Slow Rise of Trade Politicisation in the UK and Brexit

María García

doi:10.17645/pag.v8i1.2737

Abstract

Since the Brexit referendum, the UK government has deployed a vision of ‘Global Britain’ revolving around trade agreements, yet, this was not a key issue in the referendum. Drawing on politicisation literature, we explore the absence of visible activism around future trade policy, in contrast to moderate activity around the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). We identify actors in UK TTIP mobilisation and trace their actions post-referendum, revealing politicisation as campaigners participate in channels for attempting to influence future UK trade policy. In the presence of these channels and lack of full clarity on future policy, to date, recourse to visible mobilisation in the public space has not yet occurred. Tracing this dynamic process, intertwining Brexit and trade policy, enables us to understand how politicisation of one process affects another. Crucially, given the context of re-nationalisation of trade policy, it allows us to explore how politicisation is operationalised in the absence of one of the key conditions for politicisation suggested in the literature: the transfer of authority to a more remote level of governance.

Highlights

On 23 June 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU by a narrow margin
In the post-referendum context, where the full direction and content of future UK trade policy and trade negotiations remains imprecise, and with the existence of opportunities to participate in policy consultations, large UK civil society groups working on trade policy are eschewing the high visibility activities that their European partners institigated against Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)
Trade and trade agreements have become very salient in the media and political debates, and views on these matters are highly polarised, fulfilling some of the key conditions for politicisation identified in the literature (Hutter & Grande, 2014), but this has not translated into visible mobilisation as in the case of TTIP

Summary

Introduction

On 23 June 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU by a narrow margin. Emotional campaigning in the referendum gave way to heated exchanges in Parliament, Cabinet, and the media as to what shape Brexit should take. To answer the question the article charts the politicisation of trade policy across time: Within the TTIP controversy, during the referendum, and since the referendum, with respect to future UK trade policy. It does so by identifying the presence of the key components of politicisation as described in section two of this article. The article concludes that politicisation is still there as associations involved in TTIP campaigning are actively participating in channels for (attempting) to influence the direction of the UK’s future trade policy. In the presence of these channels, and lack of full clarity as to what the future trade policy will look like, recourse to demonstrations and more visible politicisation in the public space has not occurred

Conceptualising Politicisation

Budding Politicisation of Trade Policy in the UK

Trade in the Referendum Campaign

Post-Referendum Positions on Trade Policy

Findings

Conclusion