Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit Global Britain sounds good – and that’s about it

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson did not coin the phrase “Global Britain”, which he made liberal use of during the Brexit campaign to symbolise a promised land where the nation might transit from being one among many European Union members to being a world leader again. The term has a more respectable provenance than being just a political slogan.

The Global Britain envisaged in a report published earlier this year by the Henry Jackson Society in London, endorsed by Johnson and written by Member of Parliament Bob Seely and foreign relations expert James Rogers, appears at first to offer a seductive “21st Century Vision” for Britain.

This would be a Britain which (if not yet torn asunder by Brexit strife) might not rule the waves like Britannia of yore but could use its military might to help protect freedom of navigation. It would be a free trader and a defender of liberal values as well as of its national interest.

It is a rather romantic (or quixotic) vision that sees Britain exerting benign democratic influence around the world in support of those who oppose autocracy, economic autarky or mercantilism. The idea of a Global Britain as a defender of rights might have whimsical appeal in Hong Kong, for example.

Three years ago, Johnson, then foreign secretary, suggested that people around the world were looking for Britain to lead. “And so, whether we like it or not, we are not some bit part or spear carrier on the world stage. We are a protagonist – a global Britain running a truly global foreign policy,” he said.