Not dealing with Brexitism

It’s hard to keep up with what is happening in the world of trade, even just considering those aspects which have a direct or indirect Brexit connection. Since my last post, there has been a flurry of activity, including a deal, of sorts, between the US and China which, for now at least, seems to mark a truce in their trade war. That, along with some other developments, suggests that Trump is now desperate to row back on the chaos that his ‘Liberation Day tariffs’ unleashed. On the other hand, there are signs that he proposes to double down on his hostility to the EU.

The recently announced UK-US ‘trade deal’ is one, relatively minor, aspect of these developments. It, too, is evidence of Trump’s backtracking, and it could be read as part of an attempt by him to increase divisions between the UK and the EU. At all events, along with the UK-India deal, it forms the background to next week’s UK-EU Summit. The outcome of that may, whether in what it does or what it does not achieve, mark a new phase in the Brexit saga, but there is little sign of Britain dealing with 'Brexitism'.

The UK-US ‘trade deal’

As always with anything Brexit-related, it’s a big task just to strip away the lies, half-truths and misunderstandings, and that becomes even more difficult when Donald Trump is involved. When the deal was announced, both Trump and Keir Starmer talked as if it was a historic breakthrough, and suggested that it was the long-touted post-Brexit Free Trade Agreement (FTA). It was nothing of the sort, and nor was it ever going to be. As I explained in a post last November, when Trump’s tariffs had not been announced but were in prospect, if it was going to be anything it would be an ‘exemption deal’, meaning that it would exempt the UK from some, if not all, of Trump’s new tariffs.

The difference is significant, not least because it means that the best it could achieve would be a return to the status quo ante. That is, it might avoid Trump’s new tariffs but not improve the terms of trade that had already existed. To an extent, at least, that is what has happened. In headline terms, the new blanket 10% ‘reciprocal tariff’ remains on all goods, but the 25% tariff on cars has been removed up to a quota of 100,000 vehicles sold per year (but these will still be liable to the 10% tariff). The 25% tariff on steel and aluminium has also been scrapped, but it seems there will also be some quota limit on that (the details are not clear). In return, the UK has agreed to scrap tariffs on an increased quota of US beef (with some reciprocal increase in access to the US beef market), and to scrap tariffs on US ethanol within a high quota.

So, a very limited deal. But, as quickly emerged when the text was published, it is not even a deal, in the sense that it is (explicitly) not a legally binding agreement and that many details are still to be agreed, most glaringly, perhaps, in relation to pharmaceuticals trade. As Alison Morrow of CNN Business put it, it is not so much as deal as “a concept of a deal”. That isn’t to say that none of it will come into effect, because there is evidently some political commitment to it. So at least some of it very probably will. But given Trump’s proven unreliability to stick to the terms even of legally binding deals, it is even harder to be confident that he will honour, or even continue to recognize, any political commitments.

That it happened at all reflects the weakness and neediness of both sides. Unlike the EU or China, the UK is simply not strong enough to take on the US in a trade war. The UK also has a pressing political and economic need to shield its car and steel industries from Trump’s tariffs. But the US is weak too. Trump’s tariff policy has backfired on him very badly, and, as I suggested recently, that has made him keen to start ‘doing deals’ with his victims so as to give the impression that this had been his strategy all along, and to reverse some of the damage he has inflicted on himself and the US economy. Thus, as many commentators noted once it had been announced, Trump needed a deal, and quickly.  

The timing may also have reflected a desire to make an announcement on VE Day so as to get in some sanctimonious references to the wartime alliance and the ‘special relationship’ or at least, since Trump’s ego is considerably greater than his grasp of detail, to ‘historic’ events. Timing aside, the terms of this trade non-deal also reflected the neediness of both parties. The UK has not had to make any of the concessions that had been speculated about on tech firm regulation and taxation, or on food standards (there will be cheaper US beef, but it will not be ‘hormone-treated’), a point I’ll come back to. The UK also resisted demands to reduce pork tariffs. To that extent, the reported jubilation in the Starmer government is understandable. The UK gave surprisingly little for what, at least in political terms, was quite helpful to the government.  

Nevertheless, to repeat, the overall effect is to leave the UK worse off than it was before Trump launched his tariff offensive. Starmer shouldn’t be blamed for that, as it’s highly unlikely any other outcome could have been agreed on remotely viable terms, and what was achieved is worthwhile for the car and steel industries, but in a normal world it wouldn’t be seen as a triumph. There is also a more complex issue, identified by the UK Trade Policy Observatory’s (UCTPO) analysis of the deal. Referring to an aspect which I have not mentioned so far, namely what the agreement says about supply chain security, UKTPO warn that, depending on exactly what it comes to mean in practice, it may well push the UK towards provisions which will be unpopular with China, with retaliation possible. It’s a specific illustration of another point I made in an earlier post, about how post-Brexit Britain is obliged to duck and dive between not just the US and the EU but, also, China.

Brexit dimensions

What of Brexit more generally in all this? It’s true by definition that the UK could not have agreed such a deal had it still been a member of the EU, or even if simply in a customs union with the EU. Whether it proves ‘better’ than whatever the EU agrees or doesn’t agree with the US remains to be seen. What is certainly striking is that it has wrong-footed the Brexiters (as shown, rather deliciously, by a disagreement between the Tice-Oakeshott Reform power couple). Some, at least initially, hailed it, in the way Trump did, as the post-Brexit trade deal he had always promised, although they quickly latched on to the implicit criticism of the Tories contained in that, as well as the explicit lie it entailed.

Very soon, Kemi Badenoch was complaining that the deal had “shafted” the UK (£), bemoaning that it was, indeed, not a comprehensive FTA. In short, we had the unedifying spectacle of Labour at least implying that it had delivered the key trade promise of the Brexiters, and Conservative Brexiters criticizing the government for not delivering what is simply not available for agreement with Trump, any more than it was with Biden, but pretending otherwise. It was yet another small illustration of the fundamental dishonesty Brexit has brought to British politics.

Beyond domestic politics, there’s a deeper issue in play with this deal. Again, I’ve gestured towards it in a previous post (I’m sorry to keep doing this self-referencing, but the various discussions obviously connect together, and linking to where points were previously made means I don’t have to repeat explanations or background). That issue is what all this means for ‘WTO rules’.

It’s not just that the Brexiters used to sloganize ‘Let’s Go WTO’ as a supposed alternative to any trade deal at all with the EU, or that ‘regaining our seat at the WTO’ was supposed to be some great prize, it is that their whole economic vision of post-Brexit Britain was predicated on the existence of a global trade order. Trump is now ripping that up, and both Alan Beattie, the Financial Times’ trade expert (£), and the UKTPO analysis suggest that the UK-US deal, specifically, flouts WTO principles and undermines the multi-lateral trading system.

The UK-India deal

All this came in the wake of the announcement of a UK-India trade deal. The two stories are, as BBC Economics Editor Faisal Islam argues, very likely to be related. That is, the general mayhem Trump is causing to international trade may have provided an incentive to complete what has hitherto been regarded as an “elusive” deal. However, the two deals are very different. For the UK-India deal is a trade deal, both in the sense of being a genuine FTA and of being (or at least being the basis of) a legally binding agreement. Moreover, it sits within, and does not undermine, the WTO framework. Indeed, the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy suggests that “may be one of the biggest achievements of this agreement”.

Although the full details have yet to be published, reports based on the government’s summary of what has been agreed suggest there will be a fairly comprehensive removal of tariffs, with whisky and cars two of the UK sectors most likely to benefit, and garments and footwear amongst the benefitting Indian sectors. There’s less sign of liberalization of services trade, which some, especially in the financial services sector, had hoped for, although that is not surprising (lack of services coverage is one of the reasons why FTAs are so different to the EU single market). However, of potential importance to some UK firms, and potential controversy in India, UK access to the public procurement market should increase.

It was always anticipated that the block to this FTA would be an Indian requirement for a relaxation of UK immigration policy – something even less likely to be agreed by the present government, which is, if possible, even more obsessed with reducing immigration at whatever the economic cost than its Tory predecessors, something I will return to. That turned out not to be the case (although perhaps, had it been agreed, it might have enabled a deeper deal), and the only tangentially immigration-related issue was an agreement to exempt Indian workers on short-term visas from National Insurance Contributions (NICs).

Once again Brexiters were wrong-footed. This was a deal they had long-advocated as a Brexit prize, and Jacob Rees-Mogg greeted it as “exactly what Brexit promised”. But Kemi Badenoch latched onto the NIC provision (as, more unexpectedly, did the LibDems), either unaware of or ignoring the fact that such arrangements (which are reciprocal for UK workers) have been agreed with numerous countries in the past. Nigel Farage also weighed in, denouncing the deal as “truly appalling”, and as selling out British workers and farmers.

All this was, as with the US deal, pure opportunism (one senior Indian official was even quoted as saying that Badenoch had agreed the NIC provision in principle when she was Trade Secretary). There’s no doubt whatsoever that the Tories would have done the same deal. But the Brexiter reactions, especially Farage’s, also point to one of the biggest of the many contradictions which have run throughout the entire Brexit project, that between nativist protectionism and globalist free trade. Hence the idiotic situation that Brexiters can now regard the UK-India deal as both a vindication and a betrayal of Brexit.

A Brexit benefit?

To the extent that the deal is being claimed as a ‘Brexit benefit’, the usual arguments apply. Yes, it could only be made because the UK has left the EU. But according to official calculations its economic value, an estimated 0.1% increase to GDP after 15 years, whilst slightly greater than the FTAs with Australia (0.08%) and New Zealand (0.03%), is nugatory compared with the costs of Brexit (minus 4%). Given that Brexit has happened, there’s a case for doing such deals, but the idea that they in any way justify Brexit is absurd. In any case, it is reported in the Indian media that the ongoing EU-India trade negotiations are likely to be accelerated, again precisely because of the impetus injected by Trump’s trade mayhem.

Of course, whenever the economic deficiencies of their project are pointed out to Brexiters, they invariably fall back on some version of their ideas about sovereignty and democracy. In relation to trade deals, they used to make much of the idea that, with Brexit, the people’s representatives in parliament would ‘regain control’ over ratification of FTAs. That was always based on a false premise, because as an EU member the UK could have held parliamentary votes on FTAs made by the EU, potentially even blocking them, but it waived that right. As for the present situation, whilst it might fairly be said that the UK-US deal is so flimsy and indefinite it hardly warrants a vote, that is not true of the UK-India deal. Yet the government has stated that, in line with post-Brexit legislation and practice, there will be no vote. So that’s another supposed ‘Brexit benefit’ that has quietly been discredited.

Where does all this leave the UK-EU reset?

The short answer to that is that it leaves it exactly where it was before, except that we are now only a couple of days away from the EU Summit at which (perhaps) the tangible details of what the ‘reset’ is going to mean will be unveiled [1]. As such, most of what I wrote in my previous post still applies, but it is worth spelling out one particularly important issue. The fact that the UK-US deal explicitly affirmed that US products sold in the UK must meet UK SPS standards (i.e. no hormone-treated beef, chlorinated chicken etc.) means that there is no (new) obstacle to a UK-EU SPS agreement. This is the issue many commentators have identified as the key indication of whether the UK is going to ‘choose’ between aligning with the US or the EU. It seems to have chosen the EU (which is consistent with what the latest UKICE report shows to be the general direction of regulatory policy).  

That should not be a surprise to readers of this blog, as I’ve repeatedly argued (in the face of some sceptical responses) that it was highly unlikely that the government would agree anything with the US, or anyone else, to prevent what has always been Labour’s central, most repeatedly stated, reset ambition. It obviously remains to be seen if there will be a UK-EU SPS agreement, but the possibility remains open. I don’t think that quite amounts to the UK-US deal being a “triumph for remainers”, as Adam Bienkov argues, but it does endorse their core economic proposition of the centrality of geography to trade. Certainly the deal doesn’t mean that (taken in conjunction with the India deal) “the Rejoiner dream [has] finally died”, as pro-Brexit commentator Ambrose Pritchard-Evans claims.

Assuming there will now be a UK-EU SPS deal (in principle, if not immediately in detail), the important question is what else, if anything, gets announced next week. Over and above the widely expected defence and security pact, there are several possibilities, as outlined in my previous post, and there’s not much point in reviewing the various rumours and speculations there have been since. We’ll know soon enough.

What resetting means

That previous post attracted a certain amount of negative comment on social media. In particular, one poster on Bluesky [2] repeatedly and aggressively criticized me for having said that Labour’s red lines are fixed which, they insisted, meant I was indulging in British ‘exceptionalism’ whereby the EU was expected to make all the compromises and to find the solutions for the problems Brexit has caused the UK. It was a slightly bizarre accusation given the number of times over the last nine years I have criticized such a position, which has indeed often been in evidence. More importantly, it was simply ignorant. It is a fact that the Labour red lines have not changed, and a fact that they necessarily put a massive restriction on what can be agreed by the EU. But that certainly does not mean that there is no space for agreeing anything beyond what was negotiated by Boris Johnson and David Frost (a view which, ironically, mirrors Frost’s own criticisms of the reset).

That is for two reasons. One is that the UK under Labour does seem to have dropped one of the Johnson-Frost (and May) red lines of doctrinaire objection to any role for the ECJ and European Law. Admittedly this has never been formally stated, but, for years now, it has been notably absent from Labour’s list of red lines. If that is indeed so, it potentially opens up new areas for agreement that had been closed down by the UK, including but not limited to an SPS agreement, without entailing any concession from the EU on the need for ECJ jurisdiction. The other is that, even within its red lines, the Johnson-Frost deal was in many respects minimalistic, because of their hang-up about sovereignty in a more diffuse sense (i.e. beyond even what those red lines of necessity betokened). This is one reason why the quite expansive possibilities – possibilities envisaged by the EU quite as much as the UK – in the (non-binding) Political Declaration, which accompanied the 2019 Withdrawal Agreement, were never brought to fruition. There is now at least the potential to revisit them.

Nor, to address another repeated, and related, criticism made of that post, does doing so automatically amount to UK attempts at ‘cherry-picking’ or ‘cakeism’. Those concepts, whilst certainly highly relevant at some stages of the Brexit process (and, again, I've exhaustively catalogued and criticized this) have been rendered largely redundant since the UK became a third country to the EU. There are no cherries to try to pick, because the UK has foregone the pie. Now, the only issue is whether both the UK and the EU see it as being in their own interests to make agreements over cooperation in specific areas or participation in specific programmes. Indeed, that began to happen under the Sunak government, with the UK-Frontex deal on tackling irregular migration and the admission of the UK to the Horizon Europe and Copernicus programmes.

Trust in Starmer’s Britain?

If cherry-picking is no longer of much, if any, relevance to understanding Brexit events, new considerations have emerged. One is whether, contrary to what I have said, the UK-US deal, whilst not in its provisions affecting what the EU and UK might agree, could do so by antagonizing EU leaders. As I said above, that could well have been part of Trump’s intentions in making the deal and, even if not, the agreement hardly showed the UK standing in solidarity with other targets of Trump’s aggression. Again, I discussed this in a recent post, pondering that, if such a deal happened, it might simply be regarded by other countries as understandable realpolitik. That remains an open question, but the positive reaction to the agreement from Germany’s new Chancellor Friederich Merz might at least suggest that this is possible.

The other issue is that of domestic politics. Here, Simon Nixon makes the interesting argument that the US and India deals have provided Starmer with political cover for a maximal reset, by presenting himself as having just delivered on the Brexiters’ key trade promises. That could be so, but what is quite clear is that the Brexiters’ attack on the reset is continuing to gather force, and Badenoch has already threatened (£) to reverse anything agreed that “betrays Brexit”. Such threats are now the most potent weapon in the Brexiters’ arsenal, and they (rather than previous concerns about cherry-picking) are the most obvious disincentive to the EU to agree to a substantive reset.

Equally, the sight of Keir Starmer not just rehashing Brexiter nonsense about trade deals but now invoking their ‘taking back control’ slogan when launching this week’s morally reprehensible, politically counter-productive, and economically illiterate anti-immigration crusade is hardly likely to inspire confidence and trust from the EU. It hardly matters whether Starmer really believes what he said, or whether it is dishonesty resulting from fear of the Reform Party. Either way, quite as much as Badenoch and Farage, he is showing that ‘Brexitism’ is entrenched and that he has no intention of trying to challenge it.

I’ve referred several times to my recent posts on this blog, including the last one, and sometimes mentioned occasions where my expectations have proved accurate, or defended what I’ve written against criticisms. However I will freely admit that one of the main arguments of the last post, to the effect that Starmer had the opportunity to challenge Farage head on, and ‘reset’ domestic politics away from Brexitism, has already been shown to be hopelessly naive. It is now clear that isn’t going to happen. Next week there should be a clearer sense of whether Labour’s approach to the reset with the EU is going to be another missed opportunity to start to deal with the damage of Brexit.

 

Notes

[1] It is always worth recalling that, any reset aside, the UK has still not implemented all of the provisions of the original Withdrawal Agreement, nor some parts of the Windsor Framework. Moreover, there is still no deal on Gibraltar, although reports this week (£) suggested (not for the first time) that one is imminent. Indeed, the resolution of outstanding issues, perhaps especially Gibraltar, may well be part of the conditions for a reset of any significance.

[2] In line with my normal practice of not ‘punching down’ by linking to individual social media accounts, except when they are those of public figures, I will not identify the poster in question. In any case, some others were almost equally unpleasant.

How Trump has reset the Brexit reset

This week saw, according to respected economics commentator Simon Nixon, “the end of the economic world as we knew it”, and he is not alone in that view in the aftermath of Trump’s tariff announcement. But this is a blog about Brexit and actually, from that perspective, much of what I wrote in the first section of last fortnight’s post about the framing of current events still applies [1]. So, too, do many of the questions posed within that framing.

This in turn reflects the fact that what has effectively happened in the last couple of months is that the Brexit ‘reset’ policy with which the Labour government came to power, and which in some rather ill-defined sense it has been pursuing since then, has become inextricably entangled with the changed geo-political and economic landscape created with such speed by the new Trump administration.

So whereas what used to be called ‘the reset’ denoted simply a UK-EU process, framed by what had happened since 2016, it now has a new meaning as both the UK and the EU, and the UK-EU relationship, seek recalibrations framed by what has been happening in the US since January, including the latest dramatic, but not unexpected, developments (which I will return to). As a result, it has become far more complicated.

The changed meaning of ‘the reset’

To see the significance of that change, consider the idea of creating a deeper UK-EU defence and security pact. This was always central to Labour’s original reset plans, going back well before the last election. And it was not an especially radical idea, since it was effectively a revival of the non-binding Political Declaration signed, though subsequently ignored, by Boris Johnson in 2019. As such, it was actually a good example of what Labour could legitimately call ‘the Tories’ botched Brexit’, in that the absence of such a pact wasn’t inherent even in Johnson and May’s Brexit and, again as such, was a prime candidate for the reset in its original meaning.

However, there is now much more at stake in that such a pact is not only more urgent but has become bound up with massive changes in defence posture and policy under way within the EU and many of its member states, especially Germany. At their most basic level, these changes are about Europe, as a continent, taking responsibility for its own collective security now that the US can no longer be relied upon. In parallel, that is now conceptually bound up with, even though it is formally distinct from, Anglo-French attempts to mobilize a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ to support a ‘reassurance force’ for Ukraine in the event of any kind of peace deal.

There are already quite a few moving parts within that, even before adding in the potential economic and regulatory aspects of any reset. And the nature of that addition has also changed. In the original reset, these aspects might have been seen as relatively discrete from that of defence. Now, with possibilities for integrated defence manufacturing and procurement having come to the fore, they are much more closely connected.  

From this, some of the political questions which already arose have become more complicated. In particular, to what extent do, or will, EU and/or UK negotiators treat all the different components as being inter-related and therefore, potentially, susceptible to being traded against each other? To give one important example of what that means in practice, to what extent might a defence and security pact be contingent on a deal on fishing rights, or on the still unresolved matter of Gibraltar? There is also a swathe of issues which are due to come up within the next year under the existing Trade and Cooperation Agreement, for example energy security, to add to the mix.

All of this brings new meaning and importance to the UK-EU Summit to be hosted in Britain on 19 May. If it doesn’t lead to the announcement of a substantive agreement, it will, given the wider context of crisis, mark a major failure of, and for, both the UK and the EU. A wise article by former EU Commissioner for Security Sir Julian King makes the point that the best way of averting such a failure is to avoid seeking to create a single ‘grand package’. That is, it is vital to reach agreement on the most pressing issues, whilst creating future processes to address those which cannot be resolved.

On my reading, King’s deeper message is that, primarily because of Trump, the nature of the UK-EU relationship needs to be thought of in different ways from those which have obtained since 2016 or even 2020. In other words, to repeat the point with which I began, a global reset is already under way, and the reset of post-Brexit UK-EU relations is now bound up with adapting to that new reality.

More accurately, it is bound up with adapting to a new reality which is still in the process of emerging. Because as well as all the moving parts within the UK-EU relationship, those within the US’s relationships with the UK, the EU, and the wider world also continue to be in flux. This flux has two broad aspects but, in terms of how they impact on resetting the UK-EU relationship, they point in potentially different directions.

The moral collapse of the United States

The first aspect is the rapidity of the US’s ongoing descent into authoritarianism and, which makes it hard to document and make sense of, the chaotic manner in which this is happening. Much is being written about this, by people much better-qualified than me, so this is just a brief summary.

There is now a multi-fronted war against universities, with overseas students being pulled off the streets by masked agents, detained in legal limbo, and deported. Entire universities are being battered into submitting to government demands, extending to what can be taught and how. What may in the long run become most damaging are attempts to censor or outlaw scientific research which is deemed ideologically unacceptable.

Some of this overlaps with a ferocious onslaught on alleged illegal immigrants, including deportations to a hellish prison in El Salvador in defiance of court orders. It also overlaps with the attempt to erase all traces of ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ (DEI) in public and private organizations and even amongst foreign firms supplying the US government. Lest anyone think that is no more than a re-balancing of some of the wilder shores of ‘wokery’, it has extended to removing the names of black, Hispanic and female military veterans from the Arlington National Cemetery website, the list of those names including General Colin Powell, Secretary of State to George W. Bush. This isn’t a corrective to ‘political correctness gone mad’, it is simply mad.

The intimidation of universities is accompanied by growing intimidation of journalists, authors, lawyers, judges (£). The latter, in particular, but all of these developments, in general, are bound up with what is now widely acknowledged to be a wholesale undermining of the rule of law. This of course extends to the rule of international law, including renewed threats against Greenland made, in the stock manner of every aggressor since time immemorial, in the name of the intended victim’s security’. Indeed all the developments I have mentioned are sickeningly familiar from all the other cases of countries sliding into authoritarianism or even totalitarianism.

Hovering above all of this is the spectre of radical violations of the US Constitution, with the most egregious threat being Trump’s recent talk of finding a way to serve a third term in office. And lurking underneath all this is something which is perhaps the least consequential but, to me, somehow seems the most revealing: the throat-clenched anger revealed by the savage rudeness, casual cruelty (the ‘fun videos’ referred to in the link include those of shackled deportees being frog-marched to detention camps), and sheer depravity of so many of the regime’s functionaries and cheerleaders. What we are seeing is not just a maverick government but something far more profound and far more dangerous. Hatred has been unleashed and made legitimate.

So far as this first aspect of what is happening in the US is concerned, its potential impact on UK-EU relations is to make them closer and deeper. It underscores the point I made in a recent post that, in this new global divide Trump has initiated, both the UK and the EU are on ‘the same side’. Both have shared values in being broadly committed to liberalism and the rule of domestic and international law. In this sense, as I suggested in that post, Brexit is an anomaly and an incongruity.

The United States’ declaration of economic war

The second aspect of what is happening in the US and its relations to the wider world is the economic warfare it has unleashed with ‘Trump Tariffs’. As flagged at the start of this post, this has been the big story of this week, with the long-trailed announcement on Wednesday of the details of a blanket 10% tariff on all goods imported to the US, including from the UK, with effect from tomorrow. The EU faces a 20% blanket tariff, and several countries an even higher levy, up to the 54% imposed on China. Moreover, there was confirmation that imports to the US of steel, aluminium and motor vehicles from all countries, including the UK, have had a new 25% tariff imposed.

By any standard, this marks the beginning of an enormous economic shock. The full effects are difficult to predict partly because, as was seen earlier this year, Trump’s capriciousness means the policy might be altered in any direction, at any time. That capriciousness is itself partly because it isn’t simply an economic policy, as was underscored by the rambling speech about supposed American victimhood with which the new tariffs were announced, and the bizarre nature of the way they were calculated (£). As I noted shortly after his election, “trade policy for Trump is about beating his enemies … so there’s no point in thumbing through Ricardian theory on comparative advantage to try to understand [it]. But the corollary is that there’s no point in trying to frame responses in these terms.”

In particular, much of Trump’s trade policy apparently aims, and certainly has the potential, to provoke division, including between the UK and the EU. That is because of the different ways different countries have been treated, and also because of the possibility, and therefore the temptation, for individual countries to cut their own deals or make their own responses in the face of US aggression. So whilst those threatened may have shared values, they do not necessarily have (or perceive themselves to have) shared economic interests. Thus this second aspect of what is happening in the US could work against UK-EU relations becoming closer and deeper.

Back to Brexit

Specifically, the UK government, mired as it is in economic difficulties, may believe that Brexit is a lifeline rather than ‘an anomaly and incongruity’. Certainly the Brexiters are already crowing that Trump imposing a lower rate on the UK than on the EU represents a vindication of Brexit (they would do better to reflect on the mockery it makes of their former faith in ‘WTO rules’). They also believe that there is an even bigger potential ‘prize’ in the form of an exemption deal with the US.

Plainly the government does so too, having been seeking exactly that in recent weeks and, although it has not been successful, it claims that the effort is continuing, even hinting that a deal may be near to completion. Meanwhile, Starmer is insistent that there will be no immediate retaliatory action but that “all options remain on the table”, implying retaliatory tariffs if there is no deal, and has launched a consultation exercise with businesses about what these might consist of.

It’s worth saying that there is nothing inherently shameful about trying to negotiate a deal with the US, despite what some commentators and politicians seem to believe [1]. After all, the UK is not the only country which has tried and is continuing to try to do so, with examples including Canada, Mexico, India, and Japan. The EU, too, “would prefer to negotiate”.

The issue is, more, what happens if those attempts continue to fail. Does the UK then pursue a policy of being a non-combatant in the trade war? If it did so then, again, it would not be alone. It seems that this will be how Australia and New Zealand, both of which have ‘only’ suffered the 10% baseline tariff, will respond. The UK’s situation is different to those countries, though, in terms of its economic enmeshment with the EU. On the other hand, what happened if the UK’s attempts succeed? That would make it not so much a non-combatant as a defector.

The economic temptations for the UK to continue to seek an exemption deal, or to eschew retaliation without one are obvious. The political risks are equally obvious. Domestically, it is out of line with opinion polls, which would prefer closer links with the EU (but public opinion might be fickle if and when Trump Tariffs bite on UK jobs). Internationally, it may undermine or even destroy the developing unity with the EU and other countries, including those of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ to support Ukraine (an illustration of the complexity of the moving parts in the new reset).

Bluntly, why would other countries want to get closer to, let alone ‘stand shoulder to shoulder with’, a Britain making weaselly deals with Trump even as Trump punishes their economies and even threatens their territory? In the process, any political kudos Starmer has garnered, both domestically and internationally, for his post-Trump leadership on defending Ukraine from Russian military warfare may quickly be lost if he is unwilling to defend the UK and its allies from US economic warfare.

Perhaps some would understand and accept it as a matter of UK realpolitik. For example, it is reported that “João Vale de Almeida, former EU ambassador to the US and the UK, said he did not expect the UK to retaliate in the way the EU was bound to”, although he added that “it was important that Starmer hit back in some way by criticising the way the US president used tariffs as a tool of policy.” But perhaps (and perhaps more likely) other countries will see it as one more example of Perfidious Albion and one more example of the British preference, come what may, to cosy up to the Americans. An interesting sub-question is whether, if the UK continues to fail to make a deal with the US until eventually and belatedly joining the EU and others in retaliations, that would be seen as scarcely any less perfidious.

Starmer’s choices

These considerations, amongst others, lead Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland to make the case that Starmer should publicly admit and denounce the threat that Trump poses, rather in the manner that Mark Carney, the new Canadian Prime Minister, has done. Former UK Ambassador to the US Sir Kim Darroch has made a similar argument. Freedland suggests that, apart from anything else, doing so might also enable Starmer to escape some of the economic policy constraints the government faces, by presenting this situation as a national emergency. Another kind of reset, so to speak.

Of course Freedland and, undoubtedly, Darroch are well aware that the extensiveness of the UK’s defence, intelligence and economic ties with the US makes such a course highly risky [2]. That is also true of Canada, but Carney is in a rather different situation, firstly because he is about to fight an election, and secondly because the US attacks on Canada have been so extreme and so public that they can hardly be finessed away. So even if Freedland is right that, sooner or later, open confrontation will become unavoidable, there is every reason to think that Starmer will opt for it to be left until later rather than done sooner, and, meanwhile, try to walk the tightrope so as to avoid alienating anyone.

But that, too, has its risks, above and beyond those to relations with the EU, Canada etc. For, whilst failing to unequivocally oppose him in the manner of Carney, it is not clear that Starmer’s stance is enough to satisfy Trump anyway. For example, whilst it seemed as if the invitation for another State visit temporarily appealed to Trump’s grotesque ego, it was reported that the subsequent sight of King Charles meeting President Zelensky negated that appeal and fed a new resentment. The wider point is that Trump’s character isn’t such as to appreciate a tightrope act, he wants unequivocal fealty. In other words, it’s perfectly possible that Starmer, and therefore the UK, will end up alienating everyone.

I don’t think anyone, or at least anyone with an iota of political insight, imagines that Starmer’s choices are easy, or that any of the options are good. But choices have to be made, if only by default, and time is not on his side. In the absence of the quick completion of a deal with the US, the policy of not responding to Trump’s tariffs will soon come under pressure from industry and voters, as well as from opposition parties and some Labour MPS and ministers. Equally, depending on what is given away in return, a deal with Trump is likely to be controversial. Moreover, depending on exactly how things play out, there will potentially be some complex, and specifically Brexit-created, problems for Northern Ireland.

Most urgently of all, the reset with the EU cannot be allowed to drift, now that it has taken on its new meaning, and it is going to have to be substantively advanced by the Summit, which is just six weeks away. If it’s not now or never, then it’s very close to it. And although it would be naïve to expect moral outrage to play much part in realpolitik and statecraft, the immoral spectacle unfolding in the United States can surely not be ignored for much longer. Or, to put it differently, and perhaps better, realpolitik and statecraft ought to alert us to the fact that the immorality of what is unfolding in the United States, quite as much as the imposition of tariffs, represents a clear and present danger to our national interests and our way of life.

 

Notes

[1] As I explained in detail in a previous post, a ‘deal’ in this context means some kind of agreement for the UK to be exempted from these new US tariffs, not a comprehensive UK-US Free Trade Agreement (this is presumably why Starmer always uses the term ‘an economic deal’ rather than ‘trade deal’). It’s worth stressing, because I was struck that when this was discussed in parliament yesterday some MPs, including some Tories urging a deal and some LibDems urging caution about a deal, appeared to be utterly confused about the difference.

[2] This isn’t negated by growing concerns about the security risks of sharing intelligence with the US, which were brought into sharp relief by the SIGNAL Yemen raid scandal, because that doesn’t affect UK reliance on receiving intelligence from the US.

The new global divide makes Brexit an anomaly

The new global divide I’ve been talking about in recent posts has deepened very sharply again since my most recent one. It is a divide that is likely to become as profound as that of the Cold War and, although it doesn’t yet have a snappy name, its existence has been recognized by just about every political commentator. Something very basic has shifted, summed up by the headline to Martin Wolf’s recent Financial Times article (£): “The US is now the enemy of the West”. As a result, according to former Ambassador Sir David Manning, there is a “seismic change” underway in the UK’s relationship with the US.

That has happened quickly, and in ways which are unfolding daily, if not hourly, around the world. In the UK, with almost equal rapidity, it is beginning to shift the tectonic plates of politics, and in particular the shape of post-Brexit politics, in line with this new global divide. However, although the global consequences are alarming and potentially horrific, the impact on British politics may in some ways be positive.

The new global divide

At stake, as recently discussed on Professor Ben Ansell’s Radio 4 strand, Rethink, may be the survival of liberalism itself. That is a useful way to frame things, because it is not just ‘liberal’ journalists and writers in the ‘Establishment’ or ‘mainstream’ media who do so. It is equally explicit amongst ‘radical right’ populists and their Putinist allies that their project is to fight and destroy the liberal order in domestic and international politics. In an era when, often, it seems as if the competing sides cannot even agree on the most basic of facts, or the most basic rules of logic, on this one, overarching, issue they are at one.

I’ve pointed in recent posts to some of the ways that Brexit relates to this new divide, but it is worth spelling out how it sits squarely within the ‘anti-liberal’ camp. At the most basic level, support for Brexit is one of the many things Trump and Putin share. Beyond that, Brexit and the anti-liberal axis share the same hubristic nationalism, the same quasi-mystical invocation of ‘the people’, the same vicious anger against ‘the liberal elite’ and the ‘globalist establishment’, the same xenophobia, the same nostalgia for an imagined past, the same self-pitying victimhood, and, of course, the same loathing of the EU. They also share many of the same rhetorical strategies, especially that of promulgating false, often convoluted, claims as truth and then, when they are challenged, using that very challenge to ‘prove’ that there is at least ‘something to be debated’ in those falsities.

But if this consonance were all there were to it, then the current situation would look very different. Post-Brexit Britain would be neatly dovetailing into the Trump-Putin side of the new divide. It would, to take an important recent illustration of that divide, have voted with the US, Russia, Belarus, and North Korea in their opposition to the UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Or at the very least, it would have abstained, like China. Of course, in that situation, many British people would be horrified by what their country had become, just as many Americans are horrified by what the US has become, but, with Brexit, as with Trump’s re-election, the die would have been cast.

Britain agrees its position

That isn’t the situation, though, and in fact the UK voted with all the other liberal countries, including Japan, Canada, Australia etc. as well as those in Europe. And this is because, although Brexit has happened – the UK has left the EU – it does not entirely define Britain, certainly not in the way that Brexiters had hoped and expected. The reasons for that are complex, but obviously include the fact that Brexit was so narrowly supported in the first place, and that for almost the entire period since it happened it has been supported by only a dwindling minority. As I’ve remarked before, having won the referendum, the Brexiters went on to lose the battle for the post-Brexit narrative.

Allied to this is the fact that most of the tenets of liberalism, both in international relations and domestic politics, whilst taking a battering from Brexit, have survived, sometimes precariously, in the UK. Most particularly, British support for Ukraine, both as a matter of principle and because geography makes it vital to national security, is strong and popular. That, in turn, is reflected in the way that most Brexiters, especially within the Tory Party, unlike Trump and the US radical right, are supportive of Ukraine, hostile to Putin, and pro-NATO.

For this reason, politicians of almost all parties, including populist Conservatives, condemned the literally stomach-turning bullying to which Voldymyr Zelensky was subjected by Trump and JD Vance. It’s too early to be sure, but I have a strong sense that this was a turning point for the British public, and it certainly united the British press in revulsion. That revulsion came even closer to home when Vance made dismissive comments about, apparently, the British military (although he later denied they were the target), something which caused genuine anger cutting across political divisions, including that of remainers and leavers. Probably nothing could have done so much to cement the view that the US under Trump has become a nasty, rude, and hostile power.

At all events there is now a new political consensus emerging in response to the choices Trump has forced upon us. For example, even if we had a Conservative government, it would all but certainly have voted the same way as the Labour administration did in the UN vote. More generally, the Conservatives have both supported and praised Starmer’s general handling of what the eminent War Studies Professor Lawrence Freedman has called “the great crisis”. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage, with his open admiration of Putin and Trump, his apologism for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and his support for the bullying of Zelensky has become an outlier, even amongst most of his own supporters, never mind the country as a whole [1].

The limits of choice

All of this means that, Brexit notwithstanding, the UK remains in its values, interests, and allegiances a ‘liberal European’ country. However, the UK, under any government, and with or without Brexit, is not able simply to align ‘against’ the US. Trump may have made his country the enemy of the West, but many countries in the West, not just the UK, cannot make themselves the enemy of America. That is one reason why the last few weeks have been so profoundly shocking. For the UK, specifically, the scale of its trade and investment relationship with the US, and the scope of its defence and security relationship, make it impossible to undertake such a re-alignment, certainly in any short timescale.

Those relationships reach deep into the central, and the most secret, parts of the British state, including its nuclear capacity (although the common claim that the UK does not have operational independence in the use of is nuclear weapons, or requires ‘codes’ from the US to do so, would seem to be a myth) and, perhaps most profoundly of all, its intelligence capacity. Regarding the latter, former diplomat Arthur Snell has argued that, especially with respect to signals intelligence (sigint), there is almost no way of effectively detaching the UK capability from that of the US. If there is, it will take time. The US is by far the senior partner of the ‘Five Eyes’ partnership (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) which shares both facilities and yields of sigint operations and, as such, is vital to the UK for military, counter-terrorism, cyber-security, and others purposes.

This makes it all the more concerning that at least some in the US administration are pushing to exclude Canada from the Five Eyes (£), in the context of the wider economic and political aggression Trump is directing at Ottawa. The threat may well come to nothing, but it is a reminder, not least to the UK, of the hazards of being dependent on the caprice of a partner that is no longer a friend. It is also one of many indications that Trump’s America is vindictive and bullying to those it perceives negatively, whether for being enemies, or parasites, or competitors, or weak, or just for having in some way offended against Trump’s pathologically colossal vanity. (This link, to a free-to-view piece by Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times, is well worth reading for a sense of the horror of what Trump is doing, and why.)

That is why Keir Starmer will go on publicly insisting – as any British Prime Minister would, with or without Brexit – that there is ‘no choice’ to be made between the UK’s relations with the US and those with Europe, and that the US remains a reliable ally. They are necessary diplomatic fictions. It is why anyone expecting to see a dramatic big gesture from Starmer, denouncing Trump for the disgrace he is, will be disappointed. It is why we witnessed the sphincter-tightening spectacle of Starmer having to subject himself to stiltedly lavishing praise on Trump, in return for some tepid compliments delivered with barely concealed contempt. It is why he invited Trump for a State Visit which, for all the growing opposition to it, will almost certainly go ahead. And it is why, when it does, King Charles will grit his teeth and smile. The rest of us should just be grateful we don’t have to do the same.

The realities of sovereignty

What we are actually seeing is a hard lesson in the reality of what sovereignty and the limits to sovereignty mean. The Brexiters were and are entirely deluded to think that this reality has anything to do with the ‘imposition’ of Brussels regulations on widgets – regulations made, when we were an EU member, with the UK having a prominent and respected voice. A far better illustration is the way that the British Prime Minister literally dares not speak anything close to the truth to or about the US President for fear of being publicly humiliated and the nation punished. Similarly, whereas leading British politicians were able to liken the EU to Nazis or the Soviet Union with impunity, no such politician, and certainly no serving government minister, would dare say the same of Trump’s America.

Of course, there is nothing new in the disparity between US and UK power, and there have been previous occasions, most obviously the Suez crisis, where that has been humiliatingly revealed. The US has the power to coerce us and to hurt us. The difference under Trump is that he would be quite willing to do so on the flimsiest of pretexts, in the most brutal of ways, and would enjoy it. What was once a power imbalance within a broadly reliable alliance has now become a power play within something more like a mediaeval court in which Britain is a minor, ageing aristocrat. And there’s not much we can do about it. It is no good reaching for the historical analogy of 1930s appeasement here. When Imperial Britain faced the threat of Nazi Germany, it did not face an adversary with which the bulk of its military and intelligence capacity was intertwined, or one which dwarfed it in resources.  

Similarly, the answer to the question posed by George Monbiot in the Guardian last week – what if Britain had to defend itself militarily against the US? – is depressingly obvious: we couldn’t. However, we aren’t in this situation, but in a different and perhaps more complex one [2]. Crazy as this US administration is, it is not bent on going to war with the UK or Europe. The military threat comes from Russia, and from the withdrawal of reliable US security guarantees to deter that threat. Here the appeasement analogy does apply, in that if, with US complicity, Ukraine is dismembered and subjugated, Russia will be emboldened to go after other European countries, both directly and indirectly, including the UK. (Indeed, the Brexit sovereigntists seem remarkably sanguine about Russia’s many incursions into UK territory as if it were metric measurements, rather than these acts of territorial aggression, which were the most real and pressing threats to British sovereignty.)

Minor powers

Equally, for all the real constraints on what the UK can say or do to the US, it is not completely powerless and, as a matter of fact, Starmer is being far from supine. There are several illustrations of that, including the way the UK voted at the UN. Related to that, Starmer has been insistent, despite Trump’s brazen lies to the contrary, that Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine.  Another example is the way that, during his Washington visit, he pushed back against Vance’s barbed comment about lack of freedom of speech in the UK (this is one of the many alt-right canards about both Starmer and Britain, heavily promulgated by Elon Musk). Then, at this week’s PMQs, he unfussily but pointedly issued an implicit reprimand to Vance for his own implicit dismissiveness of the British military.

Most prominent of all, the warmth with which Starmer welcomed Zelensky to the UK just a few hours after the Ukrainian leader’s appalling treatment in America, and the immediate arrangement of a meeting with King Charles, were clear rebukes to Trump, even if not vocalized as such. Moreover, no one could miss the contrast of the genuine regard between Starmer and Zelensky with the precarious brittleness of the Starmer-Trump meeting. These things are probably as far as the UK can do without attracting Trump’s ire; it may even be that they go beyond it.

Starmer and the UK also have some cards to play with the US which, though they shouldn’t be over-stated, are not entirely negligible. For all that it is very much the junior partner, the UK does contribute some things the US needs, with sigint capacity being one. And whilst Trump is undoubtedly too self-involved and too ignorant to do so, there are still some US Republicans who recall with gratitude the UK’s support after 9/11 and even, for those with longer memories, the Reagan-Thatcher relationship. (I make no comment on those things in themselves, just the point that they still carry some meaning for some in the US.) Even the ghost of Churchill still has some residual currency, as the (re-) placement of his bust in the Oval Office attests.

In that respect, it is perhaps telling that Vance felt obliged to deny that he had been referring to the UK (or France) in those scornful comments about the militaries of ‘random countries’. He can hardly have done so because he had been misunderstood, since no other countries have yet proposed to deploy troops to Ukraine. And there is nothing in his character to suggest he did so out of personal graciousness, still less from any sense of shame. So the implication is that there is still some vestigial realization in the White House that it cannot be totally disrespectful to its notional allies, at least in public.

The way ahead

Be all that as it may, what is certainly the case is that over time, without publicly admitting there is a choice being made, the UK is going to increase its contributions to, and deepen its relations with, a massively re-vamped EU and European defence capacity and, in the process, reduce its dependence on the US. Indeed, Trump can hardly object to that, since it is what he has asked for and, in doing so, differs from previous US administrations only in the brutality and crudity of his demands.

It is now becoming clear to many commentators that, as I wrote exactly a month ago:

“Starmer has a real opportunity to exert leadership, and in the process has been gifted an opportunity to release Britain from the drift and dither to which it has been consigned by Brexit. He could, in one bound, position the UK as an international beacon of probity, as a strong regional partner, and perhaps even as a galvanizing convenor of medium-sized and small powers, and in the process marginalize Farage as an unpatriotic scoundrel.”

It is far too early to know where this will lead, but last weekend’s convenorship of a meeting involving the EU, most of its members states, Turkey, Canada, and Ukraine was a clear example that Starmer is trying to grasp this opportunity. And already he and Britain are attracting appreciative comments from other European leaders, something that hasn’t happened for long enough.

But none of this is going to be easy, and it certainly isn’t going to be pretty. Those who are squeamish about realpolitik and who like their politics to be morally-elevated had better look away for the next few years. That doesn’t just apply to the UK, but here it will include the fact that, like it or not, Starmer is going to make use of not being in the EU in various ways. That will include using the symbolism of that as a way of getting heard in a White House that loathes the EU, something which has already enabled Farage to claim, predictably but misleadingly, that we are seeing some kind of benefit of Brexit [3]. It may include some kind of substantive agreement to avoid new tariffs and, perhaps, to develop an AI regime in conjunction with the US, rather than with the EU. Personally, I’m not convinced these things will happen, but they will certainly continue to be talked about.

The trick for the UK will be to combine this not just with getting closer to the EU on defence, but with effecting the most maximalist version of the 'reset' (and, it shouldn’t be forgotten, fully implementing the existing agreements with the EU, including the Windsor Framework, as well as completing the still unresolved, and apparently stalled, negotiations over Gibraltar). This in turn means the careful curation of relationships with other countries, within and beyond Europe, to defuse any sense that the UK is selling them out by making some agreements with the US. As such it will call for extremely astute diplomacy, but it is not an impossible task, since other national leaders understand perfectly well the difficulties of navigating relations with Trump.

Moreover, none of this is going to be cheap. The recent announcement of increased defence spending is only the beginning of what needs to come and the fraught political choices this will entail have yet to be faced up to.

Back to Brexit

In these ways, our country is going to have to simultaneously placate a dangerously unpredictable US whilst acting on the consequences of it now being undeniable that Europe is where the UK belongs. The great fantasy of Brexit, and its central strategic folly, of thinking otherwise has now been exposed, far more dramatically and suddenly than by Brexit itself. That is now becoming accepted, at least according to the commentator Janan Ganesh, even by British Conservatives. Indeed, for at least some of them, the new situation creates a welcome way out of the cul-de-sac which Brexit has taken them, not least as regards electoral strategy.

As the veteran international politics sage Philip Stephens puts it, “Trump’s America has made its choice”. In doing so, it has imposed one on the UK which, though ragged, in that it can’t be made through a single decision at a single moment, could through a series of decisions gradually re-integrate us with the EU. For within this new global divide, it is crystal clear that Brexit is an anomaly, a policy which belongs on one side of that divide yet is being pursued by a country located on the other side. At the very least, the Brexiters’ claim, which was always flawed, that the EU is irrelevant to the UK’s security needs and that these were fully catered for by NATO, has now been exposed as disastrously false.

This doesn’t, in itself, mean that rejoining the EU is on the political agenda, but it does make the timescale for that being a realistic possibility shorter than seemed likely even a fortnight ago. It already cements the pre-existing public sense that Brexit was a terrible error. So, frightening and disorientating as the last few weeks have been, I think there are at least some grounds for hope. Trump feels like a disaster, and in general terms that feeling is well-founded. But for post-Brexit Britain he might just be a reprieve.

 

Notes

[1] This could turn out to be one of the most important, and most positive, domestic consequences of the new global situation, sidelining Farage for the first time for decades. Subscribers to Byline Times can read some of my initial thoughts about this in the next issue (April 2025), and I am sure I will write much more about it, here, in the future.

[2] Thus those who, in comments on one of my recent posts, thought I was anticipating, or even advocating, the UK ‘standing up to’ the US militarily entirely misunderstood me. It may well be true, though, that there are inconsistencies in the content and tone of my recent posts but, if so, I think that is understandable – even inevitable - given the rapidity with which events are unfolding.

[3] It is misleading because although it is possible that the UK being out of the EU helps to get a hearing from Trump a) it is wrong to claim that this is because the UK now has an independent foreign policy, because it always did; b) any gain from that is offset by the very much reduced influence the UK has within the EU; c) it is only because Trump is so bent out of shape about the EU rather than being because Brexit has, in general terms, given the UK any benefits in its relationship with the US; and d) precisely because Trump is Trump it doesn’t count for much anyway. He’s perfectly likely, if he takes umbrage at something, to turn on the UK, Brexit or no Brexit. Hence the need to tip-toe around his freakshow vanities.

Trump’s new world chaos offers possibilities for post-Brexit Britain

Last week, if anyone can remember that far back, the fifth anniversary of the UK leaving the EU provoked a welter of comment and detailed analysis from which it is hard to escape the conclusion that what I’ve sometimes called ‘the battle for the post-Brexit narrative’ is over. The public view that it was wrong to leave and that leaving has not been a success is entrenched and growing. The bulk of sensible and serious commentary, both in the UK (£) and abroad, endorses that.

Meanwhile, Brexit’s remaining defenders, such as Boris Johnson (£) and Nigel Farage, can only wail about the need to “believe” in Brexit, and the benefits they claim for it range from trivialities to demonstrable lies, the most frequent and most egregious being that it enabled an early Covid vaccine rollout. The very weakness of that defence, combined with the notable absence of celebration of the anniversary, show the abject failure of Brexit to deliver the promises made for it by its advocates.

The core problem in current British politics is that the Brexiters are too shameless to admit this failure, and utterly resistant to even the most modest attempts to address the consequences. Since, public opinion notwithstanding, this stance is baked in to both the Reform and Tory parties, and large and noisy section of the media, Brexit Britain is, as I wrote in my previous post, stuck. Like squatters, having trashed the house, they will neither get out nor allow the owners to repair it.

Thus a reversal of Brexit is politically unrealistic in any immediate timescale, and the government’s promised ‘reset’ is the only game in town. Yet even that has been pursued with frustrating timidity and slowness, not least because of the opposition of the Brexit wreckers.

However, in what has been a tumultuous two weeks, there are at least signs of the reset being pursued with more urgency and a little more resolve. Perhaps more importantly, the tumult, which derives from Donald Trump’s return to power, depressing and disorientating as it is, could present an opportunity to finally break out of the stale circles of the Brexit debate.

Reset: a new urgency?

It’s hard to deny that, even though these events were already planned, Trump’s explosive arrival in the White House put new meaning upon Starmer’s attendance at a meeting of EU leaders, to discuss defence and security issues, and the meeting next day of the EU-UK Forum, where EU Relations Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds delivered a major speech. At all events, although it was scarcely the first time that Starmer has talked about wanting an “ambitious” security partnership and reset with the EU, it was the first time that he and Thomas-Symonds set out a desire to agree a reset deal within the next three months.

It’s not clear how realistic this is, since the related announcement of a UK-EU summit to be held in May would imply that negotiations be completed in advance of this. Nevertheless, both the summit itself, which will be hosted by the UK, and the identification of a timetable, can be read as recognizing the need to deliver, and deliver quickly, on a reset which, so far, has mainly consisted of warm words.

Thomas-Symonds also spoke of the need to approach the reset with “ruthless pragmatism” in place of “ideologically-driven division”. Quite what this means is also unclear. Hopefully, it is a signal to British Brexiters (£) that the government is willing to take on their backlash against the reset, which I discussed in a recent post and which has been much on display in utterly ludicrous attacks on this week’s meetings in the pro-Brexit press*. If that is so, then it would be helpful for Thomas-Symonds, or Starmer himself, to give a big, uncompromising, and full-throated speech demolishing those attacks and advocating, with enthusiasm, a detailed agenda for the government’s still far too vague ‘ambition’. If not now, when?

Less optimistically, it might have been (or have also been) a signal to the EU that the government still clings to the familiar Brexiter line that Brussels should be more ‘flexible’ and less ‘ideological’ in its application of rules for third countries. That line is still, at least implicitly, what Farage believes would “improve” the existing deal, as if post-Brexit ‘red tape’ were an EU imposition rather than an inevitable consequence of decisions taken by UK and urged by Farage himself. I’m only guessing, but it seems to me at least possible that there are still people in the civil service and the cabinet who have the same view, if only because, even after all these years, there is still so much ignorance about how the EU works and what Brexit means.

But even the most optimistic reading of these developments (i.e. that Starmer intends to stand up to the Brexiters and to work realistically and rapidly to agree the most maximalist version of the reset), for all that it would mark a shift in gear compared with the last eight months, already seems inadequate to the scale and pace of events. For, based even on the short period since Trump returned to office, there is a good case for thinking that the fundamental recalibration of global politics, which I foreshadowed in a post in November, is now unfolding in plain view.

Trump’s global coup

That recalibration isn’t only, or even primarily, about Trump’s trade tariffs, which I’ll come back to. There is already a long list of other developments, including the pardoning of the J6 rioters; the forced deportations (with the associated bullying of Colombia and the planned re-opening and re-purposing of Guantanamo Bay); the quite extraordinary handing of access to government finance systems to Musk; the hounding of Federal agencies including the FBI; the attempts to suborn the CIA; the freezing of foreign aid; the purge of all forms of diversity initiatives; the bullying territorial claims made on Panama, Greenland and Canada; the grotesque and yet absurd proposal to “take over” Palestine and create a “Riviera of the Middle East”; the withdrawal from the Paris Accord and the World Health Organization.

That is only a partial list of what has happened so far, and there will undoubtedly be more to come, probably even as I am writing. But it is enough to eviscerate any lingering idea that Trump will show even the restraints of his first presidency. It may be chaotic, but is also a coup of sorts, and arguably an assault on the constitution. Under Trump, the US has launched a global attack on liberalism in its most general meaning, and on many of its specific attributes at home and abroad.

Even acknowledging that many of Trump’s announcements and executive orders are merely performative, that much of what he does will be heavily resisted, that his administration is likely to be characterized by incompetence and infighting, will not last forever, and may become domestically unpopular, it seems certain that the US will be permanently changed and, as a result, so will the rest of the world. Apart from anything else, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Trump is, in fact, doing what he promised he would do, and was given a clear endorsement for it by US voters. So, even if some of those who did so turn against him, it really can’t be denied that there is a deep groundswell of desire for the US to be a very different kind of country to that which, at least, the UK has known, or believed it has known, since, say, 1941. (I realise there is a lot that can be debated in and around that claim.)

Trump’s tariff weapon

When it comes to Trump’s new tariffs, these can be seen as an attack on economic liberalism, and to an extent they are motivated by economic protectionism. But they are not really, or at least not simply, about waging trade wars (although trade wars with China and the EU may be the result). More fundamentally, Trump is using trade as a weapon to intimidate other countries into doing his bidding in both economic and non-economic matters. The non-economic motive was most evident in the threat to Colombia, but was also present in those made to Mexico and Canada, and carried through against China.

The fact that Mexico and Canada struck last-minute deals on border protection to avoid the tariff attacks is in part an illustration of this, but it is also an irrelevance. For one thing, they are only temporary deals, and there is every reason to believe that, like a blackmailer, Trump will come back for more (and, even if he doesn’t, this episode will have done long-term damage to, for example, US-Canada relations). For another, the very rapidity of the reprieves is all of a piece with Trump’s almost cliched desire to ‘do the unexpected’ as a weapon designed to de-stabilize his perceived enemies. Indeed, as legal commentator David Allen Green has pointed out this week, although Trump is often described as ‘transactional’, his approach to deal-making is actually “anti-transactional”, so that “an agreement offers an opportunity to gain leverage, for a new negotiation, for a new exertion of power.”

However, whilst what is happening may be inflected through Trump’s baroque psychology (£), it is not reducible to that. He is both an expression of, and a vehicle for, a deep seam of sentiment in the US which sees the country as the put-upon victim of the international order (despite that order being largely the creation of the US). In that sense, Trump’s tariff attacks are part of the wider picture of a regime determined to use force to dismantle the constraints of law and convention abroad quite as much as those within the domestic sphere. That he has even spoken of the use of military force, extending to the sequestration of territory, against some of the US’s own allies means that, at the most basic level, the US can no longer be trusted by any of its allies.

Trump’s words and actions have therefore already fractured global society. It’s tempting to reach for historical analogies, which might range from Hoover’s Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, to the America First Committee, to the endless debates about whether Trump is a fascist. But they really aren’t necessary. It’s enough to observe that he is what he is, now; doing what he is doing, now. Perhaps in the future it may seem an overblown claim but, just at the moment, it is plausible to say that we are seeing the beginning of a new global divide between rules and brute force. It is also not necessary to romanticize ‘the rules-based international order’, or to sanitize the history of US foreign policy, to see this as a momentous and highly dangerous development, with the potential to shatter previous alliances and enforce more-or-less binary choices on almost every country in the world.

What of Brexit Britain?

If this analysis, or anything like it, is correct, then the issues it poses for the UK, specifically, go well beyond those of UK-EU relations, although they encompass those relations, and beyond those of tariffs. Thus most current discussions, which focus on Britain having to navigate a careful path in the event of a US-EU trade war, don’t fully address what is at stake. It is not even as simple as picking a side between the US and the EU. It is about picking a side between liberalism and illiberalism (or worse).

This would have created profound problems for the UK even without Brexit, given the role it had roughly established for itself as a ‘transatlantic bridge’. But EU membership would have half-addressed those problems, anchoring one end of the bridge even as the other imploded. As it is, the combination of Brexit and Trump 2.0 has burnt both ends. This poses questions about UK-EU relations, of course, but Trump hasn’t simply turned on the EU. In some ways, the bigger issue his presidency has raised for the UK is illustrated by his assault on Canada, not just with tariffs but with the extraordinary suggestion that it might “cease to exist” as an independent country and could become “America’s 51st State”.

This, then, is an attack on one of Britain’s closest and most longstanding allies, and, indeed, a country of which the British monarch is still the Head of State. The UK-Canada relationship is also, let us not forget, a prime example of the kind of ‘old friendship’ which the Brexiters claimed would be rekindled by leaving the EU. Some even continue to fantasise about ‘CANZUK’ and ‘the Anglosphere’. Moreover, Canada’s relationship with the EU was constantly held up as the template for what Britain’s should become.

In this sense, Trump’s hostility to Canada, quite as much as his hostility to the EU, presents a moment of choice. What, now, should Britain do? Keep quiet? Seek to ‘navigate’ a path to spare itself Trump’s disfavour whilst its ‘old friend’ takes its chances? Indeed one might ask what Farage, the man who always claims to stick to his principles, to care deeply about national sovereignty, and to have a hot-line to Trump, had to say about Canada this last week or so. The answer, so far as I can find, is nothing.

Similar questions apply not just to the UK’s relations with the EU, generally, but to those with Denmark, in particular, and with Greenland. They also apply, in a different way, to its relations with China, which Starmer’s government has recently tried to reset. And they also apply, again in different ways, to its relations with global institutions. To put all this a different way, the vision of, at least, the global Brexiters was of being ‘freed from the shackles of the EU’ in order to participate fully in a global order, including but not limited to a global trade order, an order to which the US now is wholly opposed and bent on destroying. Even the Brexiters’ more limited notion of the Anglosphere was predicated on the US as a bulwark of the ‘rules-based’ order. Equally, they looked to NATO as the sole international basis of UK defence and security, an approach which now looks increasingly precarious. So even if there had ever been a geo-political logic to Brexit, which there wasn’t, the entire basis of that logic is now rapidly disappearing.

A UK-US deal?

To the extent that the Brexiters have any response to this situation, it is the idea of the UK creating a Free Trade Agreement with the US (and/or an exemption from new punishment tariffs). Indeed, some clearly imagine that this, finally, will be a concrete demonstration of the benefits of Brexit.

However, it is an utterly inadequate response. Although there is no doubt that Trump will dangle this possibility in front of Starmer, that doesn’t mean he will do such a deal. In fact, as is already beginning to happen, he is likely to alternately hint that he is going to spare Britain or that he is going to punish us, just as a way of demonstrating his power. But even if he does a deal, his protectionism and nationalism, not to mention his own concept of deal-making, will mean that it will not be a good deal for the UK, and will come with numerous conditions. In any case, as Mexico and Canada are finding as regards USCMA, a deal with Trump is not worth the paper it is written on. His “anti-transactionalism” means he is always liable to make some new demands for obedience from the UK.

Most importantly of all, were a US-UK trade deal to happen in the new context Trump has created it would, for what at best would be only a small economic benefit, engender not just dismay but disgust from most of Britain’s friends and allies. Brexit Britain would cease to be regarded by them, as it has been since 2016, with bewilderment and even sympathy, but instead with loathing and revulsion, a Quisling in Trump’s global war.

The very idea that Brexiters like David Frost should think that their project is justified by the ‘freedom’ to act in such a cowardly and contemptible way shows the depths and desperation they have reached. Certainly their advocacy of dancing a humiliating jig to the tune of a capricious bully removes any vestigial illusion that they are in any way patriotic.

Starmer’s opportunity

The temptation for Starmer, partly as a matter of temperament, but partly because Brexit has left Britain in such an enfeebled position, will be to go on doing nothing and saying little other than platitudes. But inaction and quietude will amount to taking sides or, even worse, will be seen by each side as taking that of the other. Likewise, it will not silence the Brexiter call for doing a deal with the US, with Farage and his acolytes acting as Trump’s Fifth Column in British politics.

Conversely, Starmer has a real opportunity to exert leadership, and in the process has been gifted an opportunity to release Britain from the drift and dither to which it has been consigned by Brexit. He could, in one bound, position the UK as an international beacon of probity, as a strong regional partner, and perhaps even as a galvanizing convenor of medium-sized and small powers, and in the process marginalize Farage as an unpatriotic scoundrel. Similarly, resistance to closer EU ties from the Conservatives and their media supporters could be positioned as undermining Britain’s staunch support for its allies. Doing so would go with the grain of public opinion. Trump and his side-kick Musk are not popular in the UK. Equally, there is public support for closer relations with the EU rather than with the US, and probably (though I haven’t found polling data) for siding with Canada, Greenland/ Denmark, and perhaps even Panama, against Trump’s aggression.

In this way, all the talk still coming from Badenoch, amongst others, of ‘honouring the will of the British people’ and ‘retaining our hard-won Brexit freedoms’ as a reason to oppose the reset could at a stroke be derided as the tired repetition of long-outdated slogans, wrenching political discourse free of the detritus of 2016 and its aftermath. That wouldn’t imply re-opening the Brexit question, or crossing Labour’s ‘red lines’, but it would imply pursuing a maximalist reset with the EU, at speed, and with open enthusiasm rather than coyness and reluctance. Doing so would not just reset UK-EU relations, it would also reset UK international relations generally and, perhaps most importantly, reset the terms of domestic political debate.

Starmer may never have a better chance than now, and, if he is to take it, then the sooner the better if he is to get kudos for being at the forefront of this new global divide. Standing up to Trump in this way would not be easy or cost-free for Britain. Doing so would have significant security and economic ramifications. But the same is true of not doing so. And it’s even possible, given Trump’s bullying temperament, that standing up to him might earn Starmer a degree of grudging respect.

In some ways, Starmer is ideally placed to take this kind of stance. As I wrote recently, his persona and politics are very clearly aligned with the principles of ‘rational-legal authority’ in both the domestic and international spheres, placing him in direct contrast to Trump’s ‘anti-ruleism’. However, at the same time, and relatedly, he is almost preternaturally cautious, lacking vision and perhaps distrustful of the very concept of vision, and as a result inclined to ‘wait and see’ and to dodge hard choices. Hence his current rejection of the bare idea that there is a choice to be made between the US and the EU. That is misguided even if the choice is framed in that way. It is even more misguided when the choice is framed, as it should be, between accepting or rejecting Trump’s new barbarism.

 

*Of these attacks, probably none was more ludicrous than that of Kate Hoey. It isn’t only that she sees betrayal in the UK Prime Minister meeting EU leaders, it is that having campaigned for years against membership of the EU because of its supra-national powers she now proposes that the UK need not deal with the EU at all, but simply with its individual members. And this is only one aspect of the idiocy on display in just this short clip.