Britain’s Brexit Deal Debacle

The Brexit Deal marks an historic debacle for the United Kingdom. The UK failed to protect is core economic, political, strategic, and legal interests. Economically, while the UK overemphasized, and ultimately sold out, a tiny sector, fishing, it achieved little in the way of reliable market access for its most important goods and services sectors, electric vehicles and finance. Politically, the UK set itself for a double partition, with Northern Ireland and Gibraltar, and possibly a triple one, adding Scotland. Strategically, the UK deluded itself about holding an equal bargaining position with the EU, and in a tripolar world in which the EU, China, and United States dominate, the UK isolated itself. Legally, the UK diminished its appeal as a legal model on substantive sanitary, phytosanitary, and technical standards, and on procedural enforcement matters. These four failures were prompted by a fifth fiasco, namely, the UK dimming its status as a multicultural beacon for global human capital talent in its effort to control immigration.