{"id":1097574,"date":"2026-07-18T21:42:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T21:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1097574\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T21:42:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T21:42:15","slug":"opinion-as-the-uk-discusses-an-eu-return-hong-kong-offers-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1097574\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | As the UK discusses an EU return, Hong Kong offers lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"

The recent resignation of Keir Starmer as Britain\u2019s prime minister has reignited a debate<\/a> over the United Kingdom\u2019s post-Brexit identity \u2013 and talk of rejoining the European Union. Over the past decade, has Britain\u2019s decision to exit the EU returned the UK to its splendid isolation \u2013 or merely a splendid squalor?<\/p>\n

It may seem a far-fetched idea but what if the UK were to become a special sovereignty within the EU? And in that case, what can post-Brexit Britain learn from Hong Kong, which has been designated a special administrative region within China?<\/p>\n

Both the UK and Hong Kong are concoctions of territories pieced together over time. The three regions that make up Hong Kong today \u2013 Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories \u2013 were united across British colonial and modern-day Chinese histories. Since 1997<\/a>, Hong Kong has found new life as a special administrative region, and is referred to as \u201cChina\u2019s Hong Kong\u201d or \u201cHong Kong, China\u201d. Today, \u201cHong Kong\u201d can refer to the island or the special administrative region, depending on the context.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the UK is often referred to as \u201cBritain\u201d even though geographically and technically \u201cBritain\u201d refers only to the island of Great Britain, which comprises England, Wales and Scotland \u2013 but not Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK.<\/p>\n

Theoretically, could the UK re-enter the EU as a distinct member with a special administrative name? Could a \u201cEurope\u2019s UK\u201d concept be explored?<\/p>\n

Political decision-making can be intimately affected by geography, as illustrated in Tim Marshall\u2019s bestselling book, Prisoners of Geography, first published in 2015. For the UK, one of a clutch of island nations that are part of the European continent, rejoining the EU may well be a question of \u201cto be or not to be\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"AA projection on a cliff in Ramsgate, southern England, on January 31, 2020, the day Brexit took effect. Photo: AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The recent resignation of Keir Starmer as Britain\u2019s prime minister has reignited a debate over the United Kingdom\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1097575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[186,802,748,1395,34918,393,2000,299,5187,1699,3749,807,299610,1144,712,10743,15,1764],"class_list":["post-1097574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-australia","tag-brexit","tag-britain","tag-china","tag-deng-xiaoping","tag-england","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-hong-kong","tag-keir-starmer","tag-kowloon","tag-northern-ireland","tag-scotland","tag-shenzhen","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wales"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116943163693107538","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1097574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1097574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1097575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1097574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1097574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1097574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}