Great Britain, Or Little Britain?

Leavers promise renewed grandeur, but without the EU, Britain will be a smaller player.

- David Goodman and Jessica Shankleman

Its imperial heyday is long over, but the legacy of Britain’s global trading network endures. The Sydney Harbour Bridge, the bollards of the Puerto Madero waterfront in Buenos Aires, India’s arterial railway network, and other key pieces of international infrastructure were all designed, engineered, or manufactured by the United Kingdom.

The residual national memory of that era was a powerful motivational tool for those who advocated for the Leave side in 2016’s Brexit referendum. Ditch the collective sovereignty of the European Union, they argued, and you’d re-establish Britain’s special place in the world economy.

But the champions of what’s become a frantic effort to sever the U.K. from the EU have laid bare the paradox at the heart of Brexit. Whatever shape the separation agreement takes, the country that mastered globalization in the 18th and 19th centuries has succumbed to the popular suspicion of it in the 21st. Die-hards may be right, and Britain may well be headed for a bright future. But its immediate one will be defined by isolation and economic self-harm as Brexit caters to the previously un-British notions of protectionism and nativism.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s government in London is promising to create a new “global Britain,” forging its own trade deals after loosening ties with the EU, the world’s richest economic alliance. The U.K. will no longer be dependent on Brussels to open up export markets. It will also be able to choose who comes into the country, shunning low-skilled workers and focusing on the best and brightest. Yet no matter how well it all goes, replacing the economic value of EU membership looks close to impossible.