Interesting article from @jgforsyth on the geo-political impact of no-deal, but it’s been obvious for quite a while that the UK/EU relationship has been seriously wounded by Brexit & four yrs of insults (both petty & serious) and acrimonious negotiations. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/no-deal-brexit-would-be-bad-for-the-west-gs8tvmztf

Deal, or no-deal, the UK and the EU are now set up to be economic rivals. The rushed negotiation on the future relationship ensures that there will be numerous loose ends come the end of the yr and disputes are almost inevitable.

At the beginning of the year, Pascal Lamy said that these negotiations would result in a “geopolitical and geoeconomic rivalry…[couched] in nice friendly diplomatic language”. He’s right, although the nice language is often absent.

It has been commonplace to describe UK/EU negotiations as unprecedented, and they are. Never before have two parties begun a negotiation from a position of complete alignment, where trade is already free of tariffs, quotas and quantitative restrictions.

So while most trade negotiations begin with the positive intent of bringing two parties closer together for their mutual benefit, UK/EU negotiations see two sides deciding which barriers to trade they want to erect.

To put it another way, the UK and EU are deciding how distant they want to be from each other and the extent to which they are willing to damage their strategic relationship. This makes the negotiations acrimonious by nature and any victories Pyrrhic.

It was always a fantasy that the UK & EU could on the one hand merrily beat each other up on trade and economic policy, and then still be best buds on security, defence or diplomatic matters. How this hasn’t been obvious right from the beginning is beyond me.

That said, it wasn’t completely inevitable that we would end up here, but walking the tightrope of erecting economic barriers whilst maintaining diplomatic relations with the EU required the type of visionary leadership that is completely absent from British politics right now.

It would have also required Britain’s political leaders to make, deepen and maintain friendships with their counterparts right across the EU.

You can only have positive long-term relations with friends, and you can only strike good deals with partners that like & trust you. You get none of this when you insult the people you’re negotiating with on an almost weekly basis.

Every govt. since 2016 has made a habit of swinging a wrecking ball through our diplomatic relations with the EU, while many Conservative backbenchers view doing this as a point of pride. Well good for them, but the consequence has been to damage the Western alliance.

Forsyth is right that Biden’s election points to more positive four yrs for trans-Atlantic relations (although we should be careful not to get carried away yet), but wrong that striking a trade deal means that the UK and EU won’t be bad-tempered neighbours.

A trade deal doesn’t repair the damage of the last four years (although having a deal will be a damn sight better than not having one).

If relations with the EU are to be repaired, it cannot (and most likely will not) be done by those currently in charge in London. The EU knows who they are and what they think of them. Only new leadership will lead to new positive relations with the EU.

The question then is, will the British electorate put in power a govt. that actively wants a close relationship with the EU anytime soon? If we’re to have good relations with the EU, the people have to want it.