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The British grew wealthy and powerful through a maritime strategy, a strong navy and merchant navy allowed strategic freedom and secure global trade which brought prosperity. In the European Union we reversed hundreds of years’ success and pursued a continental strategy, states keep together through rules and tariffs while borders are defended by expensive armies. Fortunately Brexit returned us to our long proven maritime strategy. Now we just need a government with common sense.
Britain has been a global trading nation for hundreds of years.
If you’ve ever been a student at the US Navy War College at Newport, Rhode Island, you will have read the institute’s bible – The Influence of Sea Power on History – published in 1890 and written by its strategic prophet, Admiral Alfred Mahan. My copy is always close at hand. Mahan describes how during the eighteenth century the Royal Navy defeated the rival kingdom of France by keeping the seven seas open for trade and strategic military moves from Spain to Egypt, from the Baltic to the Indian Ocean, from North America to the British Isles. Mahan’s theory applies no less today. What suits continental nations doesn’t work for strategically placed groups of islands because we can make our own rules. Instead of taking orders from Europe or America, our ship of state can sail wherever we wish over the world’s vast oceans.
With only a single real superpower and that one attacking its closest allies, not surprisingly there is a shift towards a more diverse world with several focal points, more like the eighteenth century than the last one. Already half the planet’s GDP is created around the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Even the isolation strategy released by Trump’s White House reminds that in 1990 the EU had a 24% share of global GDP but today it’s shrunk to 14% of global GDP. Price Waterhouse Cooper forecast that by 2050 the EU share of global GDP will shrink to 9%. The message is loud and clear. EU resets or rejoining Europe are not paths to economic growth, let alone faster economic growth. Quite the opposite as the government is finding out.
After half a century swallowing rules and coughing up money, we are once more free to think outside the European cage. Our neighbours are still very resentful and busy smearing Brexit along with Nigel Farage through their cultivation of our politicians and media. Brexit phobia stories make the Swiss TV news because the EU wants to lure the Swiss into their cage. Brexit is not responsible though blamed for Covid 19 and its impact on our exports, particularly aircraft engines, airbus wings and aircraft. Brexit is not responsible for Russian hacking attacks on Marks and Spencer and Jaguar Land Rover which lost production worth millions. Brexit did not cause Donald Trump to impose high tariffs on America’s trade partners yet blamed for an endless list of own goals scored by Rachel Reeves.
We need to change course and much faster. Thank heavens we belong already to a core group – Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand , Singapore and United Kingdom – all members of The Five Power Agreement. Our combined GNP in Sterling is £ 7.2 trillion and combined population 147 millions. ( As I write this article a £ buys US $ 1.35 thus our combined GDP is over US $ 13 trillion.) Together we’re democracies with nearly half America’s GNP and half its population.
At this point I should confess that I’m no more a real economist than Rachel Reeves – although as a diplomat, after consulting the local real economists, I wrote regular reports on the economies of Switzerland, Canada, South Korea and Jamaica! Moreover, I headed Britain’s diplomatic commercial departments in the last two countries during the 1980s and during the 1990s represented an industry with 80,000 employees and £5 billion annual production by serving as a member of the CBI Council.
Over three years in South Korea our exports doubled from £ 296 million in 1986 to £ 634 million by 1989. We had a remarkable export team – mostly Korean ladies from the top women’s university though a few men – but the main reason for success was the annual growth of South Korea’s GDP by as much as 12 to 13% each year. In those days imports of services were not allowed and GEC building the Seoul Subway was a large chunk of the export figures. That’s nearly fifty years ago. The figures for the year ending with the first quarter of 2025 show exports of goods and services to South Korea reached £ 8.1 billion and our imports £ 7.3 billion. Britain and South Korea this very month signed a free trade agreement.
Seven Commonwealth countries joined the twelve nation Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) which includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United Kingdom and Vietnam. That is a market of 400 million people producing £ 28 trillions of GDP. Add South Korea and that becomes a market 452 millions producing £ 30 trillions of GDP. In other words together we overtake the USA’s GDP and have a much larger population. We would match the EU’s population though far exceed their GDP. The EU are in talks with the CPTPP but membership is years away. To have any chance of joining the EU needs to modernise its antiquated customs procedures for a start. Instead of our rejoining the EU slow growth lane, may I suggest it’s wiser to make them come to us as members of the fast growth CPTPP.
The European country hardest hit by Trump’s tariffs is Switzerland – population 9 million and GDP an incredible £ 1 trillion – often I urge them to join the CPTPP rather than become breakfast for the EU. Were India to join the CPTPP that would add 1.5 billion population and £ 4.0 trillion of GDP. Brazil would add 212 million population and £ 2 trillion GDP. South Africa has 64 million population and £ 0.4 trillion GDP. Furthermore, already half the world’s economy is found around the Pacific Rim and Africa is most likely the next continent ripe for fast growth. Imagine the figures in 2050.
Growth is the key to reducing debt and creating Wealth
When one compares the rates of growth of the EU and CPTPP plus South Korea the gap is remarkable. Average growth of GDP for the whole EU was between 0.4% and 0.7% during the last fifty years. The same statistic for South Korea is 7% to 8% during the same fifty years. Figures for Vietnam tell an identical story.
The irony is that Obama showed little interest and eventually America withdrew from the CPTPP negotiations during Trump’s first administration. He would need to abolish all his tariffs to rejoin but rebuilding trust will take far longer than Trump’s remaining years in the White House. Long before that time Americans will feel the full impact of Trump economics. The bean farmers already do and Trump had to find a $ 12 billion agriculture bail out. As they say east of Suez; slowly, slowly, catchee monkey.
Membership of CPTPP was the wisest move of British trade diplomacy for many years, thanks to a Conservative Government trying to take the most obvious advantage from Brexit – namely freedom of manoeuvre and choice when negotiating international and trade relationships. Over the last decade its members reached an average GDP growth of 6.3% a year. That’s about six times the average GDP growth for the EU and over twice as much as the USA. Since Trump imposed much higher tariffs, British manufacturers already seek increased trade with other CPTPP members as an alternative to the American market.
From now onwards the CPTPP should become the corner stone of our global trade strategy that boosts our links to the Commonwealth, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Meanwhile Europe ties itself in knots through over regulation. America makes itself an unreliable opponent of free trade. Russia wants to use warfare to turn the clock back more than a century. Perhaps the greatest service our diplomats could do for the planet is to persuade China that they’re pretty comfortable. The last thing they – or we need – is a war between them and Trump!
Trump may have done us a favour with his tariffs and blackmail. He’s reminded us who we are really. We became the most powerful nation in the world by leaving Europeans and Americans to fight among themselves during a hundred years. We kept out of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. Other than the Crimean War, the British Empire fought small scale wars like that against the Mad Mahdi in the Sudan and a much larger one against the Boers in South Africa. All the while our maritime strategy made us a very wealthy country. Now we may have reached the end of the American century twenty years early. Time to restore our global past because that’s the future
