Can the U.S. Learn from the U.K.'s Post-Brexit Mess?
31:14 Share

Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer.

So Donald Trump's trade war, generally, it has not been going great. Since April's Liberation Day, the administration has signed exactly zero legally binding trade agreements. Last week, the Court of International Trade rejected many of the president's tariffs. And online, there's been a proliferation of memes depicting the president as a taco.

TACO stands for Trump Always Chickens Out, a cheeky take on Trump as negotiator. But then there is this.

President Trump today announced a U.S. deal with the United Kingdom, a trade deal. It's the first deal since the president began imposing sweeping tariffs on trading partners around the world, promising more to come. Back in May, Trump's tactics seemed to work on at least one person, the U.K.'s prime minister, Keir Starmer. Starmer is the head of the center-left Labour Party.

In purely political terms, it came across as a bit of a triumph for Keir Starmer. Anand Menon teaches at King's College London. He says, in fairness, this deal was maybe the easiest one Trump could have made. After all, there's no major trade imbalance between the U.S. and Great Britain. Donald Trump is a known Anglophile. And having Brexited the European Union, British leaders have something to prove. Especially Keir Starmer.

His Labour Party may have been opposed to leaving the EU, but now that they're newly in command, they've got to make it work. Well, I mean, all politicians need good news. I mean, they had a very rocky start. They've made a load of missteps. The government has thrashed in terms of popularity. Labour got a bit of a shellacking in the recent local elections we've just held. What I would say is what Keir Starmer needs more than anything else is growth. We need our economy to start growing.

So, is this deal going to make that happen today on the show? There is plenty to vote against in the U.S. and the U.K. This deal shows the challenge of giving folks something to vote for. I'm Mary Harris. You're listening to What Next? Stick around. This episode is sponsored by Home Chef.

Do you ever find yourself eating the same thing over and over again and in need of a little inspiration? Home Chef is here to make searching for new meals and cooking a new dish something to look forward to.

Home Chef sent me a few of their meals to try out, and I gotta say, when it is a Home Chef night, it's a relief. There's no staring at the fridge, wondering what kind of sorcery you're going to have to do to a wilted head of lettuce. No complaints that you're making the same old dish one more time. Everything is portioned out, ready to be thrown together by me or even my teenage son.

Home Chef has everything you and your family need for hassle-free, delicious dinners. And with over 30 options a week, they cater to a variety of dietary needs. Users of leading meal kits have rated Home Chef number one in quality, convenience, value, taste, and recipe ease. For a limited time, Home Chef is offering What Next listeners 50% off and free shipping for your first box, plus free dessert for life.

Go to HomeChef.com slash WhatNext. That's HomeChef.com slash WhatNext for 50% off your first box and free dessert for life. HomeChef.com slash WhatNext. Must be an active subscriber to receive that free dessert.

This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. This process only takes minutes, and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket.

Visit Progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. Before we get into this deal, let's do a little history.

Here in the U.S., 2016 is synonymous with Donald Trump's rise. But several months before he won the presidency the first time, the Brits had a seismic vote of their own. Around 52% of voters chose to leave the EU. The idea was that by separating from the European Union, the U.K. would have more independence on things like trade policy and immigration.

But it took until 2020 for the UK to officially leave. Anand Menon says that's because even Brexit supporters could not agree on what Brexit should actually look like. We were absolutely divided down the middle on it. And so finding a compromise that could attract anywhere near majority support was impossible. And one of the problems there was we had a binary question in 2016. Do you want to stay inside the European Union? Do you want to leave the European Union?

The problem was there were more than two answers. So you could vote to stay, or there were several different ways you could vote to leave. And there wasn't a majority in support of any of the various models of leaving. The British people were fundamentally divided down the middle about it. The British Parliament was fundamentally divided down the middle about it. So when in April 2019, in a fit of exasperation, then Prime Minister Theresa May said, all right, look,

We're going to give you a list of options as to how you leave the European Union. And we'd like you to vote for the ones you like. She did this in parliament. Not a single option gained a majority of MPs. And that, if you like, tells the story of Brexit is that even though a small majority of the British people voted to leave, we just could not figure out how to go about doing it and which model we wanted to

Yeah. So 2020, the UK is finalizing its Brexit deal and Donald Trump is on the way out of office from his first term. I wonder if it felt a little bit to people in the UK like the US may be dodging a bullet the UK wasn't. Like the UK was committed to leaving. Right. And couldn't avoid that. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I've got a lot of friends in the US who were sort of ringing me up or messaging me saying, you know, Trump was for one term, Brexit is forever. And a lot of those people are reaching their words now. That being said, you know, the sheer level of disruption being caused by this Trump administration puts Brexit in the shape, quite frankly. Yes, Brexit was disruptive. Yes, Brexit has had a significant impact on our economy, on our politics, on our constitutional system. I mean...

Back in 2020, I think we'd lost hope of the US doing as a quick and dirty trade deal of the kind that Boris Johnson and others in the Conservative Party had hoped for. I mean, one of the things that's worth saying about Brexit is if you look back in historical context, we almost picked the worst moment in history to leave the European Union because...

Brexit was all about becoming a global free trading nation. The assumptions behind that was globalization would keep on going. Our major trading partners would remain liberal and open. And within seven, eight years of the vote, globalization's in reverse because of COVID, because of fears about China, because of the war in Ukraine. And both the US and the EU have become more protectionist and more protectionist. I mean, under Biden, not under Trump now.

So the world suddenly felt far less friendly to Brexit Britain than it had done in 2016. So it's like Brexit relied on the UK kind of going solo, but...

In a friendly, welcoming world that was all into trade. Right. Everyone else kind of still in the pool, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Don't get me wrong. There was never a way credible whereby doing trade deals with the US or China or Australia or whoever it was, was going to compensate for the economic impact of leaving the European Union. I mean, trade is determined as much by geography as anything else. And the European Union is our nearest, largest country.

and biggest trading part. So it was always going to be an economic hit. But that vision of a sort of buccaneering Britain in a globalizing world, leading the way in promoting free trade, that started to look very, very dated quite quickly through no fault of our own, simply through developments in global politics and the world economy.

So what was the impact of Brexit politically? Like there's been so much churn in terms of especially the prime minister role in the UK. And now we see Labour in charge. Yeah. But it's that's all Brexit is my impression from over here across the pond.

Yes and no. I mean, what I would say is our political system was fragmenting quite badly before Brexit. You know, 2015 saw the lowest vote share, the big two parties, Conservative and Labour, that had ever got combined in a general election. So something weird was happening to our politics now. And in a sense, the election of 2024 saw a continuation of that trend, because again, the

conservatives and later got a very low vote share. What Brexit did, and here I think the comparison or the parallel with the US is instructive, is it kind of tilted the axis of politics. Because before Brexit, the major fault line in our politics had been economic. It was the left versus the right. It was people who favoured, you know,

a more generous state, higher taxes, more generous welfare payments versus people who wanted a small state, lower taxes. So Labour-Conservative was a bit like Democrat-Republican-Free Trump. And then a bit like in the United States, this values divide, this divide between people who are pro or anti-immigration, pro or anti-globalization and free trade, that division became the dominant division in our politics. And what we got was two coalitions,

a pro-Brexit and an anti-Brexit coalition, both of which were massively divided in terms of their economic preferences, including well-off people, not so well-off people, who didn't have much in common at all when it came to, say, tax policy, who shared a worldview, which led them to take the same side on Brexit. And that Brexit divide has remained a structuring divide in our politics. And that feels to me a little bit like

Right, because you have very wealthy people and people who aren't wealthy at all who are in favor of the Republican Party because of cultural signaling.

Yeah, absolutely. And then, of course, the nightmare becomes, as Boris Johnson discovered to an extent, how the hell do you devise an economic policy that appeals to a whole coalition but is fundamentally divided in terms of its economic interests? Seems impossible.

Yeah, it is. It's one of the reasons why in this sort of post-Brexit world, some people in politics want to keep talking about immigration, about footballers taking the knee, about how you label Vafrunes, because they are the cultural issues that trigger that values divide.

Last summer, Brexit took a beating at the ballot box, and the UK's Labour Party won a decisive majority in Parliament. The Conservatives, who had led the Brexit effort, were out for the first time in 14 years. At the same time, the far-right anti-immigrant Reform Party, led by Nigel Farage, also made gains.

Anand says this shows that British voters aren't all that into what Labour's got to offer. They just want something different from the status quo. So, yeah, they stood on a platform of we are not the Conservatives. I mean, our 2024 election was remarkable in the sense that Labour won a massive majority in Parliament on the back of a vote share of 34%.

So it wasn't that Labour were very, very popular. It was that the Conservatives were incredibly unpopular. So there wasn't a huge amount of enthusiasm for this Labour Party, even when they got elected. And that enthusiasm has drained away because as far as the voters seem to be concerned, nothing much has changed. So Keir Starmer is your prime minister now. How would you characterize the first six months of Starmer's time?

running the country. I was going to use the English word ropey. I'm not sure how well that translates across the Atlantic. Stringy? Uncertain. A little off. Yeah, a little off. And I think amongst the commentariat, a slight sense of frustration that this government seems to have come to power without any clear plan as to what it wants to do and how it wants to do it. Other than to be anti what the conservatives were doing.

Well, other than to win, the danger, of course, then is we've had the Conservatives for 14 years and people thought nothing changed. We've got Labour now. If they still think nothing has changed by the end of this parliament, then I think more and more people will be tempted to try Nigel Farage simply because neither of the mainstream alternatives seem able to deliver. Yeah. I mean, we talk in the US a lot about how voters are voting, it seems, for change in

just as an idea, like not for policies, just for different. Like, I don't seem to like what's happening here. And that seems like a real similarity to what's happening in the UK. And what's interesting to me about Nigel Farage is that he was the guy who is the big booster for Brexit, which people don't seem to like.

But he was able, because of your parliamentary system, to be in this reform party, sort of spark the idea of Brexit, not have to be the one who implements it. You know, the conservatives have to implement it. And now all of a sudden he's back and he's like, hey, it's me again. I'm still the change guy. And I'm like, I don't know if you could do that in the U.S. because of how our party system works. But I also find it very interesting. Yeah.

Well, you've got a two-party system, so it's very different. I mean, the difference here is because we have a multi-party system, bizarrely, because we have a first-past-the-post electoral system like you do, but it means that you can be a noisy challenger like Nigel Farage and criticise from the sidelines. And the only thing Nigel Farage has ever run is a political party. Hmm.

But he does it very, very well indeed. And, you know, on the Brexit question, firstly, he argues that the Conservatives did it wrong, which is why it hasn't worked. But secondly, of course, Brexit isn't the prime concern of people in this country anymore. People are concerned with the cost of living, with their wage packet, with the state of public services, with immigration. And they're all issues he's tapping into immediately.

It's interesting at the moment, because since his party essentially won the recent local elections, they've been subject to a lot more scrutiny. And a lot of studies are appearing in the media here of the costing and the impact of the economic policies they're proposing. And they're eye-wateringly terrible. Okay, they don't add up. They don't make sense. But the open question for me now, such is the scale of dissatisfaction with mainstream politics, is whether people even care.

That is to say, people might not be saying, let's vote Nigel Farage because of his unconstant promises on tax and spend, but let's vote Nigel Farage because everyone else has been rubbish. And that's a good enough reason to give it a go. Does that freak you out?

Well, I mean, it's not great for the stability of the country, I don't suppose. It doesn't freak me out because I think, you know, but I think the mainstream centrist political elites in both your country and my country need to have a good hard look at themselves and recognize the fact that for at least a decade through 2016, they failed their electorates. It's all very good, well and good being stable, being centrist, being moderate. But if you are making people feel that in their pocketbooks, then

If you are making people feel better off or that politics is for them, if you reside over a period of politics that leads people to vote for the mad alternative just because they're fed up, you've done something very, very wrong. We'll be back after a quick break. Today's episode is sponsored by Smart Travel, a new podcast from NerdWallet.

You know that feeling when you're trying to book a trip? Too many choices, too much fine print, and no real way to know if you're actually getting the best deal? Smart Travel helps you skip the stress and book with confidence. On Smart Travel, NerdWallet's travel journalists break down the financial side of travel with research-backed insights. They compare perks, costs, and trade-offs to help you travel and spend smarter.

The nerds cover topics like which airport lounge memberships are worth it and which ones just give you little stale crackers in a crowded power outlet. Curious to know which airline fees are actually avoidable and which ones are not? Turn to the nerds. They even talk about how to maximize your hotel points for real savings, not just free bottled water. And when trip insurance is actually worth it.

So if you're trying to figure out whether that fancy travel credit card justifies the annual fee, or if it's really just an expensive way to flex at the airport, give the nerds a listen. Before you book, learn how to get the most out of your travel dollars. Follow Smart Travel on your favorite podcast app. This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game, shifting a little money here, a little there, just hoping it all works out?

Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can be a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill, too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll help you find options within your budget. Try it today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

Your gut affects everything, even your mood. So Oli created two brand new products to take care of your insides. Oli Big Ten Probiotic has 10 strains of probiotics, their most ever, to support a healthy gut microbiome, immune system, and stress response. And Oli Super Good Superfoods delivers 15 superfoods in tasty gummy form. Find them at Oli.com and exclusively at Walmart. Oli! These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

What Anand laid out in our conversation, it reminded me a lot of what we're seeing with our politics here in the U.S., a far-right populist threat that mainstream politicians do not know how to deal with. And while Democrats here at home are struggling to respond to Trump's agenda, Anand says in the U.K., giving too much attention to Nigel Farage and his Reform Party, it might be a big mistake for Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour Party.

I think there's several things. I think, firstly, it is probably damaging for the Labour Party to focus solely on the threat from Nigel Farage.

partly because that allows the agenda of politics to be set by Farage, which means we're talking a lot about immigration. And I don't think in any manner of means, if we go into the next election with immigration as the big issue, that only helps one person, and that's Nigel Farage. I also think Labour, and again, this is down to our multi-party system, faces threats from its left, from the Liberal Democrats, from independent candidates, from the Green. And I think by facing squarely to the right and trying to deal with Nigel Farage, Labour are falling into the trap

of underestimating the danger of losing ground on their left as well. Remember, the one absolutely fundamental difference between the Democrats and the Labour Party in terms of how we react is the Labour Party are in power.

Okay. There's very little the Democrats do because ultimately, if you're not in power, the first thing you need is for the people who are in power to screw up. That is completely and utterly out of your control. Labour hold the levers of power. So there are still things they can do. They also get the blame. No, you do get the blame. But at least you're not impotent. You're not waiting for the other side to screw up. You can do stuff yourself. And I think that matters massively.

Yeah. I mean, Keir Starmer gave a speech in May in which he said that the UK was risking becoming an island of strangers. And he's talked about immigration doing incalculable damage to the UK. These seem like pretty right wing talking points.

I mean, it's an illustration of how Nigel Farage has been very effective in setting the agenda. It's not dissimilar to how the Democrats drifted a bit rightwards before your presidential election because of what Trump was saying. I mean, as a political scientist, what I'd say is the empirical evidence all points to the fact that if you try and accommodate the right, you only strengthen it.

you know, by adopting their rhetoric, by focusing on the issues they think are central, you basically just give them airtime and more credence. Because, you know, your voters who are really worried about immigration aren't going to listen to a Keir Starmer speech and think, ah, this guy's got it. They're going to think, well, if I'm obsessed about immigration, I'm going to vote for Nigel Farage because he's obviously been obsessed with this issue for many, many years. If you were advising Keir Starmer, what would you tell him to do?

If I were in rising Keir Starmer, I really would worry about the fate of this country. So thank God I'm not. Although, why do you say that? God, imagine the responsibility. I mean, I like to shout from the sidelines. Far less responsibility. I mean, I think he is drifting too far to the right. I think a lot of... So for me, there are two groups of voters at play here, okay? There are the ones who are voting reform, and I don't think Labour wins them back.

I think people vote reform because they've had it with the big two parties. Okay. And I think ultimately the way to keep the waivers, the labor voters who are thinking about reform, is not to just talk tough on immigration because ultimately immigration is going to remain higher than these people want anyway because our economy needs immigrants.

but is to generate economic growth and to show that there are real practical changes that having a sensible Labour government can bring you in terms of your day-to-day life. Now, that's very easy for me to say sitting on the outside. I could only imagine the sense of panic you'd have sitting in Downham Street when you see election results like our local elections. But it speaks to a bigger point for me about our government at the moment, is we have a government that is curiously unpolitical or apolitical in the sense that Keir Starmer

six plus months in power has given no hint at all

of having a political program or a political credo or an ideology. And that sort of fosters the impression that this is quite a rudderless government that is reactive rather than one that is following a narrative that it has set for how to improve the country. And I think that is doing the government no favors at all. So if I were advising the prime minister, I think the first thing I'd tell him is get a story, get a narrative, and show it out to the British people and show that you're acting to make it come true.

God, I feel like you could photocopy that and send it to the Democrats in the US. I mean, but again, it's very easy for us to say. I mean, it's far harder to do. But I do think actually politics is about competence and narrative. It's about both.

You know, without competence, you can't actually do the hard stuff, the policy detail, because politics and governing is really, really hard. But without narrative, there's no shape and no one feels any sense of momentum at all. And I think what people need is a sense that we are moving from where we are to a better destination. You know, when I look at the US and the UK, I see them struggling with similar issues, immigration, international trade.

But then when I look at this, the beginnings of the trade deal that the U.S. and the U.K. are working on right now, it seems to me like both governments needed this deal. They needed the story of this deal, like to show strength, momentum moving forward. Does that say something to you about how the isolationist approach that's become popular in both countries is actually working in practice? Yeah.

I think diplomatic success for Keir Starmer is good. And actually, the one metric where he's winning is who would make the best prime minister. And I think actually statesman like helps him there. But Trump, it was different. Trump needed to show that his tariffs were making an impact on other countries. And even though actually, they were quite low on us compared to some other countries, then it was good to show that deal. And you know,

So much of trade policy these days is performative rather than substantive, but it's suited both sides. What I would say, though, is don't overestimate the degree to which our countries are in the same boat, because the UK is a smallish country with a very open economy. The United States is a big country with a pretty closed economy. So actually, we get disproportionately badly affected by disruption in the international trading system in a way that the United States simply doesn't.

So we have more room to maneuver. Yeah, you'll feel less affected by what happens in international trade. Trade is a far smaller proportion of US GDP than it is of UK GDP. And the second thing I would say, which, you know, we watch in amazement the United States where we see the vox tops of people say how bad the economy is. You have levels of growth we would kill for. Sure.

Quite simply, you seem to have this miraculous economy that keeps growing whatever the hell goes on. We have been stuck with growth levels hovering around zero or slightly higher for many, many years. So in that sense, I think some of the political manifestations of discontent are pretty similar across the two sides of the Atlantic, but I think the base economic conditions are very different. You've said Keir Starmer is safe in his position. So why...

Is he so worried about Nigel Farage and what's happening with reform right now? I think there's a genuine concern in the Labour Party that they might lose their majority at the next election.

Keir Starmer from the start has said he's engaged in a 10-year project. People say that. I've got the feeling he means it. It's been a while since you've had a 10-year prime minister. No, no, absolutely. It's a hard thing to do, though. My God, if you can't do it with a majority of his size, then you'll never do it again. But I think, you know, he's worried about that. I think he realizes that to get real change, real results is going to take more than one parliamentary term. I think he realizes quite rightly that one of the biggest problems in our politics these days is chronic short-termism.

People take either quick and easy decision and get you results in a couple of years rather than the long painful decisions around investment that give you robust growth in 10 years' time. All that makes perfect sense. I just worry whether by being so cautious, by being so reactive, by being so defensive, that the government is blowing a chance to deploy its eye-watering majority and actually just say, you know what, this is what we're doing because we think it's right for the country and the results will come through.

Again, it's very easy from the outside to say I want the government to be more bold. I'm sure if I was in number 10, I'd be quite confused. Anand, I'm really grateful for your time. Thanks for coming on the show. Not at all. My pleasure. Anand Menon is the director of the UK in a Changing Europe, an academic think tank and a professor at King's College London.

And that's the show. What Next is produced by Paige Osborne, Alaina Schwartz, Isabel Angel, Rob Gunther, Anna Phillips, Ethan Oberman, and Madeline Ducharme. Ben Richmond is the Senior Director of Podcast Operations here at Slate. And I'm Mary Harris. Go track me down on Blue Sky. Say, hey, I'm at Mary Harris. Thanks for listening. Catch you back here next time.