Brexit, if it happens, is the start of a process and not the end of the story. Leave aside the myriad details that will need to be settled between the EU and its former member relating, say, to the rights of international civil servants working for the EU in the UK or their British counterparts living and working for EU bodies in Ireland or on continental Europe in terms of pensions, benefits, property rights and the right to remain in their host country. Once the UK leaves the EU, Brexiteers hope to set about the task of forging “bold, new buccaneering” trade deals around the world. Rather than this being the trivial matter that Brexit supporters such as Liam Fox implied (a free trade deal with the EU would be the easiest in human history, he claimed), trade negotiations are protracted, complicated affairs that require expert services (the very experts derided by Michael Gove during the referendum, of course). Politics rather than economic desires will be the driving force for this process and Brexiteers have had a taste of the complexity of satisfying competing political imperatives since the surprise outcome of the 2016 vote.
The Brexiteers have promised that food standards will remain sacrosanct after Brexit. There is much unease in Europe about some US agricultural practices: use of antibiotics in animal production, use of a mild bleach solution to sterilise poultry carcasses and the raising of genetically modified crops, to name but three. These concerns are also shared amongst the British public, yet the American agricultural lobby has made it clear that UK food standards would be expected to drop to accommodate the import of US produce as a condition of any trade deal. This would be problematic for UK farmers for two obvious reasons: firstly, cheap US food imports could undercut domestic production, threatening the livelihood of British farmers (who will then have to compete with New Zealand and Australian produce too, one imagines); secondly, and more subtly, it would make exportation of UK produce to the EU much more problematic (forgetting for a moment the question of WTO tariffs) since the EU would not easily be able to guarantee that US (or other) agricultural produce was penetrating their market which did not meet the EU’s strict standards via the UK. The easy way to prevent this from happening would be to raise tariffs on UK produce to punitive levels such that their impact would be zero.
However, a UK-US free trade deal is not within the gift of the US President. Any such deal would need to be ratified by both Houses of US law makers. A no deal Brexit will force the imposition of a border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland due to WTO obligations and (ultimately) the protection of the EU single market. This would threaten the Good Friday Agreement and potentially risk a resumption of “the troubles” in Northern Ireland. The leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Nancy Pelosi, has made it clear that they would block a free trade agreement with the UK should it happen. A US-UK trade agreement is vital to the hopes of Brexit and looks to be stymied at the very first hurdle – even before the trade negotiators can begin to put flesh on the bones of it. Sadly, Brexit true believers seem undaunted by the economic and political consequences and limitations of their “true religion”.