Description
Since Brexit, the UK has pursued a hard negotiating strategy in Europe, and softer negotiation strategies elsewhere, notably the Asia Pacific. Trade and security negotiations have been slow and antagonistic at home, but quicker with less friction beyond. What explains this unusual ‘twin-track bargaining strategy’, and what does it say about post-Brexit UK internationalism? This article argues that at the heart of this issue are assessments of identity, status, and prestige. On the one hand, the UK sees itself as ‘too big’ for Europe, seeing relatively little status gained from a European identity. On the other hand, status suppression in Europe is seen as responsible for becoming ‘too small’ elsewhere, particularly in the Asia Pacific. The UK thus sees more status and prestige to be (re)claimed from a global, over a European, identity. So while UK hard and soft negotiating strategies appear almost as opposites, they have comparable aims towards recapturing imagined status via the ‘prestige project’ of Global Britain. The article contributes to debates into the emerging course of UK post-Brexit internationalism, and to the relatively under-theorised significance of prestige in International Relations as a vehicle not only for constructing identities but deconstructing others considered undesirable.
