Post-Brexit Britain’s Trump problem goes much deeper than trade tariffs

Brexit is back in the news again. That is partly the aftermath of the budget, discussed in my previous post, which was followed by speeches at the Mansion House by Chancellor Rachel Reeves and the Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey. The latter highlighted the economic damage of Brexit and called for a re-building of relations with the EU “while respecting the decision of the British people”.

It's true that, as economics commentator Simon Nixon observed, this marked a notable break with official Brexit omerta. Still, it was not exactly dynamite stuff. The economics are well-known and the political message was identical to the government’s own stated policy. Indeed, Reeves’ own Mansion House speech said the same thing. In that sense, Bailey’s comments showed the limitations of government policy in that, as he must know, closer relations with the EU will only marginally reduce the ongoing costs of Brexit. So, despite being accused by Matthew Lynn in The Spectator of “reopening the Brexit debate”, Bailey hardly did that, unless even the barest mention of Brexit is now to be described that way.

If his comments attracted attention, it was mainly because of the wider context of now intense discussion about what the coming Trump presidency is going to mean for post-Brexit Britain. In my previous post I suggested that ‘hot takes’ on this were not wise, and to an extent I think that is still the case. Apart from the fact that he isn’t yet in office, he is by any standards a capricious politician. What he may actually do when he comes back to power is highly unpredictable.

Trump’s psychodrama

I don’t mean, of course, that it isn’t already abundantly obvious that it is going to be dire. The choices he is already making for key appointments demonstrate he is going to oversee a depraved, intellectually and morally bankrupt, regime. About the only thing which may save us from the worst is that it may well also be too incompetent and too prone to infighting to deliver what it threatens.

However, within that broad picture, it remains to be seen exactly what he does in terms of the two issues most obviously of concern the UK: defence posture as regards NATO generally and Ukraine specifically, and a blanket hike in trade tariffs. I’ll discuss the latter shortly, and whilst I won’t discuss the former in this post there is a good analysis by Benjamin Martell of Edinburgh University in The New European, building on his and others’ report for the Independent Commission on UK-EU Relations earlier this year.

Beyond the difficulty of predicting what he will do, I think there is an undesirability in doing so. One of the ways in which narcissistic bullies like Trump exert power – and it’s the same in playgrounds, prisons, and some businesses as it is in politics – is precisely to generate a psychodrama of fearful uncertainty around themselves: ‘what will he do? What will we do if he does that? What will he do then if we do that?’

In this way, those around the narcissist become unwittingly complicit in his way of exercising power. It is very difficult to find a way of resisting that kind of power, but one possibility might be to stand back a little from the frenzy. To play it long and cool, rather than short and hot. Admittedly, that is not a luxury open to the heroic defenders of Ukraine, but it might be good advice to the UK. However, as a matter of fact, political actors and commentators here are currently engaged in trying to work out what Trump means. So the frenzy can’t be ignored.

Trump’s tariff threats

In the UK, and very directly connected with Brexit, much of that frenzy has been to do with trade. Specifically, if Trump does impose a blanket 10% or even 20% on imports to the US it would mean, at the upper end of that range, an estimated 0.8% fall in annual UK economic output. That it is not even worse is because the bulk of UK exports to the US are services (which do not attract tariffs) rather than goods. But, in the context of already anaemic growth forecasts, and the very urgent political and economic need for improved growth, that would be quite bad enough. That seems to be the baseline assumption in most commentary, but of course if it turned out to be 10%, or if the uplift was only applied to certain sectors (and depending what these were) the impact would be less. But it still wouldn’t be good.

If any of these scenarios happens, then one response, and it may well be the EU’s response, could be to impose retaliatory tariffs on imports from the US. A trade war, in other words. The UK could do that on its own account, but it is far too small to be able to win a trade war with the US. So this exposes the weakness of post-Brexit Britain. For many of those opposed to Brexit, it re-presents a choice between the EU and the US, to which the answer must be the EU. According to Brexiters, though, the opposite is true (£), and being outside the EU means that the UK could strike a deal with the US on its own account.

Others, by no means confined to Brexiters, see a less stark choice. Peter Mandelson, tipped as the possible next Ambassador to the US, sees a third way, with the unfortunately worded suggestion (£) that the UK could “have its cake and eat it”. It’s a possibility endorsed (£) by the generally acute Financial Times commentator Robert Shrimsley. Similarly, Andrew Haldane, the former Chief Economist at the Bank of England, believes a deal is possible without prejudicing relations with the EU. One reason for making such a claim is that not only are most UK exports to the US made up of services, but it is services trade where the UK has a trade surplus. Given that Trump’s tariffs are aimed at those countries with surpluses in goods trade, the UK isn’t so much his target as potential collateral damage.

What does a ‘deal’ mean?

However, the discussion of all this has already become mired in confusion. That is principally because it has conflated two potentially very different things. One is the old Brexiter dream of a UK-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA), meaning, at its most basic, an across-the-board removal or reduction of all or most tariffs, but potentially including the removal of some non-tariff barriers to trade. The other is a specific deal to be exempted from the blanket imposition of Trump’s new tariffs. An FTA would improve the current terms of trade. An ‘exemption deal’ would simply return terms of trade to the status quo ante.

They are also different in that FTAs typically take a long time to negotiate, whereas an exemption deal, at least in principle, need not. And that reflects the fact that the things required of the UK for an FTA would be likely to involve substantial concessions on regulatory issues (‘chlorinated chicken’ being the symbolic one), especially as regards agriculture and pharmaceuticals. What would be needed for an exemption deal is less easy to predict, but could be things like voluntary export quotas, restrictions on Chinese imports, or agreement to import large quantities of US military equipment – but not, necessarily, regulatory concessions. [1]

These two scenarios therefore have different implications for the other side of the coin, UK-EU relations. An FTA, to the extent it entailed regulatory change, would move the UK further from the EU regulatory orbit. That would derail the current direction of Labour’s ‘reset’ policy, which is primarily based on continuing alignment with the EU. It would certainly derail the centrepiece of that policy, a UK-EU SPS deal (which would entail regulatory alignment on agricultural standards, especially). It would also have implications for Northern Ireland, which would remain bound by EU goods regulations, and thus would ‘thicken’ the Irish Sea Border. A more limited exemption deal might well avoid these things, but would certainly do political damage to the reset in terms of trust, assuming that it left the EU fighting a trade war with the US which the UK had managed to slide out of.

A trade deal with Trump?

Some Brexiters would undoubtedly argue that the distinction I’ve drawn is irrelevant, in that an FTA would also be an exemption deal (even though an exemption deal wouldn’t be an FTA). That’s true, but it doesn’t affect the point that an FTA would take longer to agree, and in the meantime there would be no exemption from the blanket new tariffs. Nor does it recognize the profound political difficulties any UK government would face if it met likely US demands on regulations.

But there is a more fundamental issue. Brexiters, both in the Tory and Reform parties, are now talking as if a UK-US FTA was there for the taking under Trump’s first presidency, and will now be available again. Kemi Badenoch is even claiming (£) that there is an “oven ready agreement negotiated by the last Tory government”. This is nonsense. There was no such agreement [2]. In fact, Trump blew hot and cold about a deal first time round. That’s actually a specific example of my earlier point about how narcissistic bullies use uncertainty to exert power. And even if he ever did offer such a deal, it would be on one-sided terms (that would probably be true under any US administration, but certainly under Trump’s ‘winner takes all’ version of deal-making).

In any case, this latest upsurge of talk about trade talks is exhibiting some of the same deficiencies as the earlier version. One concerns the relative importance to the UK of trade with the US and the EU. Brexiters, including Badenoch, are already wheeling out the misleading claim that the US is the UK’s largest trade partner. That’s misleading because it treats each member of the EU as a separate trade partner. They aren’t, to the extent that all are part of a single market and customs union. Brexiters really can’t have it both ways, saying that EU membership prevented the UK from being independent, especially in trade policy, but then talking as if each EU member is a separate trading entity. Secondly, it resurrects the misleading idea that a UK-US FTA would be much of an economic prize anyway. The previous government’s figures suggest it would provide an additional 0.07% to 0.16% per annum to GDP over 15 years.

Nevertheless, what we are going to see, and are already beginning to see, is Brexiters pretending that there is an easy, perfect solution to the Trump tariffs, but one that the Labour government is refusing to take because it is anti-Trump and pro-EU. We will see, as is also already beginning, Nigel Farage claiming with smirking self-importance that he has his own special relationship with Trump, giving him a unique influence and insight, just as he did first time round. Along with that will be noises from Trump supporters, and again they are already beginning, suggesting a deal is possible if only the UK abandons ‘EU socialism’. Trump will undoubtedly throw fuel on to that fire (‘I offered them a great deal, it was a beautiful deal, but they didn’t want it. I d’know why, I hear they preferred the EU, I d’know, but it was a beautiful deal’).

Beneath this, there is a still more fundamental issue. Trade policy is never wholly about economics, or economic rationality. But this is unusually so for Trump. If it wasn’t he would hardly even be contemplating the blanket tariff, which will increase prices in the US (though, despite what some think, that probably won’t bother his supporters). Instead, trade policy for Trump is about beating his enemies, in this context meaning the EU and China (which may face 60% tariffs). So there’s no point in thumbing through Ricardian theory on comparative advantage to try to understand Trump’s policy. But the corollary is that there’s no point in trying to frame responses in these terms.

In concrete terms, this means that the UK government should not weigh its (distinctly limited) options simply in terms of economic effects. An exemption deal might reduce the immediate economic damage, but its longer-term costs to the UK, both economic and geo-political, would be considerable in terms of the EU and, very possibly, China. The potential Chinese dimension is worth stressing, because at issue for the UK is not a just a two-way tug between the EU and the US, but being stuck between all three blocs. That was brought into focus by Keir Starmer’s attempts this week to improve relations with China, which might well be jeopardized by any form of deal with the US. To put all this another way, the only deals Trump does are those that favour him.

The cleavage in 21st century politics

This brings us to the final, and deepest, level of what is at stake here, and it is far more important than tariffs on this or that, or small percentages of GDP. It is that what Trump represents, as Brexit does, is what I’ve elsewhere discussed as ‘anti-ruleism’. In the most basic way, his anticipated blanket tariff policy makes a mockery of WTO rules. But his entire approach to politics is one which rejects the rule of law, scientific rationality, and, ultimately, the concept of ‘rational-legal authority’. I try to avoid social science jargon on this blog, but I think it may be useful here.

The sociologist Max Weber developed the idea that modern, industrial societies were increasingly characterised by systemic, codified rules and laws, objectively formulated and applied. So we obey X because s/he is the legitimate holder of the office (of President, or CEO, or whatever), not because of the person holding it. Weber contrasted that with authority that was ‘traditional’ (e.g. monarchy, church) or ‘charismatic’ (derived from the persona of the leader).

Trump fairly obviously seeks to elevate charisma over rules, but more to the point he embodies a hostility to ‘rules’ as a concept of social organization and politics. In this, he shares a common ideology with the ‘disruptor’ tech bosses, like Elon Musk, who now support him, and, in the UK, with their fanboy Dominic Cummings (£). He also shares it with Vladimir Putin, who relies on a peculiar admixture of charismatic and traditional authority, fused with nationalism, and is equally disdainful of the rules-based international order.

It is also shared by Boris Johnson, exhibited by the way that he (for perhaps idiosyncratic reasons) and the Brexit Jacobins (for reasons of fanaticism) believed it was acceptable to dispose of all conventions and institutions, including parliament itself, in order to ‘get Brexit done’. It is shared by Liz Truss, who still insists those institutions caused her downfall. Emblematic of this is the hostility of both Trump and the Brexiters to bureaucracy and, especially, the civil service, which, not coincidentally, was emblematic, for Weber, of rational-legal authority. That hostility is shared by Kemi Badenoch, in her aggressive diatribes against ‘the bureaucratic class’. Such anti-ruleism is obviously connected with populism, but it isn’t identical to it (there’s a book to be written there). The disjuncture is what did for Boris Johnson, when his disdain for the Covid rules fell foul of the populist idea that ‘rules should apply to all of us’. 

There are many different ways of understanding these developments. One way might be to see them in terms of the latest phase in the unwinding of the politics of the Cold War (that would need another book). Another, even more epochal, would be to see them as a kind of Counter-Enlightenment, in which the eighteenth-century battles over rationality are being re-fought but in the other direction (that’s a third book). Of course, the Trump presidency will not last forever. But there is a sense that deep and profound changes are now established in the US and elsewhere. And why not? Despite the brief moment when some claimed ‘the end of history’, history never ends.

However they are framed, the key point is that these developments are about far more than international trade. That is not surprising, because Brexit itself was about far more than trade with the EU; more, even, than membership of the EU. Needless to say, these are not the terms in which most people are framing the current situation, although Rafael Behr of the Guardian comes close to doing so. If it were framed that way then, indeed, the whole question of Brexit would be re-litigated. It is clear that the government have no intention of doing that.

Will Starmer’s government rise to the challenge?

Nevertheless, in terms of the division I have presented here, Keir Starmer is very much on one side, being almost the epitome of rational-legal authority or, so to speak, ‘ruleism’. That is something to be grateful for, yet even framed in the narrower terms of trade and tariffs his government’s response so far is rather wishy-washy. Reeves has spoken of seeking to do a deal with the US “whether that's through a free trade agreement or through further improvements in our trade and investment flows”. But in the same interview she pledged that “we’re not going to allow British farmers to be undercut by different rules and regulations”, effectively ruling out an FTA. As for some exemption deal on new tariffs, she just says that “we'll make the case for free and open trade”. What does that mean in practice? Who knows.

Perhaps, when Trump’s intentions become clearer then so will those of the British government. But my hunch is that they won’t. I don’t think that the government is, as I put it earlier, playing it long and cool. I think it will simply try to muddle through, dodging or fudging the choices in the hope that they become irrelevant, if only through the decisions made by other countries. Arguably, in a situation in which the UK has so little leverage and so few good choices available, that has a certain pragmatism. But as a response to the bigger framing of those choices gestured towards in this post it is wholly inadequate.

Why are Labour in this situation? In some ways it is because, faced with Trump, any British government, like the governments of many other countries, has an almost impossible problem. But, just as, for Britain, Brexit adds to all the economic problems that other countries face, so too does it add to the Trump problem. For this government, in particular, that is compounded by its commitment to a Brexit policy which it does not believe in but is unwilling, and perhaps unable, to repudiate.

 

Notes

[1] This is my amateurish take on the question. For more detailed analysis (though I think it is pretty much compatible with mine) from trade experts, see Sam Lowe’s Substack newsletter, David Henig on the UK Trade Policy Observatory blog, and Dmitry Grozoubinski’s guest post on Ian Dunt’s Substack newsletter.

[2] It may be that Badenoch was referring to the previous government’s statement of the case for such an agreement (2020) Even if so, that was, emphatically, not an agreement with the US, still less one which is now ‘oven ready’ to be signed with Trump.

Brexit Britain's place in the world

As the talks between the UK and the EU limp on – this week, again, they finished early with little sign of progress - and coronavirus and its consequences continue to dominate the news, the Brexit process has fallen into one of its periodic quiet phases. There are reports of UK lack of preparedness for the end of transition, and an EU statement about the many things which, deal or no deal, will change at that point. However, the first isn’t at all surprising and the second isn’t, for the most part, news though it may shock those who haven't been paying attention. On a more amusing note, Michel Barnier’s reply to Mark Francois’ letter (discussed in last week’s post) drily pointed out that it had been complaining about things which Boris Johnson had agreed to and which he, Francois, had voted for.

Most likely the quiet phase will continue over the summer. But it was clear from the beginning that Brexit was never going to be simply about a redefinition of the UK-EU relationship and we are starting to see in greater detail just how profound and complex a geo-political shift is underway (£). Trade is only one issue to be navigated and trade itself cannot readily be separated from international relations more generally.

For example, as Philip Hammond, the former Chancellor, remarked in an interview this week, with the UK introducing new trade barriers with the EU it becomes increasingly important to improve trade relations with China. Yet these relations cannot be taken in isolation from political disputes over, currently, Hong Kong and Huawei. And the UK’s stance on the latter, in particular, impacts in turn upon relations with the US. Britain is caught in a world of economic and political power blocs, but without belonging to any, in which any course of action regarding one of them has adverse consequences with respect to another.

Britain found a role – and threw it away

The bigger picture, of course, relates to Britain’s place in the world. Having famously lost an empire but failed to find a role in the first two post-war decades, membership of what became the EU led to its finding a role of sorts. With Brexit, it has been observed that “Britain has lost a role and failed to find an empire”. That role, primarily of being a transatlantic bridge, was not always a comfortable one – the Iraq War being an obvious example – but, in any event, it is a bridge that was burned with Brexit.

It’s important to focus on both ends of that bridge. The impression given by some Brexit Ultras is that after the end of December the EU will simply disappear from view (perhaps one subtext of the current misnomer of an ‘Australia-style deal’ is that they imagine being on the other side of the world from Europe). Global Britain will then focus on its relations with the wider world and cement that with the US in particular. But whether or not there is a UK-EU deal there will still be relationships between the two, and between the UK and individual member states.

Dr Helene von Bismarck, an historian specialising in British international relations, has written this week about how Anglo-German relations, despite the  genuine commitment from both countries to a good future partnership, will face the problem of how to put that commitment into practice. How, she pointedly asks, “can joint interests between a Britain that seeks to be ‘global’ but shies away from any form of institutionalised cooperation with the EU, and a Germany committed firmly to Europe be organized and managed in the future”?

Similar questions will arise for Anglo-French relations, and others. Repairing relations with Ireland, which have been horribly mangled by Brexit, will pose particularly profound challenges. Managing relations with Spain, especially as regards Gibraltar will be another complexity. At the core of all this is the strategic incoherence of Brexit in the context of a regionalised and multi-polar world.

A Biden Presidency?

Coming back to the other end of the bridge, the implications of that incoherence are coming into sharper focus as the possibility grows that Trump will lose the Presidential elections. His much-vaunted support for Brexit has never translated into anything concrete anyway, and if Joe Biden wins then UK-US relations will be transformed. Not so much in terms of any trade deal – it’s likely that any US administration would make similar demands and make use of similar leverage – but because, like Obama, Biden and his team are well-known to regard Brexit as a serious mistake. A mistake for Britain, no doubt, but more particularly a mistake in terms of American interests.

A very thorough discussion of this was provided by Henry Zeffman in The Times this week (£). Biden is significantly more pro-EU than Trump (not a high bar, admittedly), and has strong links with Ireland. On the other hand, hardly less than Trump, he is likely to regard China with suspicion. More generally, a Biden presidency would represent some return to the US’s ‘normal’ advocacy of the rules-based multilateral order and to that extent might regard Brexit as one of the things which has put that in peril.

But, more importantly, US-UK relations would be governed by unsentimental calculation of interests. And as a foreign policy expert quoted in Zeffman’s article summarises those, “London has become a less valuable geo-political partner as a result of Brexit, which has eroded Britain’s traditional role as a transatlantic bridge”. That isn’t to say that there would not be particular issues where the two countries may find common ground, but it is more likely to be ad hoc rather than amounting to a coherent – still less a ‘special’ - relationship.

Why seek a ‘global role’ anyway?

Of course, there will be many in the UK who think ‘so much the better’. The problem, though, is what should replace it to re-define Britain’s global role. But one might put that a different way. Why should Britain seek a ‘global role’ anyway? Why not accept being a medium-sized power whose global sway is largely in the past, and which has plenty of domestic problems to address rather than seeking to project itself on the world stage?

Here, the nationalism of the Brexit project, and its carry forward in Johnson’s endless rhetoric about Britain’s ‘world-leading’ or even ‘world-beating’ status in this that and the other is a major barrier to rational thinking. For of course any such national self-appraisal would probably have meant that Brexit would never have happened anyway – plenty of other former colonial powers of various vintages have found EU membership perfectly congenial. Plenty of them, too, don’t experience any conflict between such membership and being a ‘global trading nation’. And France manages to operate as a nuclear power and permanent member of the UN Security Council whilst being a central player in the EU. But the continuing appeal of British exceptionalism mitigated against that, which reflects the fact the present conundrum of post-Brexit Britain’s role has roots which long pre-date 2016.

The Suez Crisis, no matter how it may have appeared at the time, does not in retrospect seem to have occasioned a profound shift in public (as opposed to official) realization that world powerdom was over; the Falklands War gave fresh impetus to the idea that Britain could project global military power at will even though, arguably, it could no longer be repeated (£). In particular, whilst from the 1970s Britain seemed to have found its post-imperial role via Europe, that was never anchored in a wider public debate about its past, either in terms of Empire or in terms of the ever-present mythologization of the Second World War. If anything, acting as the ‘transatlantic bridge’ served to prolong a certain delusion of grandeur, and enabled the historical amnesia I have written about in a previous post.

Sham patriotism

Having failed to have such a reckoning with the past when it might, perhaps, have been possible, it’s very difficult to see how it can occur in the present, highly partisan, times when it is most needed. The clear power imbalance in the Brexit negotiations – underscored by Angela Merkel’s recent comments – which has played out since 2017 cannot, in such times, serve as an education. It is invariably dismissed as punishment or bullying. Nor can the obvious implications of the way that Ireland has been able to exert such influence because of its EU membership. Consider reactions such as that “the Irish should really know their place” and the hostility of the Brexit press to Leo Varadkar. Even Hammond’s straightforwardly factual statements about the realpolitik of Brexit and China brought a furious denunciation from Brexiters.

So what should be lessons in political, economic and diplomatic reality simply entrench the division between those who understood it all along and those who deny it. That is especially so when news is refracted through a media which is not just partisan but parochial. The way that Brexit Britain is regarded by the wider world – take India, for example - scarcely registers, even as fantasies about ‘Global Britain’ and the Commonwealth are indulged in, often with more than a sense of being “the last gasp of empire” as Sally Tomlinson and Danny Dorling argue.

Unable to learn such lessons, this week Brexiters hailed Britain’s new independent post-Brexit sanctions policy as a great “victory”. Yet if the aim of sanctions is to be effective, they will be far more so if undertaken in concert with others. As with Britain’s ‘independent trade policy’, which has little to commend itself economically, the emphasis is entirely on the ‘independence’ – on the symbolism rather than the substance.

Why independence matters, what it achieves, or what it even consists of remain stubbornly ignored. It’s just better to have a ‘British’ policy than a policy, or that policy becomes good policy by virtue of being British. That looks like patriotism but it’s a sham, not because it makes use of symbols but precisely because it lacks any accompanying substance. The failure of the British rival to the Galileo Project is one obvious example, indicating how hollow a slogan ‘taking back control’ is in a world where interdependence is vital.

Fiddling while home burns

The bitter irony is that just at the moment that Britain is least well-equipped but most in need of a serious re-appraisal of its place in the world, this sham patriotism neglects the ways in which, domestically, it is falling apart. A favourite Brexiter line is that Britain is “the fifth largest economy in the world”, yet it is bedevilled by a longstanding productivity growth problem, dramatic levels of inequality and crumbling public services. A report from the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) last year showed how, on a range of measures, Britain is actually ‘undeveloping’.

The current coronavirus has exposed many of these problems to a greater degree, and exacerbated some of them, but it has also, as Fintan O’Toole argued recently, shown the delusions of Johnson’s Brexity world-beating rhetoric. The issue, again, is symbolism over substance. There is no patriotism in endlessly declaring national superiority whilst daily delivering outcomes that are, as in this case, so much worse than most other countries.

The break-up of Britain?

The strangest irony of all in this is that Britain, largely as a result of Brexit, although again exacerbated by coronavirus, looks ever more likely to, literally, fall apart. I’m not going to express any opinion on the merits of the case for Scottish independence or Irish unification (any such opinion would be ill-informed and presumptuous on my part, and whatever opinion I might express would probably invite more of a backlash than, even having written about Brexit for years, I could cope with). But it’s been obvious since the Referendum that Brexit would make Scottish independence more likely, and the hard form and non-consensual way it has been undertaken since has made that even more true. It’s now quite widely seen as inevitable that there will be another vote, and the latest polls suggest that, if so, the outcome would be independence.

Equally, Northern Ireland, which also did not vote for Brexit, was always going to be dramatically affected by it. As hard Brexit developed, and given the measures agreed in the Northern Ireland Protocol to accommodate it, what is about to be created is a significant continuation of economic integration and unification within the island of Ireland along with a significant economic barrier between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. That clearly makes the prospect of political unification much greater and at the very least puts it on the agenda in a way which wasn’t true prior to Brexit. Even Wales – where a majority voted for Brexit – may be seeing increased support for independence.

Rethinking Britain?

So questions about Britain’s post-Brexit ‘place in the world’ (rather than ‘global role’ per se) need also to be thought about in terms of what Britain itself is. And with no apparent appetite from the Conservative and, cough, Unionist Party to give serious consideration to either issue, there’s a real possibility that they will still be chuntering on about Global Britain when Britain has simply ceased to exist.

I don’t think that all the blame for this lies with the Conservatives, or even simply with politicians. It’s also the case that the, specifically, English public don’t really want to have the kind of debate that is needed. How often do countries ever really do so? Context is crucial. I would suggest the answer is usually only after some sort of cataclysmic event – most obviously war, occupation or the fall of dictatorships. Often, that is only partial and takes a very long time, as in the very different cases of Austria’s post-war history or Spain’s post-Franco period. Invariably, it is painful.

Moreover, ‘debate’ is perhaps a misnomer if it implies a formal, organized conversation. That sometimes happens, as with South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and similar initiatives in other countries. But I suppose – I don’t have any expertise in this area - the reality is that countries more usually re-orientate themselves via multiple, connected but not entirely formalised processes. Perhaps the gradual social liberalisation of Ireland is an instructive example of that.

At all events, there needs to be an impetus and a willingness to do it. Could Brexit provide these? That’s an especially difficult question because Brexit both potentially occasions such a debate but, also, represents an absolute refusal to engage in one: it has only been about what Britain did not want to be, not, in any practical sense, about what it could or should become, still less about what it has been. On the other hand, any such national debate would, if multi-stranded, be not just about Brexit but other aspects of Britain’s past and future. The current increased awareness of the role slavery played in that past could be the beginnings of one example. Discussions of how an ageing society will shape the future of Britain might be another.

So, yes, perhaps - but perhaps not yet. Awful as it is, Brexit isn’t on a par with war, occupation or dictatorship, and its effects will emerge gradually and be difficult to disentangle from other events. Unless or until those effects become very clear there’s insufficient impetus. And it will probably need the coming to power and the coming of age of a new generation to supply the willingness.

What the UK will look like by then, and whether it even still exists, remains to be seen.

Parliament's Brexit shame

The spectacle of the House of Commons voting overwhelmingly to trigger Article 50, though unsurprising, was a shaming one for parliamentary democracy and sovereignty. It’s first worth recalling, since some Brexiters who spoke in the debate hailed the vote as a victory for that sovereignty, that the vote only occurred because the Supreme Court insisted that it should. Left to its own devices the government would have proceeded without parliamentary approval, and fought desperately to avoid it (ironically, the vote has now strengthened their position). Meanwhile, those who brought the court action and the judges making the decision were viciously pilloried in the Brexit press and subjected to vile threats and abuse.

Handed the power to decide, MPs (with several honourable exceptions) refused to use it wisely. Thus – and herein lies the shame – they voted to do something which the majority of them think is wrong and many know to be disastrous for this country for decades to come. Yes, to have done otherwise would have been to defy the result of the referendum and, yes, it would have led to massive criticism and a political crisis. But, against that, at this historically defining moment the MPs chose to allow the government to embark on a course of action that the majority of them know to be against the national interest and, in terms of the form of Brexit planned, probably against the wishes of the majority of the electorate too.

It is possible (but unlikely) that some amendments to the bill may be carried, or that the House of Lords may at least delay things. It is also possible (and perhaps more likely) that later in the Article 50 process parliament will assert itself. Nevertheless, at this decisive moment MPs have abdicated their responsibilities. There was almost a sense that they knew this when, hypocritically, they applauded the veteran pro-European Ken Clarke, the only Conservative MP to vote against the bill. It was almost as if they knew that he had done what most of them dared not do.

There was much talk of MPs wrestling with their ‘consciences’ as to how to vote. But this was not a matter of conscience in the sense that that terms if usually used in a parliamentary context – that is, a matter of individual moral conscience as with issues such as euthanasia. This was a matter of intellectual judgment about the long-term strategic interests of the country.

That there will be a high strategic price to pay for Brexit is rapidly becoming clear, primarily because the first days of the Donald Trump presidency have highlighted what it will be. There is nothing new in the UK seeking a strong relationship with the USA – that has been the cornerstone of foreign policy since 1945. But in recent decades that has meant primarily being a ‘bridge’ between the USA and the EU. Now, with American politics itself undergoing a rapid transformation away from its post-1945 norms, it seems more likely that the UK will be a kind of battering ram within what are rapidly becoming the antagonistic relations between the USA and the EU.

Britain, now more than ever, is desperate for political and economic connection to the USA, making its capacity to distance itself from what is already a controversial and chaotic presidency very limited. Yet at the same time there is a desperation to develop better links, especially economically, with China to which Trump’s administration is hostile and likely to get more so. On the other hand, the administration is far better disposed to Russia than is Britain, whose position is far more closely aligned with that of the EU than it is with that of Trump. But Brexit Britain has few foreign policy options open to it, so that what would, even without Brexit, have entailed diplomatically difficult choices now allows of no choices at all.

It is telling that in the ongoing controversy over Trump’s new immigration measures which in the UK are linked to the question of whether he should be invited for a State visit closely map the Brexit divide. Thus pro-Brexit MPs have been limited in their criticism of the measures and supportive of the visit. Meanwhile, the petition against the visit is reported to be most supported in those areas of the country which voted ‘remain’ (petitioners having to submit their postcodes in order to sign).

Those pro-Brexit MPs have the logic of consistency to their credit. They recognize (even if they would not put it in these terms) that the luxury of an independent foreign policy is one which can no longer be afforded after Brexit: the strategic choices are now massively curtailed and driven by a mixture of diplomatic isolation and desperation for trade deals. By contrast, the Labour Party which has been vociferous in its criticism of Trump and of the British government’s posture towards him show no such consistency. For by insisting that its MPs vote to trigger Article 50 Labour has endorsed precisely the policy that makes such criticisms futile.