19 September 2019

Financial Times: EU foresees a US-UK axis after Brexit

The larger question for European governments is whether a post-Brexit UK will detach itself from Europe in matters of trade, business regulation and security in order to align itself more closely with its traditional US ally, warns the FT's Europe Editor Tony Barber.

[...]In the judgment of European leaders, Donald Trump’s support for pro-Brexit hardliners, such as prime minister Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, the rightwing populist politician, illustrates how the US president aims to exploit Brexit as a tool for undermining the EU.

Now EU leaders are asking if the British will become increasingly dependent on Washington in an era when the US is focused less on upholding a multilateral world order than on corralling allies against its main rivals, China and Russia.

Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister who is the European Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator, touched on this point in a debate on Wednesday in the EU assembly.

“The European Parliament will never accept that the UK can have all the advantages of free trade, and not align with our ecological, health and social standards . . . We will never accept ‘Singapore by the North Sea’,” Mr Verhofstadt said.

However, it has become clear since Mr Johnson took over the premiership in July that the right to diverge from EU standards is central to his government’s vision of the post-Brexit future.

Such a stance might unavoidably lead, in the course of time, to closer arrangements with Washington, set out perhaps in the future US-UK trade and investment partnership that Brexiters in London hope for.

There is, however, a potentially serious obstacle to such a deal. Congress would be unlikely to give its approval if Brexit were to destabilise the Good Friday peace settlement on the island of Ireland.

In this risk lies one reason why the Johnson government and other pro-American Brexiters would be well-advised to think twice before going for a no-deal Brexit. [...]

Full article on Financial Times (subscription required)

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