Post Brexit Power: A Mirage?

As yet it is too early to be sure. But there are already signs that the UK is no longer quite the international force it was before June 2016. Then the special relationship with the US was not just an emotional connection but a practical tool of international power politics. On matters of international relations the UK  was the EU’s foremost power. The authority came not from military strength, but because the UK was the US’s man in Europe and Europe’s key to the doors of the US.

That has all changed, as was demonstrated  when Boris, apparently following May’s half baked instructions rather than his own carefully prepared agenda, cancelled his trip to Moscow. Instead he put forward a silly sanctions plan which the EU rejected, humiliating not just Boris, but the UK’s prestige. Tillerson watched the influence of his closest ally go down the EU plughole and reported to Trump that the special relationship, whilst useful in the intelligence arena, appeared to have lost its practical political value.

Meanwhile America and Russia are now talking, albeit in rather acerbic tones, while the UK is cut out of the loop by its own flat footed diplomacy.  Moreover a buddying up is going on between the Trump administration and China over a potential trade deal and how to finally resolve  the North Korean threat. Osborne’s vision of the UK being China’s best friend in the West has become somewhat clouded by a much bigger attraction to the Chinese across the Atlantic.

In summary America, Europe, China and Russia are all talking to each other over various major international issues but the new global Britain, which the vicar’s daughter promised, is nowhere to be seen. It get’s worse. Her agenda for the Brexit negotiations is about to be rejected unanimously by the EU council. They will demand she pays the exit bill first. That is far from the posture, to use her own phrase, of her negotiating stance.

So what next? Unfortunately that is no longer up to us. We shall have to wait and see what is on offer.