During the 2017 United Kingdom general election, Prime Minister Theresa May ran on the slogan that she would provide ‘strong and stable leadership’. What followed was a weak electoral performance and two years of chaos as her government failed to pass a Brexit deal. Looking back at her premiership, one could hardly pick a more ironic pitch for what was to come.
Leaders choose political slogans that try to reflect the visions and dreams they pursue. As May’s experience suggests, slogans do not always go to plan. However, these cliches can be useful prisms through which we understand political developments.
In the wake of both Brexit and the return of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States of America, Britain finds itself in a precarious place. Brexit means that trade between the EU and the UK is subject to increased paperwork. Trump is proposing raising a 10-20% tariff on all imports. Collectively, this would mean that more than 60% of Britain’s trade will have significant trade barriers that hurt its economy.
If one wants to understand how Britain reached this point of potential danger, there are two closely related slogans that should be put back under the spotlight. The first is the Brexit campaign promise to ‘take back control’; The second is Boris Johnson’s policy of a ‘Global Britain’ which would pursue free trade deals with quickly developing partners across the world.
The Origins of ‘Take Back Control’ and ‘Global Britain’
During the 2016 referendum, brexiteers argued that the UK’s sovereignty—its ability to set and follow its own laws and regulations—was being undermined by EU membership. The UK’s place in the single market meant it was subject to laws and regulations dictated by non-British politicians in Brussels. These rules had huge implications for its trade policy. The single market limited the UK’s ability to make trade deals with third parties around the globe as it had to have the same trade relations with other countries as its European partners. In the brexiteers’ minds, this hampered the UK’s economic growth. The EU’s regulations, even beyond the UK, are widely held to be restrictive and to stifle enterprise. Some brexiteers argued that EU ‘overregulation’ led to a cost of 6% in GDP. Importantly, they argued that EU membership also cost 3% of GDP because it meant that the UK could not trade freely across the Atlantic with the US.
Brexit, branded as ‘taking back control’, would facilitate the emergence of a ‘Global Britain’ that prioritized free trade deals with faster growing economies like the USA, India, and China. This ‘Global Britain’ cliche, with its dreams of an unshackled Britain that could trade with whoever it wants, under whatever regulations it wants, was a direct corollary of the ‘take back control’ cliche. The former notion relied on the freedom and independence afforded by the latter.
US-UK Free Trade Arrangement: the Stumbling Climax of the Two Slogans
After the success of the Brexit campaign in the referendum, a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States was the big prize to be won for those dreaming of a ‘Global Britain’. However, for a number of reasons, the deal is yet to materialize. When Britain first left the EU in 2020, the main problems were due to a divergence in food standards between the UK and the US. The Trump administration would not be able to defend a trade agreement that did not open new markets to the US agricultural industry. This meant that a condition of any FTA would be the UK allowing imports of US-standard products like chlorinated chicken and hormone treated beef, essentially lowering food standards in the UK to levels the British would not accept. Trump and his team tried hard to get the UK to accept these demands, however the former trade and environment ministers Liz Truss and George Eustice insisted that the UK would not consider lowering its food standards to allow the deal to happen.
This reveals a contradiction between Brexit’s ‘take back control’ and ‘Global Britain’ concepts. ‘Take back control’ demands that Britain is granted freedom to regulate as it pleases and trade with whomever it wants across the world. However, due to the reciprocal nature of trade, ‘Global Britain’ demands that the UK accept the standards of their new, less regulated partners. So long as Britain intends to be ‘global’, it must accept the foreign influence on British regulations which attracted the ire of brexiteers.
These regulatory disputes were not the only roadblock for the FTA between the UK and US. After Joe Biden won the 2020 election, any talk of the US-UK FTA virtually disappeared with his administration’s opposition to negotiating or signing new trade agreements on protectionist principles. This left the UK in somewhat of a no-man’s land. Brexit allowed the UK to take the first step of shifting its center-of-gravity away from Europe, but it never made the second and complementary step of being embraced by fast-growing global economies. Rather than unleash British industry from cumbersome regulations, Brexit has simply increased the scope of bureaucratic burdens over UK businesses—so much for ‘Global Britain’ and its relationships with fast growing economies across the world.
Is the Stalemate on the US-UK FTA About to End?
The reelection of Trump threatens to shake up the status-quo of Britain’s trade policy. Firstly, Trump—the self-proclaimed ‘Tariff Man’— insists on placing a 10-20% tariff on all imports. This increases the urgency for Britain to agree a trade deal with the US so that it can shield UK businesses from the effects of these tariffs. Additionally, Trump himself may be more willing to sign a deal with the UK than his predecessor was. It has been floated that Trump would go soft on the UK because of his historic ties to the UK and his affinity for the Brexit project and its anti-institutionalism. These factors have led to a renewed impetus for a FTA within the UK, with the new Tory party leader Kemi Badenoch pressuring Prime Minister Keir Starmer to use Trump’s return as an opportunity to finalize a deal.
However, there is a new obstacle to the US-UK FTA. This is Starmer’s project of ‘resetting’ relations with the EU. Starmer has repeated again and again that he would like to see more cooperation with the EU on defense and trade. Any advantage that Brexit might have given the UK in achieving an FTA would be wiped away if the coming Trump administration saw the UK make substantive movements back towards the EU’s direction. Trump’s senior economic advisor Stephen Moore indicated that the UK has an ultimatum before it. It can either align itself with the US or the EU, but it cannot do both. Therefore, if the FTA is to happen, Starmer may have to sacrifice his attempt to build bridges with the EU.
There is a case that Starmer should consider this. Starmer has set many red lines on the UK-EU relationship, saying that the UK will not rejoin either the EU or the single market. He has done this in order to avoid reigniting the debates of the late 2010’s which paralyzed British politics. However, a consequence of his political caution is that his ‘reset’ with the EU may not bear much fruit for the country. The main concrete possibilities that have been discussed are a veterinary agreement that would reduce trade barriers between the UK and the EU on animal products and a deal to make it easier for British musicians to tour the EU. While these may be areas where Britain’s trade relationship with the EU can be streamlined and improved, they would hardly count as seismic shifts that will make up for the pain caused by increased US tariffs on UK exports. Therefore, if as Starmer argues Britain must stay out of the main EU institutions, it may as well be protected from US tariffs.
Why Would the UK Resist a US-UK FTA?
However, this argument to double down on the ‘Global Britain’ dream by committing to a FTA does not address intractable differences between the US and the UK. America has entered a protectionist and isolationist era. Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ and ‘America First’ slogans are inherently nostalgic and self-serving, making them clear parallels to the post-Brexit ‘take back control’ rhetoric. However, close these philosophies may be, they are not a stable basis for a closer transatlantic relationship. After all, if you put two actors similarly committed to playing by their own rules together, you get stubborn disagreement, not a flourishing friendship.
The failure to reach a trade deal is symptomatic of this unproductive US-UK dynamic. It is impossible to see Trump relinquishing ‘America First’ by budging on the US demand that the UK import chlorinated chicken and hormone treated beef. Trump’s instinct will always be to prioritize American interests. In renewed negotiations over an FTA, he would likely accuse the UK’s National Health Service of ripping off America on drug pricing, as he has done when previously discussing non-American purchases of US healthcare products. Last time Trump negotiated with the UK, he wanted ‘full market access’ for US medicinal products, likely to allow US drug companies to charge the NHS more.
Without doubt this would be another red line for the UK government – it would be political suicide for Starmer to burden the NHS, a revered national institution, in the name of American interests. America strong-arming the UK into importing chlorinated chicken or more expensive drugs would constitute the death knell of British sovereignty. It is ironic that ‘take back control’ has led to a situation where the UK must give up so much agency in order to achieve its ‘Global Britain’ aspiration of a trade deal. If the UK wants to keep its way of life with respect to agriculture and healthcare, it cannot rely on Trump for favorable terms simply because it abandons Starmer’s project of resetting relations with the EU. Trump does not just want the UK to give up the EU reset, he wants it to give up a European way of life which is committed to robust regulation and cheaper healthcare.
For these reasons and more, alignment with the EU makes more sense in the long run than dependence on the US. The EU is the UK’s closest neighbor and by far its biggest trade partner. It is much easier for the UK and EU to agree to trade standards because they have already accepted the same standards for decades. In fact, currently thousands of EU laws are still on the UK books. When it comes to the fundamentals of geography and custom, the EU is so aligned with the UK that resetting relationships is more conducive to a sensible long-term strategy.
What’s Next?
All of this considered, it seems that the UK is in a difficult situation. Tariffs are potentially rising in the US and there is no immediate path to a significantly improved trade relation with the EU. It seems that the UK is learning a lesson about its ‘take back control’ and ‘Global Britain’ slogans. Proponents of Brexit thought that leaving the EU would restore British sovereignty and let the country trade with who it wants and how it wants. However, the country is finding out that whichever country you trade with, you must also align and cooperate with their rules of conduct. The UK cannot leave the EU for the US and then expect to continue the practices of its former partner.
For ‘Global Britain’ to be achieved, British sovereignty must be limited in ways that undermine the drive to ‘take back control’. These two slogans which, on face of it, seem like natural bedfellows, actually are in tension with each other and have left Britain reacting to rather than controlling global events. It is time that Britain started steering its course back to its reality, back to Europe.
Featured Image: Reuters
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