It is not a mystery that Britain is leaving the EU. The coronavirus crisis has dominated 2020 but not obliterated memory of the many years right before. Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, the authorities is expending £93m on a Brexit refresher campaign with the slogan “check, modify, go”.

This is aimed at persons who have dealings with Europe and may be below the illusion that it will be as quick in the upcoming as it has been in the past. No one particular has carried out extra to cultivate that misapprehension than Boris Johnson. The government’s new concept on Brexit is to disregard what the prime minister applied to say on the topic.

The essential situation in this article is that Brexit can make EU membership go absent, but not the EU alone. When the only difficulty was getting inside, escape was the only solution really worth chatting about. Hardline Eurosceptics were no additional bothered by the problem of how an ex-member state may well deal with relations with Brussels than arsonists are intrigued in what to do with ashes.

As a consequence of that complacency, the British isles does not have a plan in the direction of the EU, only an impulse away from it and that is of fading relevance. No 1 adopted us out. The fireplace did not capture.

It is essential to distinguish strategic European plan from the detail of borders, tariffs and restrictions. The British isles has a comprehensive agenda for that things and negotiations are ongoing. If people talks fail, there is always the Globe Trade Corporation (as Brexit ultras in no way tire of pointing out). But even if it had been economically smart to tumble back again on WTO principles (and it is not), the query of Britain’s geopolitical alignment would still stay unanswered.

The rubric for the latest talks is “the upcoming relationship”, but the Uk has narrowed the discussion to exclude everything apart from trade. Johnson took foreign coverage, protection and defence cooperation – the stuff of which intercontinental alliances are made – off the table. European leaders had been baffled by that selection, which appeared to defer dialogue of a thing no much less urgent than fish quotas and customs declarations, and additional crucial in the extended expression.

The British isles situation is dependable with the Eurosceptic doctrine of pristine sovereignty. In that perspective, EU establishments consume nationwide electrical power. Every single programme, even a little something as ostensibly benign as the Erasmus scheme for scholar exchanges, is a trap. The full level of new “global” Britain, as an upgrade from the old European variation, is that it is freer to deal with other global gamers peer-to-peer.

The constraints of that solution are swiftly becoming clear. In January, the authorities announced that it would allow for Huawei, the Chinese telecoms business, a minimal job in developing British 5G infrastructure. Yesterday, the limit turned an exclusion, setting up up coming calendar year.

The change follows force on Johnson from Tory MPs who complain, with superior explanation, that Huawei has the probable to be a conduit for Beijing security interests and want its package stripped out of the network even sooner. The far more decisive issue is US sanctions towards the organization and the demand from customers from Washington that Britain be far more demonstrative in its transatlantic loyalty. The unambiguous concept from the White Dwelling is that trade and stability plan are intertwined. A country that would like a offer to access US marketplaces can hope to have its international investment decision relations vetted for intimacy with undesirable states. Beijing has warned of trade retaliation towards nations considered hostile to Huawei.

Any primary minister would prioritise the protection alliance with the US in excess of a business deal with China. But Johnson comes about to be the to start with prime minister to be confronted with the alternative in stark, binary terms, simply because his trade plan is a blank sheet of paper and Donald Trump is holding the pen.

As an EU member, Britain’s trade specials ended up brokered by the European fee, which mobilised the scale of the one marketplace – 28 countries 450 million customers – as leverage in negotiations. That is what concessions in national sovereignty invest in, and every single authorities that has felt the added benefits considers it a price tag really worth paying. The Uk was no exception. David Cameron was a everyday Tory Eurosceptic, happy to enjoy-struggle from Brussels banditry, but when the option grew to become actual he campaigned to continue being. Would Johnson have been a leaver if his Downing Avenue ambitions experienced occur to fruition five yrs earlier and he experienced used some time hobnobbing with fellow heads of govt at EU summits? I doubt it.

In considerably less risky moments an impartial seat at the WTO would have been meagre payment for getting rid of Britain’s affect as a single of the major three EU associates. As international trade coverage will get ever further submerged in geopolitical manoeuvres, that swap appears like the worst part-trade in strategic history, even if you throw in a new royal yacht and phone it Britannia.

Johnson appreciates it, far too. If the prime minister imagined the WTO was where by the motion happens, he would nominate a credible, smart statesman with a standing for probity as Britain’s prospect to be the next director common. He available Liam Fox instead. (Fox will not get the task.)

The Uk is sliding into a strategic void because its only overseas coverage is a program that devalues old European alliances and shifts the equilibrium of power to other continents when trying to make new deals. Johnson are unable to deal with this problem without having exposing the fundamental flaw in Brexit, which is that the sovereignty he so jealously demands from Brussels buys no clout in Washington, Beijing or wherever else.

The British isles national curiosity requires a new strategic partnership with the EU, but Johnson refuses even to contain that idea in the negotiation. The obstacle utilised to be confidence that Britain experienced no require of Europe. It appears to be like now much more like worry of admitting how substantially of Europe Britain even now wants.

• Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist