A Union Without Faith or Law
Part 1: The post Brexit Game of Thrones
Far from seeing Brexit as an opportunity to reassert national sovereignty, the government’s pandemic response has strengthened calls for the dissolution of the union. In the first of two essays, David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith consider the state of the United Kingdom.
Whoever yet a Union saw Of Kingdoms without Faith or Law? (Jonathan Swift 1707)
The concept of the national interest is straightforward. In democratic societies like the United Kingdom, government exists to represent the interests of those who elected it to power, reflecting and promoting the values, traditions and aspirations of the wider population. The nation’s foreign policy should therefore serve these interests by engaging with the world in a manner that seeks to safeguard and maximise the well-being of its people.
After Brexit, government policy making was supposed to focus on securing the national interest. ‘Taking back control’ was the guiding principle of those who supported leaving the European Union (EU). The expectation was that the United Kingdom government would resume control of its territorial borders, reassert parliamentary sovereignty and return Britain to its historic role as an independent sovereign state with a commitment to a rule-governed, international trading order.
At first, the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson seemed to be moving in this direction. It sought to re-establish the UK’s economic and political links with the world beyond western Europe. It forged ‘bespoke’ free trade agreements with Australia, New Zealand and Japan and has applied for membership of the Transpacific Partnership (CPTPP).
As a naval power, Britain has also shown a willingness to promote maritime freedom across the Indo-Pacific. The signing of the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States) security pact in September 2021, evinced a welcome desire to form new and strategically relevant global alliances. The UK has also adopted, with some equivocation, a more critical stance toward China’s geopolitical ambitions.
From the perspective of ‘taking back control’ these are constructive achievements. Yet since Boris Johnson’s resounding election victory in December 2019, the much-anticipated global Britain project of a state at ease with itself and with the world remains, at best, a work in progress. More disconcertingly, there are also signs that the government is diverging from its vision of reasserting national independence and accepting instead the self-harming policies promoted by a still anti-Brexit establishment.
Main photo by Lāsma Artmane on Unsplash.
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