British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has delivered the most substantial alteration of European politics in decades, as a lifetime of jousting with defenders of the European Union culminated on Friday in an exit from the political bloc.
“Brexit is actually the single biggest event in British history since the end of World War II,” Nile Gardiner, a former Margaret Thatcher aide and expert on U.S.-U.K. relations at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a huge game changer, not only for the U.K. but also for Europe as well. And I think that most Britons are embracing a future outside the EU.”
Johnson’s team is touting the departure from the EU as a chance to restore Britain as a dynamic ally and world power. That’s a tantalizing prospect for conservatives in Washington, who share a bipartisan worry about China’s international ambitions and who long for Western help in managing smaller-scale crises around the world.
“There’s the bit of global Britain which is about us being a force for good in the world,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Thursday. “Whether it’s from championing freedom of religion, … there’s just a whole range of things where we’ll constantly find that our values and our strategic interest draw us closer and closer together. And that’s exciting.”
Those comments stoke the hope that Brexit will make “Albion,” a poetic and older name for Britain, great again. But the reality could be more drab. A campaign to mark withdrawal from the EU by ringing Big Ben foundered, as the iconic clock is under renovation. It would have cost roughly $650,000 to make the bell available by Friday. And though the United Kingdom leaves the EU at 11 p.m. local time, the Brits will remain subject to EU regulations for at least the next 11 months, as trade negotiators try to rewrite the rules of the U.K-EU economic relationship.
“They will be focused on the detritus of leaving the EU, and getting the British economy roaring again is going to take a very long time,” another American conservative analyst, who is more pessimistic about the implications of Brexit, told the Washington Examiner. “So I don’t expect we’re going to see it translated into a dramatic resurgence of the U.S.-British special relationship and partnership.”
Johnson and other Brexiteers have maintained that a withdrawal from the EU “in no sense means that we are leaving Europe.” That might prove all too true for Washington’s liking in several policy areas. The withdrawal comes just days after Johnson announced that he would allow Huawei and other Chinese telecommunications companies to contribute to Britain’s 5G wireless technology networks despite U.S. warnings that those companies pose an espionage threat.
“The Huawei decision by Boris Johnson is the first big strategic error of his premiership,” Gardiner said. “At the same time, I think the U.K. government is acutely aware of the threat that China poses as an adversary of the free world.”
Johnson has so far remained in lockstep with France and Germany in defense of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a pact that President Trump wants Western allies to scrap despite their belief that the deal defused a regional nuclear crisis.
Some don’t expect to see Britain “significantly picking up new international burdens with the United States to address the most crucial national security challenges that we face in common,” the Brexit pessimist said.
Gardiner predicted that, gradually, British leaders will take advantage of newfound freedom across a host of issues.
“In the Brexit era, Britain will be less and less aligned with the EU straitjacket,” he said. “And so in some areas, the U.K. will break away from EU positions because it’s not subject to the EU’s common foreign and security policy.”
