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Did any country have a bigger place in the world than Britain a decade ago? In 2014, the UK was in the EU but not in the more problematic euro or Schengen borderless zone. It had a close, if not exclusive, association with an open and commercial America. Most ironically, Britain was well placed to be the link between the North Atlantic world and China. The West’s first renminbi bond was issued in London 10 autumns ago.
If we look at these three blocs as overlapping spheres, which together account for most of the world’s output, Britain itself overlapped. Unlike the US, which had defense responsibilities at both ends of the Eurasian landmass, Britain did not have to spend much to build its global profile.
From three dudes in high places to essentially zero statecraft feats. Britain is now out of its regional club. And Against the protectionist US And After a period of indifference, it had to end its relations with China. This week, Sir Keir Starmer became the first British Prime Minister for nearly seven years to meet Xi Jinping in person, a fact that took me re-examining to believe.
Britain is not entirely responsible for its isolation. America’s inward turn was unstoppable from the outside. Once that happened, London was being pressured by Washington to distance itself from China, which its own behavior did not help. In addition, 2014 required a review of the UK’s openness. His dark side included an attitude toward Russian capital that was somehow at once the height of cynicism and naivety.
But Brexit was a choice. (A hard Brexit was certainly an option.) So was the sheer degree of coolness toward China under the last few Conservative premiers, who took the American line without the US GDP that made it viable. . When the UK-US trade agreement failed to materialize—as was the case with the wonders of trade, Washington’s caretakers and single-celled organisms in other galaxies—Britain was forced closer to one or both of Europe and China. It should have happened. By some combination of amor propre and internal Tory politics, it didn’t happen.
There is so much wrong with the new Labor government. It struggles to understand how economic development occurs except through some “partnership” between the state and business. (A research trip to the US, or even just Florida, could be educational.) Its energy policy has its failure written all over it. But in mitigation the following can be said. Labour’s geopolitical legacy, and therefore its economic legacy in a trade-dependent country, was a historical disgrace that may take a decade to heal.
What would it look like exactly? Which of the triangle points that Britain faced simultaneously—Brussels, Washington, Beijing—could it survive?
China will be tough, as the XI’s style with the starmer suggested this week. Trump is by far the most important figure of this century because his disagreement with the trade consensus, so shocking at the time, has become widespread. The EU has its own economic spat with Xi, and unlike most of Europe, Britain is involved in security projects, such as nuclear submarine deals with Australia and the US, that clearly have China in mind. . Starmer can court XI – not imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles would help – but he won’t and probably won’t relive the “golden” moment of a decade ago.
America, then? Boris Johnson couldn’t charm a trade deal with Trump. Four prime ministers got nowhere with the Democrats, under whom America is no less than a fortress. Even if a Labor government led by the anti-temperament of the US president-elect could secure tariff exemptions, what nation would build its future on that kind of personal whim? Finally, the UK trades much less with the US than with the EU, which accounts for 42% of UK exports. After Brexit.
The issue is even deeper. If it wasn’t simple before, recent years have brought home the point that Britain is an indispensably European country, in its per capita income, in its sovereign borrowing power (in 2022 Liz Truss’s “Money “Compare the markets’ reaction to the budget with their indifference to Trump), to the depletion of natural resources and, above all, to its expectations of the state. Britain should emulate America rather than “socialist” Europe, a Trump aide has said. Those of us who take a similar view have to reckon with the fact that Labor won a huge majority when the tax burden was already huge. The idea of an “Anglo-Saxon” approach, which jibes more with America than with Britain and Europe, misreads all three places.
Finally, all structural forces point to some UK-EU interconnection., Perhaps in the 2030s, perhaps in the form of a customs union. The opportunity cost, which is the power to strike trade deals elsewhere, is not what it was. History is watching it. In retrospect, the most important fact about the referendum was its timing. It was a big bet on additional European trade in the last year, in fact almost in the last quarter, before the world took a protectionist turn with Trump’s first election. From there, relations with China were also going to get weird. Over the decades, Britain played its part in as good a hand as any nation in the world. The most comforting thing it can tell itself is that two cards were stolen from the willful discarder.
janan.ganesh@ft.com
