What does the world think of Brexit Britain?

thank you hands Jeremy both very much indeed for joining us in what is a sort of a strange lull in the brexit process so a moment when perhaps we can try and stand back and look at how Britain looks to the rest of the world right now and how it fits into the global story if that doesn't sound too grand um Jeremy can I start with you how does Britain look to America right now yeah I think that the the brexit episode has sort of spread not only has created in in American English not only the word brexit but also introduced the word schadenfreude a-- they've really become quite bemused by it it's it's not a very important story in the US and people are very perplexed by it they you know there's obviously a lot of sort of sympathy and good feeling toward Britain in the United States but there's also this sense that they've always been making fun of the US for its sort of politics for its lack of sophistication that whole idea that that you know Macmillan propounded in the 1960s that Britain could be Greece two Americas Rome it now seems as if Britain has become you know Laurel to America's Hardy and I think that there is a certain amount of sort of satisfaction in that but but honestly it's not I think the the most important thing is it's not a very big issue in the United States it doesn't really engage the public beyond the superficial and even even the elites who do have to deal with it on a daily basis aren't terribly concerned with it let's jump to Europe in Europe I think it's a similar story there's clearly a lot of schadenfreude are in continental Europe as well it seems to me that whether we're talking about the America or continent to Europe there's this tendency I think to see breaks it through the prism of their own domestic political issues so obviously in America my impression is that breaks it seem very much through the prism of Trump and it's seen to a large extent as being Britain's Trump I don't think that's right but but I think that's the way it seemed simile in Europe because of this kind of idea of a populist wave which as I say I think is misleading I think this tent there's a tendency to see breaks it as this kind of equivalent all over the floor Nacional in France certainly this is the way that macro sees it or was the equivalent of the AFD in Germany and so it's seen I think I mean it's clearly in continental Europe a much bigger issue than in America although there is at the same time in Europe as well I think this tendency to say well you know it's not that big of an issue for us partly because there is so many other existential crises that the EU faces but I think there is this tendency to see as a threat precisely because it's seen as being analogous to things that are happening elsewhere in Europe which i think is partly true but but not quite 100% true i think it is it is really quite striking in going through continents of Europe at just how advanced they are in their stages of grief over brexit I mean they have so internalized I don't know if they did this on June 24th or maybe by June 30th of 2016 but really they've just sort of they regret that Breck's had happened but they've accepted it and they accepted it a long time ago and they've kind of moved on and they're trying to make the best of it they're trying not to let it infect their own politics and that's one of the one of the issues behind the European stance on the negotiation but there's really not a lot of sort of soul-searching or regret or really or even really a lot of talk about it Umberto's ism or self-criticism in Berlin where we wary CFR has an office we struggle to maintain even a conversation on brexit people are not interested in talking about it they don't think that it's an important issue or rather it's the except the thing it's an important issue they think it's already been taken care of to the extent that it can be and so it's not really a show bunny always uses this phrase it's a process to be managed yes it really is that the decisions for them were taken in the very few months after the referendum they're comfortable with those decisions they certainly regret what has happened and they're not happy about it but they have sort of moved on but I think there are some other things happening those slightly beneath the surface so you know this is I think interesting contradiction in the way that continents of Europeans look at break as it which is on the one hand to say you know the Brits were always a special case this has nothing to do with the rest of continental Europe they have their own particular problems with membership of the EU they're not shared elsewhere in the EU at the same time to say part of the reason we can't make any concessions is precisely because of the danger that if we do other EU member states ought to demand the same contagion and these two things don't quite add up so you know and the other thing that seems to me to be happening in continental Europe is there's this you know saluting somewhat there's a it's been a bit of triumphalism I think about particularly the polling that shows that support for the European Union has gone up you know since the brexit vote well I think it's mainly about fear personally I think you know it's not that you know the Europeans for example in the south of Europe or in the east of Europe for that matter who had really big issues with the way that the EU is being run suddenly have come to love it I think they just they can see the chaos that breaks it has caused in Britain and so it's really fear that's holding the European Union together which i think is really problematic I mean that's fine I just think that there's maybe a slightly different way of looking at it which is that contagion was a massive fear right after the referendum and the process that the Europe the Europeans have managed have has contained that contagion quite effectively one of our our research shortly after the elections showed that they were considering these types of referendums in like 18 different countries in the EU right after the right after the British referendum none of them have happened none of them are even in prospect right now now we hear the populist movements that are we obviously trying to make headway in the European Parliament elections this spring aren't deploying brexit as part of their argument is that because it in a way that's even more dangerous from the EU perspective it seems to me which is to try to destroy the EU from within I mean the United Kingdom always basically stuck to the rules it sometimes you know negotiated opt outs and so on but what I think you have with you know the Hungarian government the Polish an Italian government to some extent is an attempt to you know as I say disrupt that you from within which I think is much more dangerous actually than simply choosing to leave yeah that's I think where I was going the the the idea I think that the the new strategy for people who are dissatisfied with the EU and Viktor Orban says this quite directly is not to leave the EU but to reform it and that is a coming from Viktor Orban that's quite a chilling word you he means walk by the word reform it sounds like an essentially neutering it as a supranational organization making it a Council where they can come together to make to cooperate and they can make some and they can have a you know as some sort of single market and Economic Cooperation but in but not an organization which impinges on sovereignty ironically the type of organization that Britain would have loved to have been a member of right well in some ways I think the vision of Hungary in Poland is very very different from the British vision but I think that's true in terms of this is the idea of an a Europe of sovereign states yes so it hasn't created the waves it might have done but Europe's creating plenty waves for itself internally in fact after brexit what we were talking about was the collapse of Europe yeah and the process of brexit that the the horror that that UK politics as undergone the very disturbing sight for anybody who's a prime minister of Prime Minister May's last two years has completely changed that conversation even though no one acknowledges it and so there isn't any more prospect of countries leaving the EU they've all switched to this debate about how to reform it yeah that's true that that didn't happen to something else though it seems to me that didn't happen either because my memory of the discussion that was taking place in continental European countries in the run-up to breaks it was there are essentially two ways of looking at this one was to say this will be a huge disaster if Britain leaves the EU the other thing actually this is kind of an opportunity you know we get rid of this very difficult member state but both sides it seemed to me what they had in common was they thought that what would happen if Briggs happened and very few people in continental Europe believe that it would but if this happens what must happen is some big push for further European integration that also hasn't had we're going to come back to Europe but I just want to ask do you have a feel for how those nations that sometimes look like the sort of Bond villains of the world The Spectre look upon Britain at this moment and game our future I suppose you're talking about Russia and the possibly whatever make you think that yeah I don't know I guess there was all those pictures of Vladimir Putin with cats but I think that the you know the Russians have seen brexit as part of the sort of decadence and confusion of the West the fact that it is it is sort of taken up by their own its own internal struggles they have probably we don't really understand the extent of it but probably attempted to fuel that as well but only adding fuel to the fire not creating it that's certainly their perspective and they see this this lack of stability as generally speaking beneficial to those sort of Russian idea that the world needs to be run on more authoritarian more sovereigntist more transactional lines but I have to say they don't really have any sort of plan for this and they don't really understand where they're going with brexit or where Britain is going with brexit but it's an opportunity or it plays into an upwards it's a it's it's let's say part of an idea of confusing the world that sort of appeals to them but you see even then pull back from it very frequently because Britain is a place for them London is a place for them which has always served as a as a sort of refuge both for their money and their persons and they have always valued the this the stability of Britain and they were never intending they don't want that to be completely destroyed and so sometimes I feel like in Russia they're a little bit worried about catastrophic success with with brexit they they did like the idea pushing of pushing this idea and they were happy at the in the initial instance with the result but I think sometimes they're wondering maybe they succeeded too well on the midst of the world hands of you or Rutter itself or you well I think this is incredibly unpredictable we in Britain I think don't know what's gonna happen which is partly why I think actually it's quite exciting in a way but I word for it you know so I don't think the Russians can possibly know what's going to happen with break says and it could be a good thing for Russia or it could be a bad thing I think it's worth stressing that you know Britain's commitment to NATO remains as strong as ever it one of the possible outcomes here is that NATO actually becomes a more important venue as it were for British multilateralism once it leaves the EU so it's not obvious to me that this is good for Russia but the other thing is I do worry a little bit about the tendency that we have at the moment to think in very binary terms you know this is a struggle between some kind of monolithic liberalism some kind of monolithic liberalism so you know Jeremy you just used you know the word authoritarian and sovereigntist and that may be from the Russian perspective maybe those two things go hand in hand it's not clear to me if we look at brexit that those two things do go hand-in-hand at all you know it seems to me whatever you think about breaks it it was driven to a large extent by concerns precisely about democracy so you know the idea that some people have for example in America or in continental Europe that breaks that is part of this kind of populist wave part of some kind of authoritarian shift I don't think is really very helpful look I think that we can agree that the beating heart of the of the of the start of the brexit movement was this Democratic urge as you described it but it has a problem which is that it makes no sense of which you know eventually will matter it is not the EU which is creating this hyperglobalisation it is not the EU which is restricting Europe's I mean Britain's ability to decide these things it is the world we had a funny moment yesterday when me and Fox was in the House of Commons talking about how we hadn't quite got ready all the trade deals that needed to roll over and he said actually they're proving to be is proving to be rather difficult because they come back to us with all sorts of requirements like that certain of them say actually could you drop the EU requirements on human rights that they put into the trade and you thought well surely that was what you were expecting to happen now else you're gonna do a bilateral there's gonna be all sorts of things that you're open to and pressures that you're open to you so look at the two big issues that the US will bring up in there when they have a trade deal when they negotiate a trade deal with the UK it's already had preliminary talks and these are the issues that have come up well one of them is is food safety regulations that the EU has imposed that at restrict things like chlorinated chickens and genetically modified organisms from u.s. agriculture coming in and and the US Agriculture is very efficient and and very low priced in it and if these things are are reduced then I think you'll see that it's it UK agriculture will struggle with this will with to compete with the US Agriculture on these terms the second thing that's very interesting to the American negotiators is the NHS it's the idea which it's a huge organization it spends a lot of money opening it up to foreign competition perhaps the ability to do for some of these private companies to do for British health care what they've done for American healthcare is something that is very attractive to American American industry we may discover the Britain's not quite as free-trade as we thought we were and we've been hiding behind French skirts all these years and pointing the accusing finger at EU partners yeah so there's two choices there right either they accept these American demands in which case they haven't satisfied the demands that created that led to brexit or they don't and in which case they don't get the trade deal that they want and you're bursting you to come back you know they're I think there is an argument for you know being part of a smaller unit where you know although you couldn't you don't have the same amount of leverage you can pursue your interests in it in a tighter kind of way having said all that you know basically as they voted to remain and not only that you know now that we're leaving I would still argue that we should remain part of the customs union and because I think those arguments that you've made your army are you know unbalanced are right but I mean the way I think about all of this is that you know as I say it's a backlash against hyperglobalisation and the left and the right have a problem with different aspects of hyperglobalisation so as I say this is very very unpredictable and I think what's exciting about this is that we are now there's that word again yes that we're trying to reconcile Jeremy just looks nervous yeah it's a it's a very optimistic version of exciting I think we both agree that that's unpretty I'm yes I'm nervous too but I do think that there's something going on in Britain now where we're trying to reconcile these different interests in a way that we haven't in you know for my for most of my lifetime the parameters of British politics have been very narrowly defined you know for my my entire life you know Margaret Thatcher was still Prime Minister when I turned 18 amazing to me that you think that's a bad thing I think that that's something that the world would that most countries in the world would deeply desire this idea that poverty yeah and the predictability and the stability the idea that politics is predictable is very bad for analysts like you and me and very good for everyone else get into the prediction game a bit though because I'm gonna go back to something you were talking about a second ago which was the the idea that Britain's role in NATO NATO itself might get bigger Britain might continue to play a big role its that actually how people see it at the moment there is a sense I saw this morning that Britain is currently portrayed in the Dutch media through government advertising as a giant blue Muppet called Breck see who gets in the way every time you a business is trying to get to the phone on the desk and the rest of it and this is this is we have become a bit of a joke figure you alluded to it with Laurel and Hardy we really seen as people who are going to be significant players militarily equal to our past role keeping our United Nations Security Council's seat big in NATO or people beginning to just think a bit differently about us as they gain where Britain will really be 20 30 years from now yeah I think there's no question that people are at least beginning to think differently about that I mean I should be it should be said that you know the UK starts from a position in the world of enormous soft power and prestige I mean this is a country that people have always really admired I just think that one of the things that they have admired about it is not exactly its its power at least in the last few decades which there is plenty but but really Britain has always been seen as punching above its weight in the last few decades in part because of its relationship with America in part because of its relationship with the EU its membership in the EU but even more fundamentally because it is this sort of stable right-thinking country that is that is sort of a voice of sanity on the world stage especially relative to the Americans the Iraq war was a big blow to this idea and brexit has been a bigger blow to this idea and now people are starting to look at Britain and say ok well it's still a reasonably powerful country it's still obviously going to play in world affairs it's it's lower it's gotten rid of its EU membership that's one big source that it no longer has its you know it's relationship of the United States will be more and more instrumentalized by the United States it can still play but it doesn't seem to have the sort of sanity and stability and voice of reason that it used to so it's not going to be as important but I mean I think it's quite sure I think it's quite different provoked in I think yeah thank you guys I think it's quite difficult to generalize about the way the rest of the world sees Britain because they think it is different in different parts of the world and different people in the evening yeah that's my job exactly but even in America you know they were different you know there are some people that actually quite sympathized with breaks over so so if you take the example you mentioned the Iraq war I mean what is the thing that what is the aspect of that that as you say was a blow to the perception of Britain was it the fact that Britain took part in the Iraq war or was it the fact that there was a you know massive backlash against it from an American perspective it might be you know that Britain you know after Iraq is no longer as reliable and ally as it was before but you know a lot of the rest of the world looked the fact that Britain took part in the Iraq war being the problem and so you know that's the part I was referring to I think that was actually the part in in the United States even that is seen as a problem it's intriguing in the United States of course this is retrospective but generally speaking on all sides of the aisle the Iraq war was seen as a mistake even in the United States it's interestingly a mistake the United States has moved beyond a little bit more than the United Kingdom has but actually when they look back at the issue they people are a little bit upset with the United Kingdom that it failed to stop the United States this is absurd I grant you but this is this is a little bit the way that people look at it well we claimed we were minam's Kennedy in Greece yeah it was it was the advertisement and in fact what happened was that Tony Blair basically went along with George Bush's deception right and so that was disappointing to a lot of Americans at now I mean this is exactly my point is it seems to me that what's happening both on the Left clearly with Corbin but also on the right is that this I mean it seems to me that the approach Britain has taken over the last 30 40 50 years has sort of you know reached the end of we've run out of Road and one aspect of that is the economic policy basically neoliberalism that we followed you know since Thatcher but it seems to me another aspect of it is our foreign policy punching above our weight that stuff wait so some extent punching by the way but specifically the special relationship so I hear people on the right you know people like John redwood and so on who are quite um you know he says that you know biggest mistake he made in his political career was to vote for the Iraq war so it seems to me there's there's a certain you know in a way I think what's happening is that there's a sense that we need to correct this now and exactly this is the way that you're saying Americans wish we had but isn't the truth going back to you open hands about beatab did book post brexit are we going off to a Corbin future are we going off to Singapore likewise we don't know what the real driver was or rather what where people wanted to take a British foreign policy there was an isolationist element to brexit we don't want some people who didn't like didn't like a broad like the Anglosphere don't like foreigner he don't like and think we're too obsessed with the bra and I think that was a component wasn't it for some people and yet there was also another component which was we're gonna go global and be bigger than it bigger than ever it seems to be all part of a massive identity crisis which hasn't resolved itself I'm not sure it's a crisis but yes you know yes these this was my point these things were all up for grabs now we're debating these things I think in a way that we weren't before brexit yeah the debate is very lively but I have to say that when I looked at when when they were framing the brexit debate the idea was that there were options in foreign policy that Britain was not taking because they were so tied to the EU one of those options I think a key one you really see this in the campaign and especially immediately afterwards is is the American option that we can we can sort of fall back on the special relationship we can fall back on the Anglosphere I guess and that that can be a source of British leverage in the world and I still see that it's a little bit diminished since Trump is so obviously I'm interested in it but I still see it and I think it's it's it demonstrates the fact that in order to prescribe brexit in a world which is as difficult as this one is you had to have an idea of where your leverage was going to come from and there were lots of different fantasies spun out admittedly there were there were five or six as you said and they've created these conversations but actually none of them really make any sense the best one that they had going for them was the one that they just that they just got rid of and I think no one has been able to articulate even a vision that makes any more sense than what Britain is leaving now can they salvage from that a foreign policy which you know is able to reasonably represent British interests probably I mean there are medium sized countries around the world that are in more difficult positions than Britain that are managing and Britain can do that but the idea that Britain is going to have the kind of very special role that it had in the world when it's turned its back on on this key source of its leverage I think doesn't make any sense and I think it's really important to focus on that we've fallen down the scale a bit we would have done at the end of it not necessarily a disaster but they have given up something and in doing that that will matter I mean if we put this in the context of the sort of long sweep of British history I mean first of all you know Britain has been in relative decline since you know 1850 you know and so yes I accept that we're probably declining a bit further but and you know and and the important point I think there is that Britain hasn't been declining in absolute terms you know and I think that will continue to be the case the second thing is that you know there's continually in British history I mean in a way this is the story of British foreign policy it's been this oscillation between you know focusing on the European continent and focusing on the rest of the world and you know the way I see this is we're in you know at the moment we're going through another of these swings away from the European continent at some point we'll probably swing back and not quite sure what that looks like but this all to me feels very familiar from British history and you know there's the famous you know I think we're roughly where we were in in in in terms of how we think of our identity whereas where we were in you know in the mediate postwar period when winston churchill drawls you know these three majestic circles as he calls it and these different poles in a way on britain one is Europe the continent of Europe one is the United States and the other is you know that time the Empire and now the Commonwealth and you know I think whiffs or roughly in the space between those three things and you have people pulling in different directions clearly the overall context is different I think this idea that the people who talk about global Britain or even about the Anglo sphere have some kind of neo Imperial kind of aspirations I think is is is misleading I think in some ways it makes more sense than ever in British history for us to say well actually you know as the center of gravity of international politics and of the global economy shifts from west to east in particular to Asia I mean in some ways it makes more sense than ever to say you know that's where the future is that's we should we need to be part of that that's not completely crazy and it doesn't have to be a kind of a neo-colonial project and you didn't have to do it through the European Union you think well you can if you don't do it better by being part of the gang I think I think that's I think that's an open question you know to what extent being part of the European Union helps or not the other thing I think though is this all I think might look rather different in ten years time we don't know and this is I think very absent from the discussion in Britain both on the remain side and the leaves like we don't know what the European Union is going to look like in ten years time we talked about this a bit at the beginning seems to me there's at least a possibility that things go from bad to worse on in continental Europe and then I think in retrospect breaks it starts to look a little different than it does now look at of course that's possible I think we don't really know what's gonna happen in the next 10 years and the you could go in some very bad directions but I think the key thing if you're making a foreign policy is to set yourself up for success and one of the things that Britain had done well in playing a difficult hand in the last 50 years was that it had looked at those three circles that you just described and said actually we can gain leverage from all of these and specifically we can use the three of them as balancers with each other and they had been quite successful at that and I can tell you from an American perspective the fact of Britain's membership in the EU the fact of Britain's influence in the EU is one of the things that sustained Britain's influence with America and I imagine there's a similar dynamic with the with the Commonwealth and so having just sacrificed one of the legs of that leverage both of the others will be weaker now of course if the EU goes to crap then that leg wouldn't have been super useful but all other things be technical foreign policy tone yeah yeah you try to follow me but all other things being equal having these diverse sources of leverage I would say interestingly us that the EU that British diplomacy had played that extremely well they had and so much out of the EU they had gotten more out of the EU in diplomatic terms than almost any other country probably more than France because they had really understood in a way that most of the other EU countries didn't how to use the EU as a multiplier of national advantages of bilateral advantages with the United States and even with the Commonwealth this was an inherent part of British strategy but I just want to end by because as foreign policy specialists you understand influence it's it's not an amorphous tend to you you can probably think of a hundred different examples of where Britain's influence helped in the world and helped Britain but it's something which you jeremy think is going to decline what will that mean 10 20 30 years from now for someone who lives in but oh that's a good question ah you know I don't think that it will mean a whole lot to be perfectly honest I and and even as I've been pessimistic about all of this stuff it's not as if Britain can't have a very good future in life goes on life goes on and as I said medium-sized countries that struggle to exert their influence can operate very very well in in today's world and we see a lot of countries doing that by triangulating between different great powers and by keeping a low profile on a lot of issues so that's fine I'm not saying boo to China and things like yeah that's manageable I think it's a struggle really for for British identity that has not been the British identity in the world for the last hundred and fifty years is to keep your head low and not and not make nasty comments about great powers a lot of countries are quite used to that oh but Britain is not and so what struggle to adapt yeah they may struggle to adapt I don't think and that's why you see all of these ok we can get this we can maintain our previous role through the Americans we can maintain our previous role through the Commonwealth we can maintain our three this role through some sort of splendid isolation Singapore thing because they don't because I don't think British people want to give up on that identity I think you know they they probably will might need a different referendum on that I think some people are quite sick of playing precisely that role I'm sorry I think that's partly what we're working do you think we've actually declined in influence and does that make a difference to life as lived here 20 30 years from now have we declined or are we going will we as a result of this current moment I mean as I said earlier foreign policy analysts make this distinction between absolute decline and relative decline you can decline in relative terms your influence in the world can decline but you know everyday life quality of life for your citizens can continue to rise and that would be my kind of my prediction if I if I had to make one but I think the most crucial thing is you know given as I say that the everyone at least in the West is going through somewhat of a similar crisis which is how do you reconcile integration globalization with democracy and a sense of control I think the crucial thing is can Britain find a way of doing this and you know if it works and as Mark Carney said earlier this week you know if this works a wave recalibrating globalisation and rebalancing that you know getting that balance right between the benefits of globalization and democracy then it seems to me that Britain potentially if if it works and that is a big if I accept that then potentially I think Britain almost has a kind of a model function potentially for other countries in the West now it could all go disastrously wrong I accept that but it seems to me that probably in terms of if we're talking about British influence in the world that's probably the biggest contribution Britain can make that's really interesting and I would I guess I'd have to agree even though I hadn't thought of it in those terms but that is a theoretical possibility when I look at British politics right now when I look at the sort of incapacity to decide when I look at the different strands of where people want to go when I look at lose not the phrase the game come on when I look at the lack of response to the very important questions that you just posed I don't really see them being able to settle on that kind of model but you know I would admit it is it is a model that is opened it's chaotic but I think this is what democracy looks like oh what a perfect note on which to end thank you both very much indeed for discussion was anything but chaotic thanks for your time really appreciate thank you you

Channel: Channel 4 News

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Keywords: Channel 4 News, brexit, brexit latest, brexit debate, brexit news, brexit 2019, trump brexit, eu brexit, eu, brexit uk, brexit latest news, what is brexit, brexit today, brexit news uk, uk news, brexit explained, brexit trump, no brexit, brexit breakdown

Id: gVzL1J47IrM

Length: 33min 33sec (2013 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 15 2019

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