Could Britain's need for new trading partners and investment pull it further away from the European fold?
without a deal. Markets and sterling are plummeting. The country has left the’s foreign-policy structures without any framework for future relations. Its government falls. A new prime minister scans the world for friends and picks up the phone to the White House, Zhongnanhai in Beijing or even Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.
Such an outcome is very unlikely: for a start, Theresa May could even now just squeeze her deal through. Yet European leaders and officials are spooked as they contemplate a no-deal Brexit, or even a hard one as Mrs May intends. This shapes their posture and reveals something of their wider state of mind. They reckon that an acrimonious divorce could make Britain desperate for trade deals with giant partners like America, China and others.
No-one expects an overnight transformation. The concern is more that Britain’s need for new trading partners and inward investment, and its absence from commonforums, will over time pull it away from the European fold. Among the more lurid predictions are those by Marc Roche,’s correspondent in London, who imagines Britain ending up as a “tax haven at Europe’s gates” and “China’s Trojan horse in Europe”.
The continentals should not worry so much. Britain has always been a mercantile, semi-detached sort of European foreign-policy power. Brexit could accentuate the country’s relative openness to foreign cash but is not its cause. Beijing first declared a new Anglo-Chinese “golden age” in 2015 and seems to have since lost interest in the country as a backdoor to Europe.
Second, Europe’s anxieties are symptomatic of the times. After years of complacency, it is slowly taking its own geopolitical situation more seriously. There is talk, though little action, about seeking “strategic autonomy” from America. Theis increasing efforts to curb Russian-backed political interference and has introduced a screening mechanism for Chinese investments. At their summit on March 26th Mr Macron and Mrs Merkel chided Xi Jinping for trying to exploit Europe’s divisions.
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