Does Liz Truss’s Prague visit signal a post-Brexit path back to Europe?

It was not hard to catch a note of surprise among politicians and commentators alike when it was announced – just six days beforehand – that the prime minister would attend this week’s inaugural meeting of the European Political Community (EPC). There were many reasons why her decision to join 43 other European leaders at Prague Castle caught so many on the hop.

Even after her victory in the Conservative leadership contest, Liz Truss was trading on her enthusiasm for Brexit with the zeal of the convert she wanted people to believe she was. She gave no sign whatever of heeding those hopeful pro-Europeans urging her to see a fence-mending opportunity in Prague. That the EPC was the brainchild of the French president hardly helped, as relations between Truss and Emmanuel Macron have not exactly flourished since her equivocal “friend or foe” remark.

So why did she go? In a newspaper article coinciding with her departure, she cited “vital issues affecting all Europe” – the Ukraine war, energy security and migration – which affected the UK, too. She also mentioned the importance of non-EU members, such as Ukraine, Norway and Switzerland (and presumably the UK) having a “strong voice” in European affairs, while stressing: “We are taking part as an independent sovereign nation, and we will act as one.” So there, Brussels.

There would not be far to look, however, to suggest other reasons. Appearing alongside more than 40 other national leaders at a photogenic location rarely did any national leader’s authority any harm. There is also what might be called the absence penalty.

If everyone else turns up, and one stays away, it is absence, not substance, that is likely to feature on the news, sending the message either that your country is being cold-shouldered by the rest, or that it is deliberately isolating itself. In 2007, Gordon Brown went all the way to Portugal but signed the Lisbon Treaty alone. In trying to convey one political signal, he sent a host of more negative ones.

There can be a penalty, too, for not being in on the start of something – as the UK learned to its cost with the Common Market that eventually evolved into today’s EU. It then had to suffer the indignity of applying and being rejected, before joining a group whose first principles it had not helped to set. Truss or a successor may come to feel that the EPC is not working, or is “not for us”, or it may die its own death. But more is surely gained by being in, rather than out, when the early decisions are made. There will be opportunity enough to flounce out later, if that is the verdict.

Whether, as UK Europhiles would like to hope, Truss’s presence marks a change for the better in the UK’s approach to the EU remains to be seen. Her attendance could reflect nothing more than the neat phrase peddled by UK politicians in the months after Brexit – “we are leaving the EU, but we are not leaving Europe” – but at least she is not burning any bridges, yet.

Something of a change, if only of tone, can also be discerned in relation to the impasse over the Northern Ireland protocol – though, again, tone and substance can be very different things.

That said, another pattern of a sort may be emerging, in the shape of a more multilateral approach to foreign policy. This apparent change may, of course, be explained simply by the coincidence of the diplomatic and other timetables: the Queen’s state funeral in London, followed by the UN General Assembly in New York, and now the EPC in Prague. But Truss has not yet met any other national leader outside a wider international framework. Her one-on-one meeting with President Joe Biden was not – as it was with Theresa May and Donald Trump – the result of what looked like a demeaning rush to be first at the White House.

It may also be a matter of character. Boris Johnson was always something of a diplomatic one-man band as prime minister, as his “special relationship” with Volodymyr Zelensky so graphically showed. Whatever the reason, Truss seems to be starting out with at least some effort to be a team player, though how long any consensual approach might last is another matter. Even before she set off for Prague, the UK was offering to host the second EPC meeting (only to learn that Moldova was next in line, and the UK was fourth in the queue). It often seems that there is no grouping the UK joins without at the same time insisting it should “lead”. Can Truss leave the British hubris at home? Will others in her party and government let her?

If so, perhaps the main reason for Liz Truss going to Prague is the best one: that the UK recognises the European Political Community, or something like it, as a good idea, even if it was conceived in France.

What to do about the neighbours has posed difficulties and caused disagreements for much of the EU’s existence. This was partly solved by setting exacting economic and legal conditions before candidacy, let alone accession, was possible. Even then, an argument can be made that some states were accelerated to full membership largely for political reasons, producing some of the divisions in outlook and priorities that exist today.

The rest were consigned to the EU’s “neighbourhood policy”. They include the countries of the Western Balkans, which increasingly resent what they see as their second-class status. Membership for Turkey, meanwhile, has been pending one way or the other for more than 30 years.

Until Russia invaded, Ukraine offered a classic case of EU ambiguity. The proposed EU Association Agreement triggered a popular uprising in Kyiv when Ukraine’s then leader turned it down. The real problem was that some in the EU saw that agreement as a long-term alternative to EU membership, while others saw it as a step to membership. That Ukraine has now been effectively promised membership in the light of its military heroics has not gone unnoticed in the Balkans, where some feel that war has given Ukraine a fast track. Should they persist, or might they turn towards Moscow?

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How feasible full EU membership is for Ukraine in the relatively short term remains a question. But Macron’s concept of a Europe of concentric circles around the core of the EU offers a solution of a kind. It allows those countries whose economies and laws are sufficiently convergent – and who are happy to sacrifice the necessary degree of sovereignty – to move towards that “ever-closer union” so hated by UK Brexiteers. It would also allow those who either don’t want, or cannot achieve, that degree of cohesion to remain at one or more removes.

It is akin to the “a la carte” Europe proposed by some before, but with a more formal structure and more acceptance of long-term differences. We shall see whether the EPC is something Truss and her Brexiteer government – or their heirs – can countenance.

In the meantime, the prime minister has raised some very typical red flags. The European Political Community, she said, “must not cut across the G7 or Nato, and must not become a talking shop”. In other words, the UK will reject anything that could threaten its top-table status, and the more Russia-focused, or rather anti-Russia-focused, the better (though Turkey, among others, might have qualms about that).

As well as perhaps indicating a new reluctance to close doors, the prime minister’s late decision to go to Prague may say something else, too. UK foreign policy is once again in flux. Much of the “Integrated Review”, published last March as the blueprint for the UK’s position in the world post-Brexit, has been thrown up in the air, first by the war in Ukraine and then by the departure of Boris Johnson. The review has been sent back for a rewrite – though its leading light, Professor John Bew, is one of the few to have survived Truss’s purge of Johnson advisers. The updated review may be where the first clues to Truss’s foreign policy will be found – if, that is, she is still in her job.