The Politics of Brexit in Neo-liberal Economic Order: Implications for British Trade Relations with the World Trade Organisation

Abstract

This research set to achieve a- three-fold objectives as follows: to examine the dynamics of British domestic politics as elixir to its exit from the European Union, to appraise trade relations between Britain under the EU banner and WTO and to assess possible challenges of Brexit relative to WTO’s trade regime. The historical and descriptive research method necessitated the use of mainly
secondary information from scholarly texts, journals, magazines, newspapers, internet websites and views of eminent scholars. Existing data enabled us to generate analytical discussions and arguments while making deductions leading to findings. The research revealed that Brexit was a direct reaction to domestic politico-economic stimuli aimed at re-asserting her position as a major power capable of independently charting her economic destiny. Brexit remains a resolve of a major global player to reverse the trajectory of perceived diminishing sovereignty and increasing subservience as well as the need to dilute EU’s influence in Europe. Findings also revealed that British trade with WTO had been rewarding going by the quantum of trade deals under EU banner. Furthermore, it was revealed that Britain faces frontally dearth of skilled personnel from its bureaucracy to negotiate trade deals with the EU, WTO and individual member states of WTO. By this therefore, we recommend that Britain should enter into strategic partnership with the EU to have British trade negotiators who are EUtrained and in the employ of the EU to help recruit, train and develop capacities of future trade negotiators for Britain.