Rishi Sunak waves goodbye to Boris Johnson’s Global Britain era

London – and thus ends the first era of global Britain – not with Johnsonian glam, but with Sunkian sanity.

Rishi Sunak’s decision Merger of trade and business departments There is a clear departure from post-Brexit policymaking, and what confirms has been clarified to close supervisors for months — that the current UK prime minister is not prioritizing big new trade deals.

Instead, Sunak is pursuing less sexy goals, such as boosting exports and increasing foreign direct investment, and hopes his Whitehall merger will better align those objectives with Britain’s broader trade policy.

This is a far cry from the lucrative efforts of Johnson and his business secretary Liz Truss – who briefly succeeded him as prime minister – as a way of selling “Brand Britain” around the world with the now defunct Center for International Trade (DIT) Department to use and secure post-Brexit PR victory.

“Liz Truss thought trade was all about trade deals, which it is not,” said a former UK trade minister, speaking anonymously. While headline-grabbing agreements are certainly worth exploring, the same person said, less “glamorous” tasks such as dealing with trade barriers are “more important.”

,[Business and Trade Secretary] Cammy Badenoch gets that, while Liz Truss doesn’t,” said the former minister. Badenoch’s newly-expanded Whitehall empire is unlikely to hurt his popularity in the Conservative grassroots, with He’s already a favourite.

The move to scrap the DIT came as part of a wider shake-up of Whitehall by Sunak on Tuesday, which is eliminating the dedicated trade department as well as setting up a ministry focused on energy and another on technology and technology. Keeping an eye Science.

breaking down barriers

The initial response to the Whitehall makeover was largely positive – although some are questioning whether it will eat up valuable government time at a time when Sunak has little to waste.

A current trade and business minister, also speaking anonymously, said that it was “sensible” in his eyes to more closely link the business portfolio with business and industrial strategy.

The creation of the DIT was one of the first acts in office of then prime minister Theresa May following the EU referendum, with the shiny new department – ​​which swallowed up the existing UK trade and investment wing of the Ministry of Business – just a day after she entered office Number 10 Downing Street in July 2016. It was billed by his government as one of the central pillars in the UK’s efforts to make the most of Brexit.

The department certainly scored quick successes by rolling out copy-and-paste EU trade deals with a long list of foreign countries.

However, many senior figures have questioned the value of the UK’s post-newly-inked trade deals – including Sunak himself.

He said during last year’s Tory leadership contest that the UK-Australia trade deal was hurried and “one-sided”. Sunak told the rural audience that both the Australian and New Zealand trade deals – which have been criticized by Britain’s agriculture lobby – had accepted too much on agricultural imports for too little in return.

What was once seen as the department’s biggest prize – a US trade deal – has meanwhile eluded successive trade secretaries and is unlikely to happen in the near future. There are hopes within the government that Badenoch will instead strike a deal with India and secure entry into the 11-nation CPTPP trading bloc this year.

The trade minister quoted above said: “A lot of trade deals have been done, whether through rollover deals or through some of the new deals we have signed. What we need to do now is break down other trade barriers and focus on tariffs and trade measures, which have sometimes been overlooked.

Alexander Horne, professor at Durham University and an ex-Whitehall lawyer, agreed that the “low hanging fruit” is now gone and said departmental mergers therefore “make sense.”

goodbye to boosterism

Sunak’s political opponents saw the shake-up as a clear downgrading of the business agenda, although Sunak’s official spokesman on Tuesday strongly denied this. He said it was simply “a recognition that business and trade naturally go together.”

But what is clear is that Sunak sees a very different role for business policy in his government. With less than two years to go before the next general election, there is little parliamentary time to pursue new trade deals, and the government’s focus is now mainly on domestic policy.

Badenoch is therefore expected to focus on increasing British market access abroad by unlocking trade treaties in areas including digital and financial services. The Business and Trade Secretary said in a speech last month that one of his top priorities would be to “make the UK the undisputed top investment destination in Europe”.

Marco Forgione, director general of the Institute of Export and International Trade, said Tuesday’s Whitehall shake-up could help achieve that goal, calling the merger “an opportunity to better integrate exports within Britain’s wider growth strategy”. described as.

“There needs to be a focus on what works best to stimulate growth through international trade,” he argued.

Departmental merger may sound overly-technical to some in Westminster – and it’s a charge that’s often leveled at a PM is widely seen as a technocrat, But they epitomize one of the main differences between Sunak and Gung-Ho Johnson.

Johnson has never been so comfortable as giving a tub-chugging speech to sell Britain as a wellspring of talent. The fad appears more likely to drown itself in the expansion of global trade and investment patterns.

With his reshuffle of the government machinery, the prime minister will be hoping to put the intimidation and excitement of the Johnson era behind him, and promote a very different vision of Britain around the world.