Engaging in meetings and over dinner in London recently with British figures observing or involved in the Brexit process brought home that, while Australians follow the Brexit drama, we know little of its detail. We enjoy the sport, but try explaining the Irish Backstop in your local pub.
Those Australians who articulate firm views about Brexit tend to be on the conservative/monarchist side of our political spectrum and side with the Leavers.
The advent this week of Boris Johnson as British prime minister has given Australia’s brexiteers a fillip. Two federal senators have even started “a Parliamentary Friends of Boris and Brexit”.
Given the European Union is unlikely to move from its conditions for an agreed Brexit, and despite the vicissitudes of British parliamentary procedures, a no-deal Brexit is looking more likely. And Brexit – particularly a no-deal Brexit – will not be in Australia’s interest.
This is because a weaker British economy is not in anyone’s interest – except possibly Russia’s.
Expert estimates of costs of Brexit to the British economy since the 2016 referendum range from £550 million to £800 million a week.
According to the IMF , a no-deal Brexit could cause British gross domestic product to decline by 3.5 per cent to the end of 2021 as compared with a no Brexit estimate. Smoother Brexit options would cost Britain about half as much.
And this week the IMF said that along with United States’ trade policy , a no-deal Brexit could throw the global economy off course.
Moreover, the arguments about the incremental benefits to Australia from a post Brexit trade/investment agreement with the UK are not yet clear. For example, relevant officials from both countries agree that the complexity and fluidity of trade in the European Union precludes an estimate of whether Australia would have done better under a free trade agreement with a union that included Britain or, as currently envisaged, with separate agreements with the EU and Britain.
Britain’s departure from the EU would also have adverse implications for Western security.
First, a breakup of the United Kingdom can’t be good for the West. A no-deal Brexit would prejudice the UK/Irish Good Friday agreement and could revive the Northern Ireland troubles. Even an agreed Brexit could probably lead to another push by the Scots for independence. Bewilderingly, a recent You Gov poll indicated that 63 per cent of the Tories’ English membership would prefer that Scotland leave the Union than that Britain remain in the EU .
Second, Brexit proponents argue that Atlantic security falls to NATO – not the EU – and that Britain will be as active as ever in NATO. But security is not that neat. The EU’s founders intended it to prevent wars in Europe The fact that EU foreign and defence ministers and officials meet all the time has security significance.
And it was not because he wanted a change from the Washington weather that, before the referendum, President Obama spent four days in Britain arguing the case against Brexit as prejudicial to Western security interests.
Just last week the British would have been reminded of the European aspects of their security when seeking European involvement in a maritime alliance to protect European shipping interests in the Strait of Hormuz.
In London I heard suggestions being made by senior Brexit advocates that, having left the EU, Britain would play a wider global role benefitting Australia – for example by working with us to counter Chinese aggression. This is drawing a long bow. Deployment of the occasional British vessel in the South China sea or the opening of small missions in the Pacific will be marginally positive rather than significant factors in helping balance Chinese power.
That said, Britain remains an effective, albeit reduced, military power with the finest foreign policy/security apparatus in Europe. Particularly given increased strategic congruence between Russia and China, Western nations with similar security outlooks need to work closely together. A strong Europe is integral to Western security. Europe without Britain is diminished.
In the face of Trump’s poor treatment of his Transatlantic allies, Britain has shown commonsense in differing from Washington on issues such as Iran, Israel/Palestine and climate change. Thus far it has not accepted US arguments on banning Huawei from a 5G network. However, given Britain’s concern that with its retreat from Europe it needs the US all the more, British resolve to hold firm against American pressure cannot be taken for granted on a number of fronts.
These thoughts give rise to consideration of the place of the Anglosphere in Australian policy, referred to this week by Tony Walker in the Herald.
Even before the Brexit debate, Canberra occasionally showed signs of regarding the Five Eyes intelligence sharing arrangement (USA, UK, Australia, NZ and Canada) within the Anglosphere as being as important as the wider structure of our foreign relationships which that arrangement is meant to serve.
It would be a pity if in the wake of personal and policy bonding between Johnson and Trump, Australia were to put exaggerated political energy into the Anglosphere at the cost of our dealings with the region. The Asia-Pacifc is facing issues arising from Chinese expansionism and American disregard for the rules-based system which it created. These developments raise challeges of a dimension not seen since the Second World War. That the British brexiteers wish to revert to days of yore should not encourage us to act similarly.
John McCarthy AO FAIIA is Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at Melbourne University, a senior adviser to Asialink, and a former ambassador and high commissioner to the United States and numerous Asian countries.
Comments
2 responses to “JOHN MCCARTHY. Enter, Boris.”
I agreed with much of what John McCarthy wrote about Johnson and Brexit but not his statement that Scotland becoming an independent nation “can’t be good for the West”. That shows woeful ignorance of the actual situation. In the 2014 independence referendum, the Scots were sold a story from Westminster and the ‘No’ campaign that to stay in the EU they would have to vote against independence. By a small margin the Scots voted ‘no’. In the 2016 EU referendum, 62% of Scots voted to remain in the EU while England and Wales voted to come out and that means Scotland and Northern Ireland will be dragged out because, as Fintan O’Toole writes in his ‘Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain’, “Brexit is essentially an English phenomenon”. It has been about the rise of a rather unpleasant English nationalism with racist and xenophobic undertones. Johnson and his cabinet, the most right wing possibly ever in the UK’s history exemplify that, as jingoism replaces rational thought. Many EU leaders have now said that they would welcome Scotland as a member because, through this whole farce of a debate since 2016, the Scottish Government led by First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, as been pro-European, pro-migrant and consistent. No, the Union is well beyond its sell-by date. As the SNP leader in Westminster said on Johnson’s first day in his post, he’ll be the last PM of the United Kingdom, and that is a very good thing for the West, Europe and the rest of the world.
Are we looking at the formation of two major coalitions/blocks, the Anglo-saxon block of the US and UK versus a German-French block? Is Brexit going to return Europe to the ages-long animosity and conflicts between Britain and the continental powers, the endless wars in which millions died in battles?