https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/03/dividing-the-kingdom-britains-game-of-
“There is disunion and distraction in Downing Street as the Prime Minister struggles to explain his cavalier attitude to lock-down rules. Meanwhile, amid growing divisions at home and absent efforts to broaden and deepen ties beyond Britain’s shores, the Commonwealth faces the prospect of dissolution. The unavoidable surmise is that policy-makers and bureaucrats are either asleep at the wheel or actively hostile.”
After Brexit, government policy-making was supposed to focus on securing the national interest. Those who supported leaving the European Union assumed the United Kingdom would resume control of its territorial borders, reassert parliamentary sovereignty and return to its historic role as an independent sovereign state with a commitment to a rule-governed international trading order.
Indeed, the Johnson government embarked upon a desultory effort to re-establish the UK’s economic and political links with the world beyond Western Europe. It forged “bespoke” free-trade agreements with Australia, New Zealand and Japan and has applied for membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
