Post-Brexit UK Foreign Policy Dynamics
Summary
Since formally exiting the European Union, the United Kingdom has embarked on a sustained effort to redefine its place in the global order. Policymakers have navigated a complex terrain of decoupling from EU institutions while seeking new strategic partnerships in security, trade and diplomacy. The “Global Britain” narrative has underpinned a pivot towards the Indo-Pacific, exemplified by defence cooperation frameworks such as AUKUS, alongside an intensification of bilateral accords with EU member states to maintain continuity in coordination. Domestic political divisions—particularly factional contestation within the governing party—have shaped both the style and substance of policy, producing oscillations between a hard-line assertion of sovereignty and pragmatic re-engagement on shared challenges such as Russian aggression and climate security. Trade diplomacy has been cast as a performative assertion of autonomy, even where economic gains are modest. Across these domains, the interplay of ideology, identity and institutional innovation has driven an adaptive foreign policy that seeks both global reach and renewed European ties.
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Post-Brexit UK Foreign Policy Dynamics publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in post-brexit uk foreign policy dynamics across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Discursive externalisation: A strategy in which leaders respond to domestic pressures by framing foreign policy initiatives as instruments for internal legitimation.
Performativity: The notion that policy actions (such as negotiating an agreement) serve to enact a political identity or narrative, regardless of material impact.
Factional politics: Internal party divisions that influence decision-making by aligning groups around distinct ideological or strategic outlooks.
Anglosphere: An imagined community of English-speaking states sharing common historical, cultural and political values, often invoked to justify strategic partnerships.
References
- Withdrawal symptoms: party factions, political change and British foreign policy post-Brexit. Journal of European Public Policy (2023).
- ‘BrOthers in Arms’: France, the Anglosphere and AUKUS. International Affairs (2024).
- You’re projecting! Global Britain, European strategic autonomy and the discursive rescue of the internationalised state. European Security (2024).
- Performing trade: ‘Global Britain’ and the UK’s post-Brexit free trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand. Review of International Political Economy (2025).
- Out of Sight, Out of Mind? UK–EU Member States Bilateralism as an Enabler of Europeanisation. JCMS Journal of Common Market Studies (2024).
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