Trump tariffs, Ukraine, and the threat of war in Asia are turning the world upside down.
The UK – faced with an America disengaging from Europe, a febrile geopolitical theatre, a sclerotic EU and a fast-rising but destabilised Asia – needs to use this moment wisely.
Firstly, the old world is gone. The UK can no longer define itself as a bridge between the EU and the US. Britain left the EU, America is turning isolationist and globalisation is going into reverse. This is no time to pine for the past.
Fortunately for Britain it has three crucial cards to play: the Commonwealth (starting with the Realm countries of Australia, Canada and New Zealand), London’s status as a world financial centre, and the UK’s superstar universities are all in play.
The latter will be critical with the rise of AI and machine learning, as human roles diminish, while the future belongs to those who own and control the IP for leading technologies.
Secondly, this is a world where Britain can no longer depend on others for its security. That means national defence must become a priority.
Fortunately, again, arms manufacturing is one of the few industrial areas where Britain still flourishes, while those aforementioned Commonwealth ties enable the UK to augment its global reach.
The UK can further draw upon London’s financial muscle; the intellectual muscle of Oxbridge, Imperial and LSE; and the fact Britain – one of the world’s few blue water navies and nuclear weapons states – is belatedly ramping up defence spending.
Despite economic malaise, the UK is also unlikely to be overtaken by any other country economically anytime soon, and could well one day surpass Germany and Japan.
To be honest, Britain’s problem is less one of external threat than chronic loss of confidence. Frankly, the world needs a strong, prosperous, ethnical, and muscular UK as a force for good in a world short on moral actors.
Now more than ever, Britain needs to wake up its new normal. The US is turning inward, and the EU is in a coma, while global flashpoints threaten to turn red hot, most obviously in Asia where Beijing threatens the territorial integrity of India, the Philippines and Taiwan.
No longer able to merely shuttle between Brussels and Washington, no longer able to subcontract its defence to others, and certainly no longer able to neglect the Commonwealth, now is the time for Britain to wake up to its new reality.
Here, Nigel Farage and Reform UK have a golden opportunity to offer a fresh, dynamic, and positive foreign policy agenda. It sure as heck won’t come from the two cheeks of the same backside Labour-Tory duopoly.
