Six years after Brexit has Britain bet on the wrong ally?


ByGollie

26 comments
  1. If that ally is Trump, yes, if it is America, important to remember, America > Trump

  2. Without a question – yes.

    A lot of it had to do with the identity crisis that *some* Brits suffer from, the idea that the UK is not a European country, while it actually is and always has been. European through and through – culturally, historically, economically.

  3. > “The only real option,” [David Frost, chief negotiator for exiting the EU] wrote in an op-ed published in the British newspaper The Telegraph, is to do “everything we can to reinvigorate the relationship with the Americans, still the economic and defence superpower.”
    >
    > “They can defend us now,” he continued. “In return, we have to be a credible ally again, spend much more on defence, accommodate ourselves to US realpolitik, and finally get out of the European economic and regulatory system. It means becoming another Israel to the U.S. Not much wrong with that – Israel is after all richer than we are now.”

    Almost looks like satire. It’s always ironic how the so-called sovereignists and conservatives are the first ones to try to sell their country. They were complaining that the EU was too demanding when they had some of the most advantageous terms in the Union, and now the guy who negociated the Brexit is advocating to become a US colony…

  4. Ally? The USA is nobody’s ally. The only real allies that the UK had are Canada and the EU. The UK threw the EU under the bus when they had a seat at the EU table and the power that came with it. Probably one of the dumbest foreign political acts i’ve seein in my lifetime.

  5. Bet on the wrong ally? It was Obama who stated clearly directly to the people of the UK, that if Brexit happens, the UK will go to the back of the line in trade talks with the US.

    Basically meaning if you want a deal, you’re going to have to give up a lot.

    This was the US being a big brother, and trying to help the UK from making a stupid decision.

    He was met with pure vitriol and hate. How dare he try and meddle in European politics!

    So don’t go blaming us now for following through on what we said before the dumbass decision was made.

  6. Almost every country in Europe is still an ally of the US. None of them are pulling out of NATO, beyond calls for diversification or derisking I haven’t seen any of them officially call for an end to cooperation with the US. Singling the UK out for censure is going to appeal to a lot of people in this sub but I don’t want to hear this shit from any of you until your country actually walks and doesn’t just talk.

    Additionally, even **after** Brexit and the UK trying to steer a path between its different alliances it’s still done more to shore up pan-European defence than much of Europe has so you peeps can jog on with your reductive onanistic takes tbh.

  7. It’s easy to generalise here, but it’s not that simple. I’m as anti Brexit as you can get, but leaving the EU supposedly wasn’t just about betting the house on the US. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan and China amongst others were used as examples of nations the UK could build stronger relationships with (and that has happened, be it through trade agreements, joint tech projects, visa-free travel or other means). Whether most of the prominent Brexiteers were genuinely sincere about opening these sorts of doors is another question, but it is disingenuous to insinuate that post-Brexit economic and political opportunities proposed by the leave campaign were exclusively tied to the United States.

  8. I opposed Brexit and the answer is pretty plain, but don’t for a second assume:

    1) Brexiteers will change their mind presented with a bullying, imperialist USA who disrespects war veterans. They won’t.

    2) Trumpist relations with Britain won’t radically change if Reform gains power. It’s clear that the Republicans are now open to interfering in foreign politics and their relationships depend on which ideology is in power.

    It’s a blessing for the world that the Labour/ Republicans and Conservatives / Democrats cadence just happens to be off.

  9. This framing of the UK “betting” on one ally or the other is just stupid.

    The UK is an ally of both the EU *and* the US. It was allies of both while it was in the European Union, and it is allies with both now it has left the European Union. At no point was that a mutually-exclusive choice. Heck, the EU and US are still fundamentally allies despite all the tub thumping to the contrary.

    Equally, the UK has more than those two alliances, and leaving the European Union had impacts on all those other relationships as well in positive and negative ways. Reducing this to a binary of just those two relationships is nonsensical.

    I firmly opposed us leaving the European Union, but nonsense like this just helps no one

  10. Obviously they did. Even the rest of Europe is looking at the US in confusion after the Greenland saga. Everyone is reevaluating the relationship even those not as close to them as the UK.

  11. Militarily? Absolutely not.

    Socially and Economically? The UK problems there are domestic and it wouldn’t matter whom they “ally” with.

  12. Yes and after the vote only one thing was going to happen so it’s ten years.

  13. 23 years after illegally invading Iraq while being walked by Bush, has Britain finally realised that they bet on the wrong ally?

  14. Britain didn’t choose any ally with Brexit they chose weapons grade stupidity. The US deserves all sorts of shit right now but don’t you be putting that nonsense on us, Obama literally campaigned *against* Brexit at the time

  15. Brexit was a shitshow of epic proportions. This is happened because the U.K politicians constantly made the EU out to be a boogeyman and blamed then for everything that went wrong.

    On top of that a good chunk of the old fossils who voted to leave and WOULDN’T live to feel the consequences of their idiotic and shortsighted vote and died.

  16. Farage hoped for Trump’s trade deal in his first term, but it never appeared. Boris hoped for a trade deal with Joe “I’m Irish” Biden. Now it’s Trump’s second term and, well, he’s more interested in tariffs and trade wars than anything else..

  17. Honestly I think they type a catchy headline first then build a story around it

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