Date: Friday, 08 May 2020
THE ECONOMIST, MAY 7, 2020
THE RISE OF ISOLATIONISM IN THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY - BRITAIN IS STARTING TO LOOK LIKE A VERY LONELY LITTLE COUNTRY
Afew years ago britain liked to think of itself as the belle of the globalisation ball. david cameron invited xi jinping, china’s president, for a state visit that involved a trip down the mall in a gilded carriage and a banquet in buckingham palace. he wooed angela merkel, germany’s chancellor, in a bid to breathe new life into britain’s membership of the european union. he liked to boast that his friendship with barack obama, america’s president, was so close that mr obama had once tucked him up in the presidential bed on air force one.
Boris Johnson came to power promising, in a very Johnsonian manner, to preserve Britain’s pro-global stance while also delivering Brexit. He routinely referred to the Europeans as “our neighbours and partners”. He got on famously with Donald Trump. Shortly before taking over as prime minister he told a Chinese tv station that his government would be “very pro-China”. He repeatedly insisted that there are two possible versions of Brexit: Nigel Farage represented the inward-looking and xenophobic one while he represented the outward-looking and cosmopolitan one.
Yet Mr Johnson’s party may be turning against his global vision. One piece of evidence is the emergence of the China Research Group (crg). Founded a couple of weeks ago to “promote debate and fresh thinking” about China, in the words of one of its founders, Tom Tugendhat, it has attracted interest from all sorts: moderates like Damian Green, Eurosceptics like Mark Francois and human-rights advocates like Benedict Rogers. Mr Tugendhat is a moderate Remainer; Neil O’Brien, the co-founder, a moderate Leaver. It has already drawn some blood: on May 5th the foreign-affairs select committee, which Mr Tugendhat chairs, asked some difficult questions about whether, acting through surrogates, the Chinese government took over a British-based firm, Imagination Technologies, in order to get control of security software.
The rise of the crg is not evidence, in itself, that the Conservative Party is losing its enthusiasm for “global Britain”. There are plenty of good reasons for criticising a country that distorts trade through industrial subsidies, soft loans from state banks and discriminatory standards while conducting industrial espionage and supporting authoritarian regimes around the world. Keeping China at arm’s length may also be a price for maintaining a close alliance with America: some senators are trying to block the deployment of the latest generation of American fighter jets to Britain because it is allowing Huawei into its 5g network. Still, the crg’s name, a deliberate echo of the European Research Group (erg) that masterminded Brexit, is ominous. You cannot pick fights with China without China hitting back.
The rise of scepticism towards China that the crg represents comes at a perilous time for Britain’s international affairs. Relations with Russia have not recovered from the Salisbury poisonings two years ago, and those with both the European Union and the United States are unusually troubled.
A Tory mp characterises Mr Johnson’s attitude to the eu as “the only way is out, out, out”. The prime minister is willing to accept a much harder Brexit than the average member of the erg would have thought possible a couple of years ago. He has little interest in remaining part of the eu’s foreign policy and security structures that his predecessor, Theresa May, held in high regard. The pandemic is widening the channel even further. Britain is so preoccupied by the virus that it is devoting far too little attention to its Brexit negotiations, increasing the chances that an on-time Brexit will also be a bitter Brexit.
Britain’s relations with the United States are volatile. The Brexiteers’ bet on Donald Trump was always risky, given his exotic personality and determination to put America first. The Anglo-American trade talks, which have just got under way, cover such tricky topics as chlorinated chicken and the National Health Service’s purchasing policy. The chances that Britain will soon be dealing with Joe Biden rather than Mr Trump go up by the day, as Mr Trump flails around in the face of the virus. Mr Biden may well be more interested in cosying up to the eu than to “Britain Trump”, the moniker which the American president bestowed on the British prime minister. Given his long record of pro-Irish sentiments, Mr Biden will not take kindly to a Brexit that damages either the Anglo-Irish agreement or the Republic’s economy.
Domestic pressures to turn inward are also mounting. The election shifted the Tory party’s centre of gravity from regions dominated by the winners of globalisation to those dominated by losers. The pandemic is leading many Tories to question the relevance of free-market orthodoxies to a world in which supply chains are vulnerable and protectionism is spreading. They point to the way that Germany has benefited from its national capacity to carry out tests and make personal protective equipment. “Reshoring”, “domestic resilience” and “strategic industries” are all the rage. Mr Johnson talks about a shift to “national self-sufficiency”, with a step-change in Britain’s capacity to manufacture drugs, vaccines and medical equipment.
The idea of distilling a “global Britain” from the frenzy of Brexit was always problematic. It depended on pulling off two difficult tricks simultaneously: back home, taming the protectionist forces that drove Brexit, and, abroad, cosying up to competing powers without getting too close to any of them. The pandemic has made it harder still. Anti-Chinese sentiment is rising across the West, particularly in America. Nation states are retreating to their core function of protecting their citizens first or consolidating their relations with their closest neighbours. The British are about to discover that the “splendid isolation” the Victorians once celebrated is less glorious when that solitude is not chosen as an instrument of power, but is imposed by the world’s indifference.
