Historian Johnson wonders whether Britain will move away from Europe

Paul Johnson‘s latest Forbes magazine commentary ponders Britain’s future relationship with the European continent.

The U.S. has always preferred that Britain be a member of the EU and, if possible, that it take a lead in the EU’s policies and vision for the future. Most Americans aren’t interested in the details of the EU’s structure, but the U.S. State Department has a distinct view of what it would like the EU to be: a federal body with common legislative, economic and taxation policies, with Britain at its center.

I suspect the reason for this view is that the U.S. would have a much easier time dealing with a federated EU in which Britain was a leading player and guiding spirit than it has dealing with today’s conglomerate of nations, each pulling in a different direction according to national interests.

Indeed, some American diplomats envision the EU becoming an up dated version of the “Special Relationship,” with a federated Britain setting the tone, in accordance with Anglo-Saxon principles, in foreign and economic policies and educating the Europeans so they follow suit.

But this is pure fantasy. Europe isn’t like that and never can be. One can’t make analogies to the U.S.’ creation, either. The Founding Fathers shared not only a common language but also a common heritage of law, society and custom. They were able to debate the contents of the Constitution using the same terms and in the same emotional spirit that had been in use in the British Parliament for hundreds of years.

Many of the Founding Fathers believed they weren’t creating anything essentially new but were restoring a representative set of institutions that George III and his ministers had perverted. They were turning the clock back to the glorious days of the mid-17th century, when the king had been executed by an Act of Parliament and the people’s representatives ruled.

In contrast, the Europeans who created the EU, who run it from Brussels and who are devising its federal structure come from a quite different intellectual background–one that is narrow, bureaucratic, formal, ultralegalistic and fundamentally undemocratic.