Brexit! Brexit? Brexit!&#£?

Here is proof of an old Yiddish curse: ‘May you get what you wish for.’

Britain has got its wish: it left the European Union on 31 January.

The hard part starts now. Exit done, Britain must find new entrances.

Rejecting Europe’s version of globalisation and free trade, Britain must now embrace globalisation and free trade. Retaking its ‘sovereignty’, Britain must now negotiate with the sovereignty of others. Out of political turmoil, Britain must remake its politics.

Seeking to escape the austerity mindset of the past decade, Britain faces hard economic choices and the tough truth told by trade flows.

Discarding open borders with Europe, Britain must rethink the meaning of its borders, and what that might bring for Ireland and Scotland.

Choosing its history over its geography, Britain must rethink its history and deal with the demands and blessings of its geography.

As The Economist editorialised:

Britain’s future is full of uncertainty. No longer part of one of the great global blocs, it has to find a new role in the world. Pulled apart by the tensions within the union, its nations need to find a new accommodation. Shaken by the bitter arguments over Brexit, it has to mend its frayed social contract.

Here are my forecasts for Britain bereft by Brexit and the shredding of its traditional grand strategy:

• Britain will be a weaker international power, with less diplomatic and strategic influence and a smaller role in what Europe does and how Europe acts.
• With new and permanent barriers on its biggest market, Britain will be relatively poorer than if it had stayed in Europe.
• The ‘special relationship’ with the US will be less special and less important. A poorer nation with a fainter voice in Europe will have a weaker voice in Washington.

Australia once called Britain the ‘mother country’. Let’s hope the madness is not hereditary. Brexit offers Australia cautionary lessons.

For a view of those cautions, turn to two of our finest: the journalist and author George Megalogenis and Sam Roggeveen, director of the Lowy Institute’s international security program. George provides the foreword for Sam’s new book, Our very own Brexit: Australia’s hollow politics, and where it could lead us.

Both of these public intellectuals are Australians courtesy of the post-war migration waves that make Oz one of the great multicultural nations.

Roggeveen and Megalogenis bring their own lives to discuss the twin perils of an Australian Brexit: stop migration and turn away from our Asian future.

As Megalogenis writes, the Roggeveen warning to the Oz political class is the risk of following Britain and Donald Trump’s America down ‘the dead end of nativism’. The trouble is, Megalogenis notes, nativism has worked at the ballot box, even though the consequences can be catastrophic:

The election of Trump on a platform of bellicose nativism and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union are unmistakable declarations of retreat from a phase of globalisation that favours Asia over the North Atlantic. The challenge for Australia is to separate sympathy for our allies from a pragmatic assessment of our national interest as a rich nation in Asia. This phase of globalisation plays to our natural advantages of mining, education and mass migration.

The open model works for Australia just as it works for Asia.

While not predicting an Oz Brexit, Roggeveen contemplates a scenario produced by Australia’s hollowed-out politics. The worst-case future is a rupture in the multicultural/immigration consensus of the Oz polity.

Our Brexit referendum is a general election that’s a vote on Australia’s future population. One side of politics argues for more immigration; the other erects the ‘no vacancy’ sign.

The question to the voters could sound simple: should Australia have 25 million or 50 million people?

The figures are from the Productivity Commission’s 2016 migrant intake report. With zero migration, Australia’s population in 2060 would be 27 million—similar to today’s 25.5 million, but it’d be an Oz that’s aged and grey. If migration kept to its long-term average, the population in 2060 would be 40 million. If migration grew at the higher average of the past decade, the 2060 population would be 50 million.

Our Brexit choice would be a vote on Australia’s multicultural and increasingly Asian identity. For Roggeveen, embracing immigration would be the nation deciding ‘to remain powerful enough to look after itself in the toughest and most competitive international environment we have ever faced’.

The question would be about much more than 25 million versus 50 million: the population choice is about the sort of people we are and will be.

Roggeveen writes that our national interest is in becoming a larger Australia that inevitably looks less European and more Asian. Here’s his conclusion and his lesson for Oz:

Brexit did not happen because British voters were clamouring for the United Kingdom to cut its ties with Europe; it happened because the political class was too weak to resolve its internal differences and had to call on a disengaged public to mediate. Australia’s future too may hang on the manoeuvrings of a handful of deeply unpopular politicians from parties that are largely isolated from Australian life, and a bored public so detached from the nation’s politics that it fails to grasp the stakes of the desperate wager these politicians are making.

Brexit shows what happens when poor leaders ask their people a simple question about a complex issue. Stupid question can turn into stupid answer.

The Brexit answer became, ‘Stop the world, I want to get off.’

Britain has got off. Now it has to find ways to get on with the world.

With Britain as the mother country and the US as the alliance father, Australia has a dysfunctional family.

Mum has gone nuts; dad has gone rogue.

The anchors of the Anglosphere are angry and adrift, distracted by nationalism mutating to nativism.

Domestically, the US system is so strong and dynamic it will recover from Trump. The worrying question is whether the international system that the US created can also rebound.

The prognosis for Britain is darker.

The British polity is doing lasting damage to the nation. As Martin Wolf observed in the Financial Times in March, the UK ‘has fallen into the hands of lunatics engaged in an astonishing act of national self-harm’.

I’ve always loved the Poms. I was fascinated by my grandmother’s stories of growing up in London (especially her memory of German zeppelins bombing the city during World War I). I’ve lived and worked in London (our son was born there), but I’ve never doubted I was an outsider, branded on the tongue as foreign. So this is an outsider’s sorrowful view of what Brexit is doing to the Brits.

The 2016 referendum result was as much a vote against recession, austerity and the stresses of modern life as it was a vote against Europe. But visiting London last year it was clear the Brexit obsession had become permanent. And to be in London last week was to witness the lunacy gone amok.

Three big conclusions can be stated as established facts.

1. British politics is deeply polarised. Another election is inevitable. The poll may deliver a realignment of political power, or merely entrench the polarisation.
2. Britain is leaving Europe. The economics of this is dumb, even mad. Britain will be relatively poorer because of Brexit.
3. Britain will be a weaker international power, with less diplomatic and strategic influence.

On the first point, it’s not too far-fetched to muse about Britain taking on some features of a failed state because of the way its politics and institutions are rupturing.

Chris Patten, former minister and Conservative Party chairman, is one of those who has summoned up the failed state image, as British politics lurches to extremes on both the left and the right: ‘As Brexit looms ever closer, Britain’s institutions, economic prospects, constitution, and future are all at risk. But the reckless plunge into delusion and lies proceeds apace.’

Those thoughts were penned before new prime minister Boris Johnson moved to sideline parliament and then purged Tory grandees who voted against him.

On poorer Britain, the impacts are already being felt. The UK economy is ‘2.3 per cent smaller than it would be if Britain had voted to remain in the European Union’.

As the economics editor of The Times reported: ‘Confidence has fallen to its lowest ever level, consumer purchases have recently worsened, employment fell at one of the fastest rates in almost seven years and capital investment shrank … Companies scaled back production in response to the steepest drop in new order intakes since mid-2012.’

The Brexit assurance is that a tough transition will deliver a wonderful future. The reality is that Britain will impose permanent barriers on its biggest market.

As the Oxford economist Simon Wren-Lewis keeps hammering: ‘What the UK is doing is utterly, utterly stupid. An act of self harm with no point, no upside.’

The third point about Britain being a weaker power, with less strategic and diplomatic influence, is where the lunacy really feeds on itself.

It’s tempting to say that in lurching towards the European exit, the Brits have chosen their history over their geography. In fact, Brexit is as ignorant about history as it is about geography and economics.

Britain’s diplomatic and strategic history is as Europe’s offshore balancer. That strategy means being deeply involved in Europe to stop any one country from dominating the continent, not sulking offshore.

David Blagden notes that, ‘after nearly 500 years of seeking to prevent a single great power from controlling the whole of western Europe, British withdrawal from the European Union could pave the way for precisely that outcome’. Johnson, the man who loves Churchillian World War II images, is going to surrender to the Germans.

Exiting the European superstate means giving up Britain’s historic role. It’s turning away from traditional balance-of-power realism as well as abandoning the great European effort to live in peace.

Martin Wolf commented in July: ‘The UK the world thought it knew—stable, pragmatic, respected—is gone, probably forever. Lost reputations are not readily regained.’ Whatever sort of Britain emerges from the other side of Brexit, it’ll have a reduced role and reputation in Europe.

Britain is going to have less say in what Europe does and how Europe acts. Less diplomatic influence. Less power.

Britain’s oft-cited ‘special relationship’ with the US will be less special and less important. A poorer nation with a fainter voice in Europe will have a weaker voice in Washington.

Polarised, poorer and with less power—Britain is bereft by Brexit.

Welcome to ‘The Strategist Six’, a feature that provides a glimpse into the thinking of prominent academics, government officials, military officers, reporters and interesting individuals from around the world.

1. What does Brexit mean for Britain’s place in the world?

I don’t think it will make much difference. There’s a great deal of emotional rhetoric attached to the debate on Brexit, which I can understand because the UK has been in the evolving European Union for over 40 years. In reality, though, the UK derives its power not from the EU but from the size of its economy, its soft power—which is huge through everything from the arts to the media to the dominance of the English language—and its historical links to the Commonwealth.

The UK is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, it’s the second largest aid donor in the world and it has a very large defence force. So the UK already has a prominent place in world affairs, and its membership of the EU doesn’t count for a huge amount because the EU itself seldom has a strong position on foreign policy—for 28 different countries with 28 different national interests to stitch together a common position is to stitch together the lowest common denominator.

The other thing is, from an Australian perspective, we don’t view the UK through the lens of the EU. So I don’t think Brexit will make a huge difference one way or the other.

2. Earlier this year president of the European Council Donald Tusk offered a searing (albeit clunky) criticism of those in Britain who promoted Brexit without ‘a sketch of a plan how to carry it out safely’. Given the trouble that MPs have had in agreeing on a way forward, does he have a point?

I don’t think he should have said that at all—I think that plays into the hands of the Brexiteers and that’s poor politics. How to understand the situation is to look at the parties. The Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats don’t accept the result of the referendum and want to reverse it. The Labour Party seeks to bring down the government and force a general election, as oppositions are wont to do, though their Brexit position isn’t entirely clear. Most in the Conservative Party support Prime Minister Theresa May’s deal, but the ones who don’t are the members of the European Research Group or the Democratic Unionist Party—they are more absolutists.

So the question now is whether the ERG and the DUP decide that maybe the withdrawal agreement is the best of a bad lot, or maybe they decide to roll the dice and see what happens next. That will be either (a) the UK does the worst imaginable thing and withdraws from the EU’s political structures while remaining in its economic structures, (b) they just don’t leave the EU, or (c) they call another referendum, which would be so reckless. The idea that you have a referendum and lose it and then say, ‘Let’s have another’—it’s little short of outrageous. If they hold a second referendum and people vote ‘Remain’, which is no sure thing, all of the Brexiteers will lobby for yet another referendum—a neverendum!

3. Last year you finished up your four-year stint as Australia’s high commissioner to the UK. How did the UK–Australia relationship evolve over that time and what are you most proud of?

There were two things. The first feature is that we were able to entice the conservative Cameron government into showing a lot of interest in Australia—we cultivated a good environment for strengthening the relationship. The second was the Brexit referendum. The Australian government favoured Remain—and certainly the polls showed Remain would win—but when the referendum went the other way, Malcolm Turnbull rang me and said, ‘Well, what do we do now?’ I said, ‘I think you should ring the prime minister and say we’re up for a free trade agreement.’ He did that, so we were the first country that came out in support of a free trade agreement with the UK, which was deeply appreciated by the May government.

One of the things which is really positive is that, out of a much better overall relationship and in an environment where the British government has been extremely warm, we managed to persuade them to allow Australians to use their e-passport system, instead of having to queue for hours on arrival. That’s a really good thing to the average Australian. I also think our ministers—Julie Bishop, Marise Payne, Christopher Pyne and so on—did a really good job in making AUKMIN [the annual meeting between Australian and UK defence and foreign affairs ministers] more effective. During my time as high commissioner we started to do a lot more with the Brits and I think that’s in our interest.

4. What does Britain see when it looks at Australia?

They love Australia; it’s the country they most like in the world. I’ve often pointed this out to people to their surprise: there are more British-born people living in Australia than in any other country in the world (other than Britain, naturally). In fact, there are more British-born people living in Australia than living in the whole of the EU 27.

The Brits see Australia as completely reliable, an economic miracle, a country that’s very well run, with friendly, open people who are on the same side and page as they are. I would say, having been the foreign minister for a very long time and then having been the high commissioner here, there isn’t a country in the world with which we have more common cause than the UK. That even includes New Zealand. The United Kingdom and Australia are two countries separated only by distance.

5. Do you think a ‘global Britain’ has much appetite for being more engaged—that is, showing up, spending up—in the Indo-Pacific?

The UK is most certainly up for much heavier engagement with Asia, and Australia has been encouraging that. The UK last year decided to open three new missions in the South Pacific. We went to see them on many occasions and asked them to do more in the Pacific, where they have quite a lot of soft power by virtue of their history. They are respected in the Pacific in a way that many other countries aren’t even thought of. The Brits have shown an interest in rounding up their engagement in the Pacific and it is certainly in Australia’s interest that they do so.

As for Asia, they have very strong links with Japan—mainly economic, but also very good political links—and the Japanese are quite focused on the British relationship. The British claim that they’re in a ‘golden era’ in their relationship with China, but I think the gold may now be quite tarnished as some interesting and difficult issues have come up. But nevertheless they are pretty focused on those relationships. Australia has worked on getting them more involved with Indonesia as well.

6. John Howard was the last Australian prime minister to serve a full term in government (2004–2007). Do you think the prime ministerial churn has undermined our relationships and standing around the world?

The great advantage of having continuity in those so-called great offices of state—the prime minister, the treasurer, the foreign minister—is the personal connections that they can build over the years. John Howard was a great friend of George W. Bush, had a good relationship with Jiang Zemin, and got along really well with Junichiro Koizumi, because they saw each other often. One of the most difficult tasks that we faced was getting into the East Asia Summit. When ASEAN joined China in opposing our membership bid, we were able to use our personal relationships with Indonesia and Japan to help us get in, which was a huge breakthrough for Australian foreign policy. So longevity in office helps you do that sort of thing.

The problem with the churn of prime ministers in Australia is that they haven’t been able to build much of a profile in the world or make much of an impact because they haven’t been around long enough. How can our prime minister build personal relationships through the Indo-Pacific, and with the Americans, the British and other key leaders around the world, if the officeholder keeps changing? I think it’s been a huge mistake for Labor and the Liberal Party to keep changing their prime ministers, but it reflects their priorities, which are opinion polls and the media. Instead of being focused on trying to achieve particular policy goals, they’re distracted trying to get good media coverage and fretting about the latest Newspoll.

In this special podcast, ASPI’s Dr Isaac Kfir talks to Professor Philomena Murray and Dr Margherita Matera from the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne about the latest developments in the Brexit process.

You can view links related to this week’s episode here.

In 2018, we’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly in terms of … well, almost everything. Brexit, a trade war, a migrant caravan, a Saudi journalist murdered, renewed relations on the Korean peninsula, the breakdown of the INF Treaty, turmoil in Ukraine, a damning climate change report, rovers on Mars, internment camps in China, drought in Australia, conflict in Yemen. The list goes on. And as the pessimists among you will bicker about the year behind and, much like Bloomberg, be cynical about the year ahead, we here at ASPI would like to give you a brief look at the year that was.

To kick off, let’s talk about Australia’s new national sport, leadership challenges. As betting companies proposed odds and the nation sat down with a bowl of popcorn, Australia witnessed yet another leadership spill. The Financial Review pulled together the international reaction to the state of Australian politics with headlines and quotes that you have to laugh at … or it’s just sad. The Guardian brings it down a notch with a review of Australia as a whole this year, conveying the important message that the purpose is more important than the prize.

US President Donald Trump has had a tumultuous year with the midterms and the ongoing Mueller investigation, or the ‘Witch Hunt’, as The Donald likes to call it. Business Insider brings you the 20 biggest bombshells of the investigation from 2018. Trump’s Twitter antics are something we all struggle to get our heads around and the New York Times has compiled a list of 550 people, places and things that the president has insulted on Twitter since he announced his candidacy, paired with the insults themselves.

Heading south, the migrant caravan captured the attention of the world as it passed through Central America and arrived at the US–Mexico border. See a timeline here.

China had a big year with Xi Jinping becoming ‘leader for life’, more demonstrations of aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea, the continued construction of ‘re-education’ camps and, to top it all off, the censorship of Peppa Pig. The Peterson Institute for International Economics has an interactive series of timelines outlining the trade war with the US.

Reuters has a great interactive explainer of the situation in Myanmar, where leaders are attempting to repatriate almost a million Rohingya people from surrounding nations after what the UN this year described as a genocide. And relations between North and South Korea are becoming warmer after 68 years of conflict; will it put a strain on the US alliance with the south as priorities on the peninsula drift apart?

Instability throughout the Middle East is, regrettably, just as pervasive as ever. Conflicts of all sizes and severity are ongoing, from Palestine and Israel through to Afghanistan (where, after 17 years, the government and Taliban may meet for peace talks). The forgotten war in Yemen continued to rage this year and featured heavily in ‘ASPI suggests’ for good reason. CNN has the fast facts you need to know about a conflict that has caused tens of thousands of casualties and an estimated 85,000 child deaths from starvation, while the BBC asks the important question—why is there a war? After a series of ceasefires and confrontations between regional players, Syria has now suffered through seven years of war with questions over its future remaining—especially after Trump’s announcement that US troops will pull out of the country.

Brexit has dominated the headlines coming out of the UK. The BBC offers a brilliant explainer of what’s happened this year and where negotiations sit now. And who could forget British Prime Minister Theresa May’s audition for Dancing with the Stars during a visit to South Africa, which was quickly followed up by a marvellous entrance to the Tory party conference. And looking at NATO, defence spending for the organisation rose by 5% this year.

The South African city of Cape Town narrowly avoided ‘day zero’, when its taps were set to run dry and leave its roughly 4 million residents without fresh water. It was also a big year for Rwanda. The country’s tariff moves may be a sign of wider intellectual and economic independence across Africa. Having said that, Chinese influence throughout the continent has only grown this year, mainly through loans and infrastructure investment.

Vox has captured 10 of the year’s best scientific discoveries, some of which are almost as impressive as the size of Knickers the steer. Farmers in northern Germany are facing the challenge of dealing with a growing population of large flightless birds native to South America called rheas that have surprisingly thrived in the European climate and taken a liking to German crops.

Still need to buy Christmas gifts or just fancy a good read? Datebook has compiled a list of the best books of 2018 to keep you and your loved ones busy over the break.