This partly rhetorical question came to me when I heard that the UK’s post-Brexit trade deal with Singapore is officially signed but ‘mirrors Singapore’s deal with the EU’. This and other instances of the widely used repetitions in dealing with other countries attract my attention more and more as, at first glance, it does not seem right: did the UK government promise a new foreign policy, a ‘Global Britain’? If so, why do we see a full and widespread continuation of the previous British foreign policy endeavours when it was a member of the European Union? More importantly, is it the same government which wanted to escape from the ‘EU prison’? And if yes, why does it continue to be in this ‘prison’ in terms of the foreign policy? These questions are driving my curiosity forward to know more about what is going on with the post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’ and I hope to make my reader as curious as me right now.
To begin with, British foreign policy after Brexit referendum and especially after the official leave this year was and still is all about taking back control from Brussels and building a completely independent foreign and trade policy that were previously in the EU hands. With this, and of course many other reasons in mind, the Tory government has introduced ‘Global Britain’, as Tory MPs including foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt described in 2018, the “Great Escape” from the “shackles” of the “Brussels” prison (by the way, also comparing the EU to the Soviet Union). Now, ‘Global Britain’ has become everything and nothing at the same time – ‘delivering on our international ambition’, ‘reinvesting in our relationships’ and ‘championing the rules-based international order’.
First of all, I should not remind how awkward may sound the latter when the Internal Market Bill was introduced by the UK government that explicitly, but in ‘specific’ and ‘limited way’, will breach the international legal obligations. Even though it potentially may not take place (but who knows what comes after UK-EU negotiations), the fact that the HMG simply explored the possibility of breaking the international law while being a champion of the rules-based international order is troublesome and highly doubts the ‘Global Britain’ existence in the future.
But ‘reinvesting in our relationships’ and, in general, ‘Brexit gives the UK the chance to pursue an independent trade policy for the first time in over 40 years’ are perhaps one the most problematic stories here. What we see in reality is a significant repetition of every aspect of trade that was created within the EU, that is completely not the promised independent trade policy. And a good example, to start with, is today’s the UK-Singapore trade deal that ‘largely replicates an existing EU-Singapore pact’.
Moreover, the UK and Canada agreement, surprisingly, is also a trade ‘on EU terms.’ Nothing new is invented by ‘Global British’ government when it comes to the ‘historic’ UK-Japan ‘first major trade deal as an independent trading nation’. Again, as we see, the agreement largely replicates the contents of the tariff-reducing EU-Japan deal.
The other interesting example of the mostly replication, instead of creation, is the UK sanctions against human rights abusers. When the UK leaves the EU, ‘London will enact its own sanctions policy’. Officially, London left in 31st January 2020 and it still has not come up with any unique sanctions plan on its own, usually proposing the same list together with its EU counterparts, even though, now, independently. Indeed, instead of ‘EU impose sanctions on Russian officials over Navalny poisoning’, headlines are entitled as ‘UK and EU impose sanctions…’, although the list and wording are almost the same.
That all leads us back to those questions. Where is the UK’s completely independent foreign policy as loudly stated and still in attempts to be properly formulated by HMG with its ‘Global Britain’? Perhaps, in the current state of affairs, British decision-makers do not need to be different from the EU. But if so, why the UK ‘freed’ itself from the EU’s ‘shackles’ if it actually continues to be in the EU’s ‘prison’? To conclude, repeating everything that has been done by the EU maybe is not the best way for the UK if it wants to be considered as a separate from Europe, as a global great power. It needs to think about the future of its trade and political relations more carefully, put laziness aside. Otherwise, the UK will position itself as a ‘Brino’ state (‘Brexit in a name only’) which is certainly a compromise for many Remainers in this country.
Image credit: Photo by Kirsty Wigglesworth – WPA Pool /Getty Images, 2017