Brexit Britain is missing an Asia policy

Earlier this week, Alexander Downer, the former foreign minister of Australia and now the country’s High Commissioner to Britain, gave a wide-ranging speech at Oxford University’s China Centre. The contents were typically genial but frank. “During the time that I’ve been based here in London,” he observed, “I’ve been surprised how little attention Asia gets in this part of the world.”

Downer recently told BBC radio that the price of a free-trade deal for Britain in Canberra might be a more liberal visa regime for Australians. “We would want to see greater access for Australian businesspeople working in the UK,” Downer noted. “That’s often been a part of free-trade negotiations.”

In the post-Brexit world, Downer may well get his wish. Brexit is causing internal turmoil in British politics. But the moment when the country needs to seriously rethink its relationship with the world is fast approaching, as Britain seeks to exit the EU by spring 2019. The British government has made it clear it is seeking what is known as a “hard Brexit”: no attempts to remain a member of the single European market of 500 million people, and no attempts to remain part of the EU customs union.

In fact, this decision means Britain will actually need to do more, not less, about engaging with its European neighbours.

What appears to be lacking is gracious language about the peace and security that the EU has brought the continent since the second world war, if only to smooth currently fraught relationships between London and the continent. Most of the language about Europe in Britain today looks grudging and insular.

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Yet the really big task will be to bring the Indo-Pacific region to the forefront of British political and economic thinking. Top politicians from the prime minister and foreign secretary down have spoken of making Britain truly “global”. But so far, there have been few signs of a big-picture view of the world. There are occasional mentions of Australia as an old ally. But only 1 per cent of Britain’s trade is with Australia. Canberra’s biggest trading relationship is with Beijing, while its most important security relationship is with Washington.