Description
Brexit has prompted a series of questions about the role Britain should play in international relations. The discursive construction of ‘Global Britain’ has been one such response as seen most clearly in the 2021 Integrated Review of foreign policy and the salient effort to redirect Britain’s strategic national interest. Whilst research has focused on the implications of this foreign policy shift in defence, development, and security, considerably less attention is on its implications for Britain's commitment to international human rights protection and mass atrocity prevention which is at the heart of the relationship between the UK’s ‘interests and values’ (Gilmore, 2014). Policymakers outline a commitment to Britain as a ‘force for good in the world’, but the recent strategic shift in its foreign policy raises important questions about how this translates into its human protection commitments alongside parallel interests in trade and geopolitical relationships. Using examples of Britain's discourse and practice on human protection (Libya, Yemen, human rights sanctions), this article examines whether the broader discursive construction of Global Britain is the starting point of a more wholesale shift in British political discourse and practice on human rights and atrocity prevention according to how it conceives of the connection between its interests and values in its post-Brexit foreign policy.
