Now that Prime Minister Boris Johnson will get Brexit done, soon he will be able to “strike a massive free trade deal” with the United States — or so President Trump tweeted in the small hours of Friday morning as Britain woke up to a crushing Conservative parliamentary majority.
It would be tempting to think this is the end of the road after three years of the British left attempting to overturn the 2016 referendum result that ultimately ended in failure. They also failed to get the British public to bow to unfounded claims that Trump was about to snap up the country’s National Health Service, our all-you-can-eat single-payer healthcare system.
While there is much to be admired in the American right’s eternal optimism, I fear the commander in chief may be disappointed for a number of reasons. Here is what you won’t hear from senior figures of the Conservative Party.
First, Brexit is far from over. The United Kingdom will now be stuck inside the so-called transition period.
Negotiated by the previous government under the guise of providing businesses on both sides of the English Channel time to adapt to Britain’s departure from the European Union, it involves all the conditions of membership, without actually being a member.
Put another way, this is taxation without representation.
The U.K. would be subject to all EU laws, both those that exist now and those that are brought in during that period, continue to pay in full, but would no longer have a vote or veto or a single breathing representative. We will also have to continue to apply EU trade policy. Any trade agreements signed by the U.K. will not be able to enter into force until this period of vassalage ends, and it would be hard negotiating anything when the terms and conditions change hourly as dictated by Brussels. The remaining 27 EU countries are already concocting a plot to keep Britain locked into the regulatory clutches of Brussels beyond the end of next year. Tomes of burdensome EU directives would still apply. We would be an independent trading nation in name only.
EU figureheads have been quite open about the fact that the U.K. should remain as closely shackled to the bloc as possible.
The leaders of France and Germany worry that Johnson could otherwise turn the U.K. into “Singapore-on-Thames.” On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would fight to stop my country from becoming “an unfair competitor” to the remaining EU 27 nations.
Paris and Berlin do not want an uber-competitive economic superpower on the doorstep. That way their governments have no need to worry about weaning their voters and their industries off their high-tax, high-spend socialist policies.
That is why the EU’s top two officials, both of them unelected, want any future U.K.-EU regulatory relationship to be based on the idea of a strict “level playing field.” It sounds rather innocuous but is rendered to ensure the U.K. remains in the shadows of the EU’s own ailing economic model for futurity.
Trade talks may be about to start in earnest. But it is clear that the EU expects a post-Brexit Britain to continue to mirror EU laws on everything from labor regulations to food safety to environmental law. American exporters would still laughably face reams of Brussels red-tape.
Eurocrats don’t just want, but need, to put a ball and chain on U.K. free trade and bring in rampant protectionism through the back door (with a heavy French accent) if they are to defend their outmoded political project.
They fret about, among other things, U.S. chlorinated chicken flooding into the European market, undercutting the EU’s much-vaunted food standards rules.
It is why Brussels was so keen for Britain to surrender the economic sovereignty of Northern Ireland, which under Johnson’s exit deal will remain behind in the EU. Checks will be imposed on goods coming from the British mainland. This is something Johnson repeatedly promised the Tories’ former coalition partners, the Democratic Unionist party, that he would never do.
Our divorce deal from the EU and subsequent trade talks will, ultimately, still be policed by the European Court of Justice, the EU’s own courts, who would then remain the ultimate arbiter in any future U.K.-EU dispute.
Can you imagine the Founding Fathers declaring independence, but agreeing to remain subject to the whims of British judges? And I haven’t even mentioned the expectation of foreign policy subjugation that is yet another EU red line for future trade with the EU. It’s rather chilling stuff. We would be going from being a member state to a satellite state.
This is precisely why my party, the Brexit Party, argued so vociferously for a no-deal exit as the only true Brexit.
What remains is a fake news fudge that could scupper Brexiteers’ dreams of closer ties with its oldest, most important ally. Johnson’s slogan “Get Brexit Done” seems to have persuaded a disillusioned and disenfranchised electorate on the doorstep. But will he use his thumping parliamentary majority to sideline the arch-Eurosceptics or those members of parliament who originally backed remaining in the EU?
If Johnson bows to a “softer” exit, many across the Atlantic will be left scratching their heads as to why. Johnson may say he has delivered the British public’s electoral dreams in time for Christmas, but those who have been watching this drama unfold from the inside know that only a clean break from the EU will do. The question remains whether Johnson wants to be remembered as Saint Nick, or the Grinch that stole Brexit.
Whatever happens over the next year, the much-anticipated U.S.-U.K. free trade deal looks to be a million miles away.
With Brexit Party MEPs about to quit the European Parliament as the U.K. leaves the EU, the last true Brexiteer standing will be in the White House. Let’s hope he keeps up the pressure on the British prime minister, so his government delivers the true Brexit that 17.4 million Brits voted for.
Alexandra Phillips is a Brexit Party Member of the European Parliament for south-east England. She previously served as chief press secretary to Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit Party.
