Boris Johnson cannot complain about the lack of an invitation to the European summit that begins on Thursday when his foreign policy is founded on a belief that such gatherings are not worth attending.
It is true that Brexit doesn’t prevent the prime minister taking an active role in supporting Ukraine against Kremlin aggression. British military hardware is appreciated on the frontline. Mr Johnson can be in the loop of western diplomacy without a seat at the EU table. He will also be attending a Nato summit in Brussels on Thursday. In the Brexiter view, UK interests in Europe can be managed through the North Atlantic alliance and bilateral conversations with continental leaders.
If that were true, and the EU were a strategic sideshow, Joe Biden would not be attending both summits in Brussels. But the US president recognises something that Mr Johnson denies – the European Council is a place where decisions of consequence are made. The prime minister would serve his country’s interests better from inside the room.
The outbreak of war had raised hopes that the bombast and pettiness that has too often coloured British debate about the relationship with continental neighbours might be set aside. That hope was dashed when Mr Johnson made a speech last week drawing a grotesque comparison between Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion and the UK’s decision to leave the EU. Both reflected a common appetite for liberty, the prime minister said, mining a depth of crass cynicism to which even staunch critics did not think him capable of sinking.
The trivialising thrust of the analogy was made all the more insulting in the context of Ukrainian ambitions to join the very European project that Mr Johnson casts as an imperial aggressor. For Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the EU and Nato are twin pillars of a democratic European order that stands in opposition to the worldview advanced by Vladimir Putin, where the rule of law is meaningless, might is right and borders are erased at a dictator’s whim.
The concept of Europe as a democratic bastion was understood by countries of the former Warsaw Pact that sought Nato and EU membership as a package in the early 2000s. It is also understood by Mr Putin, who sees undermining EU solidarity as instrumental to the goal of sabotaging western interests. That is why he backed Brexit.
That EU solidarity, resolute at the start of the war, is under strain. There are differences over the shape and pace of new sanctions against Moscow and how to meet the cost. The Baltic states and Poland, having more experience of Kremlin hostility, are hawkish in wanting to maximise pressure on Moscow. Germany resists embargos that might weaken European economies by limiting energy supplies and stoking prices. This week’s summit is likely to produce only conditional statements of tougher intent, not tougher action, disappointing those who would push harder against the Putin regime.
That is a debate in which Britain would like a say. As one of the continent’s economic and military powers, it also has sway. Mr Johnson can be influential from outside a Brussels summit, but he has forfeited a say over the agenda. He has no one but himself to blame if decisions are made that he would have opposed had he been at the table.
