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Where do we go from here? Brexit was supposed to be the UK’s big opportunity to make its own brave path in negotiating global trade with, you have to say, mixed results since 2016. We now have a President elect in the US that holds an “America First” priority on any trade deals to be struck and wants his country’s goods to be purchased at home and exported globally. This week Peter Mandelson repeated Boris Johnson’s “we will have our cake and eat it” comments about being brave in a trading relationship stuck between the European Union and Donald Trump. This will be some undertaking.
The first days since Donald Trump’s victory have provoked strong opinions, with Brexit remainers seeing a chance for closer ties with the EU as being more palatable than dealing with the returning US President and his looming trade war. The UK cannot risk being squashed between two blocs.
On issues such as the environment and European security, the UK aligns with the EU. Keir Starmer may have ruled out rejoining its structures this Parliament, but policy can tilt faster towards regulatory realignment and security pacts none the less. Brexiteers will feel here at last is that coveted UK-US free-trade deal, which could further push Britain out of the EU’s regulatory orbit. The UK has too many defence and trade interests to abandon the Atlantic alliance, so perhaps the only option is to double down on it. Throw in hawkishness on China and doubts over the stability of European leadership and perhaps choosing sides is not in Britain’s interest. Both alliances should be sustained. There is no benefit to being pulled further from an EU with which Britain has just begun to rebuild ties and no prospect of the UK walking away from the Atlantic alliance. Britain must “relearn the art of the deal”. Subtlety and negotiation should replace the bold statements that cheer those reading the news but annoy potential trading allies.
With the US, Britain will lean on intelligence and defence ties as it seeks to keep America engaged in Europe. US demands for higher defence spending are a necessary and fair price for maintaining NATO and some of that can be spent in America. While arguing for free trade, the UK will also seek to minimise direct tariff disruption, and since its exports are mainly focussed on services rather than goods, the UK should be lower down Trump’s hit list.
Some point to last year’s Atlantic Declaration between Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden as a template. Security, (including the Aukus defence pact), defence technology, life sciences and artificial intelligence will be the overlapping areas of interest, and ones where the UK is closer to American regulatory instincts. Starmer might face an early test in the efforts of Nigel Farage and other China hawks to wind up Trump to push back the recent deal to hand sovereignty of the Indian Ocean’s Chagos Islands, home to a joint UK/US military base, to Mauritius.
With the EU, the focus will be on defence and energy security, data sharing, easing obstacles to market access and some form of youth mobility scheme. Starmer and David Lammy, his foreign secretary, are working to reinsert the UK into EU structures, primarily via a new security pact. Relearning the art of the deal also means acting with more humility, coaxing rather than demanding, and avoiding jingoistic statements for headlines alone.
Before the US election, most in Labour saw a future in which they drew closer to the EU with the blessing of the democratic White House and all worked together on shared security and climate goals. The return of Trump has changed that calculation. Labour remains too pro-EU to be pushed from its orbit. However, in forcing the UK to adjust to a new and unwelcome world order, it may well be that Trump becomes the man who delivers the original diplomatic vision of Brexit. Do have a good weekend.
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