COMMENTARY: Brexit and a new ‘special relationship’
By Dickson Igwe, Contributor
Brexiters are clearly upbeat at this dawn of a new decade. Remainers/Europhoiles, like this Old Boy, are disappointed.
There is a feeling in the air that the UK has changed for good — and not necessarily for the better. It is waiting to see whether the UK will break up with Scotland and Northern Ireland remaining in Europe, as Remain countries of the UK. Wales today is clearly in favour of remaining in Europe.
Brexit remains a mainly English Affair. And will a new special — USA/UK Northern Atlantic — a relationship based on free trade overcome the dark clouds hovering over a Hard Brexit, as Johnson intends, with his 80 plus majority in the UK Parliament?
Time will tell! Now it is clear Boris Johnson is betting big on a new special relationship with the US as overcoming any loss in market power stemming from the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. That is the simple logic of a free trade agreement with the USA.
But will it work in replacing the losses in trade and markets of the UK leaving Europe? That is the biggest equation facing the UK Prime Minister in his readiness to make a hard break with Europe at the ending of January 2020.
The three key premises
There are three key premises on the belief that a US/UK alliance can be recreated into the type of military and economic alliance that formed the Post World War Two World Order. The first is that a mercantilist order based on open seas and free trade with hub freeports around the world can be initiated.
The second is that the Donald Trump and Boris Johnson friendship based on a populist and anti-globalist political culture is sustainable. The third is that the key global trading blocs: the European Union, China, and a non aligned Russia, India, and Third World will sway towards a new and assertive US and UK North Atlantic Trading Alliance, All of the preceding three ideas can be binned at inception.
First, the present global trading order based on large blocs trading with each other cannot be done away with, even with US economic power. In fact, the EU and China increasingly view the USA as an adversary in terms of trade.
Second: there is no guarantee Donald Trump is re-elected in November 2020 in spite of numbers showing that is much more likely, especially after the ‘impeachment saga’.
Third: Trump’s isolationist and adversarial global trade stance has created new synergies that make the global trading blocs equally isolationist and inward-looking.
The new trade wars will be between super regions, not individual countries. Still, it will be interesting to observe how the Trump – Johnson Axis evolves in terms of enabling and ensuring a successful Brexit.
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Why does this guy get a page each week. He writes absolute nonsense that is far more fiction than fact
It’s a free world we are living in. Just refute the points made by Igwe and contribute meaningfully to the discourse.
He just spouts 1970’s student union politics and bare naked racism (although no obvious racism in this article). The opening premise of his articles is often false, and everything he suggeststhereafter fails for that reason.
There is no prospect that Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland would be allowed to join the EU as independent countries – their respective economies would categorically rule them out – even Greece and Spain run their economies better.
It is not really worth reading beyond the ludicrous statement that “It is waiting to see whether the UK will break up with Scotland and Northern Ireland remaining in Europe, as Remain countries …”. I did read in but it was a waste of my time.
Utter rubbish again.
I agree entirely. In fact the ‘three key premises” are all nonsense – nobody but that Old Boy would seriously suggest any of them. His modus operandi is to suggest something stupid and then say why it is stupid.
Time for that Old Boy to retire.
Whether it was England or Great Britain or the UK, it is 6 of one and half a dozen of the same. The English saw themselves as better than others; social stratification was always something that it embraced. Xenophobia , racism and discrimination against Black and Brown and even other Anglosaxons was the driving force for a simple majority voting to leave the EU. The English in particular didn’t want people from poorer European countries emigrating to the UK. They want to leave the EU yet they want the benefits, wanting the cake and eating it too.
Scotland and Northern Ireland splitting from the UK and remaining with the EU does not mean a rat’s ass to England. Similarly, England does not give a rat’s ass about the OTs. Per Queen Marie Antoinette, let them eat cake; what value are they to the crown; they no longer have any strategic value. In a heart beat, the UK will cut them loose, casting them adrift. They are riding in the little red wagon, not pulling it.
The sine qua non of UK, especially England, wanting to leave the EU is to get rid of so called low lives that it thumbs its noses at. England thinks that Britannia still rules the waves or the sun still never sets over the empire. Well, that ship has long sailed. The days of raping the colonies of their resources are over but England still living on yesteryear. It made its bed hard so let it lie in it hard; let it reaps what it sowed. Boris and Donald are two peas in a pod so let them ride together.
Good points, Disinterested. But I think the UK will thrive without the protectionist EU. Unfortunately, by rejecting the unskilled Eastern European, Brexiters have also rejected the relatively skilled Western European.
UK companies will now be able to legally hire large numbers of cheaper, highly skilled, English-speaking, replacement workers from places like Southeast Asia, India, Africa and the Caribbean.
The skilled white British would have options to move to places like Australia, but the unskilled ones will have to stay and become a growing part of the marginalized working class.
To Please, HRMPH and Howdy:
So….you dont have anything to contribute. Wow. Really? That’s was your big insight! ?
This conversation is for grown people. But nice try.
If UK now allows Northern Ireland to join the EU, then all the drama about the NI border with Ireland makes no sense.
Scotland had an independence referendum in 2014 and that result is supposed to stand for at least one generation (30 years).
Wales will never breakup with England. You are reading propaganda.
Give it a rest, old boy. A full UK Brexit is a “done deal”. And if the EU continue to demand that post-brexit UK follow EU rules, a hard brexit is also a certainty.
My goodness, why do some people just say things on top of their heads?
Is not everyone who eats what others eat…as the saying goes “ONE MAN’S MEAT IS ANOTHER MAN’S POISON ” so you’d better not bring your negative from THE MOTHERLAND.
For what does itcontribute to or nourish?
Colonialism is Dead; Long Live Colonialism!
Yes, the British Still Rob the World Big-time.
I once had an interesting conversation with a teller in a Bank in Vancouver, Canada. I had visited the bank to change cash. When the lady gave me Canadian dollars, I was surprised to see the image of Wangu wa Ngeretha (i.e. the British Queen) imprinted on the notes. When I asked her why the image was bedecked on the cash, she told me casually that Wangu’s the Canadian Head of state. I later learned that she’s also the head of state of 15 other countries including the Australian subcontinent, New Zealand, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea etc (i.e. the so-called self-governing Dominions under the British Crown).
Yes, it’s true fellow native; late Bob Marley’s country (i.e. Jamaica) is a ‘constitutional monarchy’ under the Wangu of Britain …….who has appointed a Governor General!
As if this is not enough, the British, through Wangu, exercise some form of control over 53 commonwealth countries as well as executive authority in British Overseas Territories that are basically used either as military bases or as havens for billions stolen from the holoi polloi in many countries as Geoff Miller proved in the ‘Panama Papers’ . The Brits, to a large extent, also control the economy of the 580,000 square-kilometer dominion called Kenya.
And as the report (i.e. ‘The New Colonialism: Britain’s scramble for Africa’s energy and mineral resources’) by the War on Want organisation demonstrated, 101 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange –most of them British– with mining operations in 37 African countries collectively take out over $1 trillion worth of Africa’s most valuable resources…..that is Ksh100,000,000,000,000!!!
With such loot, the British are comfortable parting ways with their European brothers and sisters.