foreignpolicy--2020-04-03--Britain’s Post-Brexit Identity Crisis

Britain’s Post-Brexit Identity Crisis

Hair typically tousled , Johnson began by pointing up at James Thornhill ’ s vast ceiling painting titled “ The Triumph of Peace and Liberty Over Tyranny.
” Britain ’ s departure , he suggested , could be a moment of liberation and transformation .
An island long shackled by continental constraints would fly like Superman , Johnson opined , “ ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion ” for the benefits of free trade and charting your own national path .
Brexit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a country whose 2016 referendum realized a vote to reject not just the European Union but also a model of globalization favoring prosperous urbanites over poorer , rural communities .
Even before the new divisions and shutdowns brought about by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic , Johnson was leading the world ’ s most radical experiment in deglobalization : a bloody-minded push to overturn decades of conventional wisdom that midsize nations must band together , both to reap the rewards of trade and solve problems that each would find too large to fix on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Brexit will act as a rebuke to those globalists who argue that economic prosperity and democratic sovereignty are hard to reconcile .
Other nations may follow suit , rejecting the strictures of multilateralism for bold new eras of national autonomy .
But that is a big if , given Brexit also leaves Britain facing awkward questions not just about the kind of trade deal Johnson may strike with the EU but also about the kind of country Britain aspires to become .
Johnson wants to believe that Britain ’ s future can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more in control of its political destiny .
Many arguments for Brexit were based on misunderstandings—perhaps willful , perhaps not—of globalization itself and thus the way Britain ’ s ties with Europe are now likely to be recast .
Johnson wants to believe that Britain ’ s future can be simultaneously more open to the world and more in control of its political destiny .
But his policies already look incoherent .
Britain ’ s tight timetable to strike a deal this year has been severely complicated because of its pandemic response .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ balancing conflicting future visions of a free trading , low-regulation “ Singapore-on-Thames ” with more statist pledges to reduce yawning inequalities .
More to the point , he faces one ultimate Brexit conundrum—namely that the act of departure itself could worsen the very underlying divisions that pushed his country to leave in the first place .
Gove had a point .
Decades of ever closer ties helped boost Britain ’ s economy .
In 1992 , the U.K. signed the Maastricht Treaty , which accelerated European economic integration by handing more powers to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ justice and foreign policy , and laying the groundwork for the creation of the euro .
At that time , British GDP per capita was nearly a fifth below that of France .
Twenty-five years later , Britain had pulled ahead .
Britain ’ s growth was uneven , however .
London boomed , as did other major cities .
Decaying industrial regions and hardscrabble coastal towns did not .
Taken as a whole , British household incomes remain well below their level prior to the 2008 financial crisis .
Homeowners in desirable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only at the cost of ever higher inequality among regions .
During the 2010s , house prices in London , for instance , increased twice as fast as they did in the rest of Britain .
It was voters from those left-behind areas , including small post-industrial towns in northern England like Consett and Wigan , that propelled Johnson back to power in Britain ’ s recent election .
It was voters from those left-behind areas , including small post-industrial towns in northern England like Consett and Wigan , that propelled Johnson back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election .
The Conservative leader now heads an ungainly coalition , bringing together genteel and traditionally Tory suburbs in southern England with once solidly socialist northern cities .
In what amounts to a realignment of British politics around a Remain-Leave axis , Johnson united two groups that voted strongly to leave : older , affluent social conservatives on the one hand and the lower-skilled working classes that used to back the opposition Labour Party on the other .
Keeping this grouping together is now one of Johnson ’ s trickier political challenges .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ be finding answers to the questions Brexit posed about the failures of Britain ’ s economic model .
Globalization tends to be portrayed as a uniform process , where all nations must follow similar rules .
But in truth each country globalizes in its own peculiar way , as industries with competitive advantages duke it out on the world stage .
That process helped Britain become the world ’ s second largest exporter of services , behind only the United States .
London ’ s status as a European and global financial center @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But British firms also thrive in trading services such as advertising and management consulting , telecommunications , information technology , and business .
U.K. services exports are worth almost twice as much as its goods exports , according to McKinsey , a consultancy .
Globalization ’ s advances also helped some British manufacturers recover from the traumas of Thatcherism—the free market , small-government policies of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher .
Policies promoting deregulation and competition during the 1980s pushed U.K. manufacturing down from about a quarter of GDP to less than a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during the 1990s and 2000s , notably in areas like car-making , where companies such as Honda and Nissan built huge factories to export cars to Europe .
Aircraft parts and pharmaceuticals did well too as Britain became a base from which international investors could access the EU ’ s so-called frictionless single market .
Yet these British successes came at a cost , not least a pronounced hourglass-shaped labor market with a squeezed middle class .
The era of hyperglobalization created plenty of good jobs at the top in both services and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ labor market also churned out poorly paying low-skilled jobs at the bottom , leaving millions of workers barely out of poverty .
But middle-skilled jobs , such as factory machinists , were caught in the middle , falling by around a 10th in the decade before the 2008 financial crisis .
Much of the recent Brexit debate has focused on how “ soft ” or “ hard ” a future EU trading relationship would be .
A Canada-style deal is undeniably hard , involving the reintroduction of customs checks and possibly tariffs .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ easy : Canada ’ s took seven years , a feat Britain now hopes to achieve in less than one , according to Johnson ’ s self-imposed deadline .
Set against the backdrop of the coronavirus crisis , with both British and European political elites overwhelmingly preoccupied with outbreak management , the odds of meeting this timetable look worse than ever .
Of the plausible deals Britain could have struck , Johnson ’ s also threatens the greatest disruption to trading patterns , short of crashing out of the EU entirely .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economy 3.5 percent smaller in a decade , according to the London-based National Institute of Economic and Social Research—a decline that amounts to $ 90 billion , or about $ 1,100 per person per year forever .
Yet Johnson ’ s true Brexit conundrum is that these new frictions will hit some sectors harder than others .
As the author and economist Martin Sandbu argued : “ A hard Brexit … stands to exacerbate the polarising characteristics of the UK ’ s existing economic model and harshen the social tensions to which it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ happen ?
A hard Brexit will hurt British-based manufacturers that use the U.K. as a base from which to plug into European supply chains , like Nissan or Jaguar Land Rover , owned by India ’ s Tata Motors .
These companies rely on sending parts and widgets back and forth across Europe ’ s borders .
Intermediate goods traded with Europe alone now make up roughly a quarter of Britain ’ s imports and exports , according to McKinsey .
When we speak of globalization , this is what we mean : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of production that trade economists call “ global value chains , ” often based on models of “ just in time ” delivery .
In this sense , much of Britain ’ s recent globalization is actually best understood as a process of Europeanization .
A hard Brexit will undo much of this , adding costs to companies via trade barriers and delays through new custom checks .
Few British industrial manufacturing firms are likely to replace contracts lost in France or Germany with others in South Korea or Thailand.Johnson ’ s predecessor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this problem with her “ Chequers ” deal—named after the country residence of sitting British prime ministers—which preserved frictionless trade in goods .
Johnson rejected this because it meant keeping common EU rules , in effect choosing to sacrifice car- and drugmakers on the altar of sovereignty .
Nor are U.K.-based manufacturers likely to be able to replace lost EU business .
The cost of moving goods over long distances remains a powerful force shaping trade patterns .
Apple can ship lightweight electronics from factories in China , but in heavier industries like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be regional , for instance in North America or East Asia , rather than truly global .
Few British industrial manufacturing firms are likely to replace contracts lost in France or Germany with others in South Korea or Thailand .
Brexit will hit trade in services too .
More than half of exported U.K. services end up in Europe , where they will lose access to the single market , for instance when the city of London loses the so-called “ passporting ” rights that let banks sell services into the single market @ @ @ @ @ @ @ centers grow by servicing regional markets , as New York does for the United States or Hong Kong for China , so London will suffer as it distances itself from its European base as banks and brokerages shift divisions to Frankfurt or Dublin .
Services are still likely to be more resilient than manufacturing , however .
Trade in services is still growing strongly around the world , in contrast to the exchange of goods , which is stagnant or declining .
If Britain manages to sign post-Brexit trade deals with countries like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is likely to seek favorable conditions for its services industries .
Services trade is also less troubled by problems of distance , meaning British banks or consultants are more likely than manufacturers to be able to replace lost European business elsewhere in the world , for instance in Asia .
Not all British factories will move : Nissan , which operates Britain ’ s largest car factory in the northern city of Sunderland , recently pledged prior to the coronavirus crisis to stay even under a hard Brexit scenario , although whether this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other major international manufacturers now depends on the severity of the coming economic downturn and potentially government support to offset huge falls in demand .
Falls in the value of sterling prior to the crisis helped workers and factories regain lost competitiveness , although again these effects have now been swamped by the economic turbulence brought on by the pandemic .
Still , when the coronavirus crisis subsides , thousands of manufacturing jobs , built up slowly over decades , are likely to shift gradually ( or potentially at an accelerated rate due @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Poland and the Czech Republic , where access to Europe is easier .
Foreigners who might once have brought new factories to Britain will head to Europe too , just as Elon Musk recently began a new Tesla Gigafactory in Germany .
Britain , he said , was too risky .
Just a fraction of Britain ’ s manufacturing employment comes via high-quality exporters .
Even so , those jobs are often to be found in left-behind regions , while services jobs in banks or advertising agencies are overwhelming concentrated in cities .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ supporting other employment , suggested Richard Baldwin , a trade economist known for his work on global value chains .
“ If you lose a few hundred jobs in London , no one notices , ” he said .
“ But if you lose a few hundred of these good jobs in left-behind areas , the secondary effects can be devastating.
” The first is “ Singapore-on-Thames , ” or , to its more boisterous backers , “ Singapore-on-steroids ” —a vision of an ultra-competitive island of rock-bottom taxes and lax rules , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ business to the U.K. in search of easier regulation or indeed to relocate entirely .
There were elements of this vision in Johnson ’ s Greenwich speech , in which he painted himself as that most unusual of animals : an ardently free-trading populist , rather than the protectionist variety represented by U.S. President Donald Trump .
Yet Britain ’ s Singaporean future remains unlikely for three reasons , the first being its misunderstanding of the country on which it is based .
Singapore is undeniably a low-tax , competitive economy .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deregulation , its economic management is interventionist , with a state that owns stakes in almost everything , including telecom providers and airlines .
Rather than undercutting regional rivals , Singapore prospered by offering relatively high regulatory and legal standards , winning investment from poorer neighbors like India , Indonesia , and Malaysia .
Then there is the second matter : Europe .
Anxious about Britain ’ s Singaporean instincts , the EU plans to make a “ level playing field ” —meaning comparable social and environmental standards —central to its Brexit negotiations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if it wants .
But Europe can then respond by raising trade barriers or with retaliatory tariffs , in effect negating any benefit the U.K. might gain from undercutting European rules .
The final barrier to Singapore-on-Thames comes via the British public .
The U.K. already has one of Europe ’ s most deregulated labor markets .
Polls show scant support for lowering standards further , for instance by cutting the minimum wage or lowering environmental and food safety rules .
The long-term public response to the coronavirus is certain to play into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scope of state intervention in the economy and increasing public demand for higher spending in core public services , especially health care .
Indeed , it is mostly for these reasons that Johnson had begun prior to the pandemic to push a second post-Brexit strategy , which was far more statist and populist and designed to appeal to Brexit-backing voters in poorer regions .
Some of this effort was symbolic , including mooted plans to relocate Britain ’ s upper house of Parliament , the House of Lords , to the north of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proposals to rejuvenate declining northern areas via a new $ 100 billion infrastructure spending pledge and to build a long-promised high-speed rail line between London and Manchester , all funded by higher public borrowing .
More radical still were the ideas of Dominic Cummings , a Brexit architect and Johnson ’ s quixotic political advisor , to shake up the British state .
Cummings attracted derision with a job advert inviting “ weirdos and misfits with odd skills ” to apply to join his Downing Street team .
He planned to lead a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of government , launching bold forays to scrap some state bodies and build others in their place , for instance a U.K. version of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency , which is responsible for developing cutting-edge military technology .
Cummings ’ s plans are eye-catching , but they require deft state direction that would be highly unusual in recent British history .
The idea here , attractive on its face , is that Britain can innovate its way into a new period of prosperity .
Government economic measures unveiled in response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for radical ideas too .
Cummings imagines a radically different education system as part of this , with a focus on science , creativity , and problem solving .
Britain ’ s recent decision to defy Trump and permit the Chinese firm Huawei to play a part in its future 5G rollout was part of this picture too , as Johnson and Cummings prioritized next-generation telecom infrastructure over favorable ties with the United States .
Yet this second approach also comes with problems .
Cummings ’ s plans are eye-catching , but they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ highly unusual in recent British history .
Johnson will have less money to spend either way , given the damage the coronavirus response is likely to do to national finances .
Politically , Johnson has the rest of his coalition to think about , which includes plenty of traditional Tories keen on low taxes and worried about expensive white elephant infrastructure schemes .
Even if they can be convinced , in part by rebranding these plans as pandemic stimulus measures , Britain ’ s underlying economic structure has proved surprisingly durable , from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regional inequalities and low investment levels .
As the economist Diane Coyle has argued , even the sums Johnson presently plans to spend are nowhere close to what would be needed to shift this pattern fundamentally .
Over time Britain will adjust to its new circumstances too .
The Harvard University economist Dani Rodrik talks about the “ political trilemma ” of globalization , in which deep global integration is incompatible with both national sovereignty and democratic accountability .
Nations , he suggests , must pick two of these three things .
Britain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and run its own institutions but at the cost of forgoing the economic benefits that hyperglobalization often brings .
Johnson rejects this trilemma , claiming Britain can now become more economically open and more in control of its own destiny .
More circumspect Brexit backers think leaving the EU might create a new Britain that grows more slowly but is more democratic and equal .
Such a bargain , they think , is probably worth having , so long as it begins to heal some of the wounds that caused Brexit in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ change this trajectory in complex but significant ways .
In the face of the worst global public health crisis in a generation , Britain ’ s public might rediscover some affection for multilateralism , especially after a crisis that has seen precious little international coordination .
But it is of course sadly possible that , as the pandemic deepens , Britain ’ s ties with Europe will be strained further , making Brexit negotiations far more difficult .
In the long run , there are many ways in which Brexit could turn out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ EU as an institution may prosper over the coming decade .
But if it does not , Britain ’ s decision to leave will seem fortuitous .
More to the point , while there is no single template for national economic development , countries that control what Rodrik dubs their own “ policy space ” are often better able to figure out new routes to prosperity , as South Korea and Singapore have done .
This is a tough process with few guarantees of success .
But Britain at least has the potential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of industries that will underpin future global growth , from renewable energy and artificial intelligence to online education .
Yet even this cautiously optimistic vision comes with risks , namely that a process promised as a cure to globalization ’ s ills may still end up worsening the disease .
Brexit is described as a divorce for good reason .
If globalization was the heady , romantic rush of economic integration , then deglobalization is the slow , awkward , and painful unpicking of decades of trading relationships .
Almost every respectable estimate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the EU .
Indeed , its economy is already about 3 percent smaller than it would have been had it voted to stay .
Brexit itself was a radical democratic act , but its effects are likely to be felt in a gradual and painful process of relative economic decline for a decade at least .
As Britain ’ s economy adjusts , the erosion of manufacturing in particular threatens to harm many of those who put their faith in Johnson ’ s promises .
At its worst , Britain could face a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which have long struggled economically and whose politics have grown more unstable as a result .
Rather than an act of national liberation and transformation , Brexit risks leaving Britain alone to navigate a more complex and uncertain global era , feeling more out of control than ever .
This article appears in the Spring 2020 print issue .

Just a few days after the United Kingdom left the European Union on Jan. 31, Boris Johnson traveled across the Thames to the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich to give a speech outlining the kind of country he as prime minister now hoped to build.
Just a few days after the United Kingdom left the European Union on Jan. 31, Boris Johnson traveled across the Thames to the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich to give a speech outlining the kind of country he as prime minister now hoped to build.
Hair typically tousled, Johnson began by pointing up at James Thornhill’s vast ceiling painting titled “The Triumph of Peace and Liberty Over Tyranny.” Britain’s departure, he suggested, could be a moment of liberation and transformation. An island long shackled by continental constraints would fly like Superman, Johnson opined, “ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion” for the benefits of free trade and charting your own national path.
Brexit backers hope to take back control of a country whose 2016 referendum realized a vote to reject not just the European Union but also a model of globalization favoring prosperous urbanites over poorer, rural communities. Even before the new divisions and shutdowns brought about by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, Johnson was leading the world’s most radical experiment in deglobalization: a bloody-minded push to overturn decades of conventional wisdom that midsize nations must band together, both to reap the rewards of trade and solve problems that each would find too large to fix on its own.
If it works, Brexit will act as a rebuke to those globalists who argue that economic prosperity and democratic sovereignty are hard to reconcile. Other nations may follow suit, rejecting the strictures of multilateralism for bold new eras of national autonomy. But that is a big if, given Brexit also leaves Britain facing awkward questions not just about the kind of trade deal Johnson may strike with the EU but also about the kind of country Britain aspires to become.
Johnson wants to believe that Britain’s future can be simultaneously more open to the world and more in control of its political destiny.
Many arguments for Brexit were based on misunderstandings—perhaps willful, perhaps not—of globalization itself and thus the way Britain’s ties with Europe are now likely to be recast. Johnson wants to believe that Britain’s future can be simultaneously more open to the world and more in control of its political destiny. But his policies already look incoherent. Britain’s tight timetable to strike a deal this year has been severely complicated because of its pandemic response. Even putting that aside, Johnson is balancing conflicting future visions of a free trading, low-regulation “Singapore-on-Thames” with more statist pledges to reduce yawning inequalities. More to the point, he faces one ultimate Brexit conundrum—namely that the act of departure itself could worsen the very underlying divisions that pushed his country to leave in the first place.
Britain’s referendum vote was a howl of frustration, but it contained an undeniable logic. Just before the 2016 vote, Michael Gove, a Johnson ally, famously claimed that Britain had “had enough of experts”—meaning the ranks of economists who predicted calamity were the U.K. to leave. “The people who are backing the Remain campaign are people who have done very well, thank you, out of the European Union,” Gove said. Leave supporters, he added, had not.
Gove had a point. Decades of ever closer ties helped boost Britain’s economy. In 1992, the U.K. signed the Maastricht Treaty, which accelerated European economic integration by handing more powers to Brussels, including expanded cooperation on criminal justice and foreign policy, and laying the groundwork for the creation of the euro. At that time, British GDP per capita was nearly a fifth below that of France. Twenty-five years later, Britain had pulled ahead.
Britain’s growth was uneven, however. London boomed, as did other major cities. Decaying industrial regions and hardscrabble coastal towns did not. Taken as a whole, British household incomes remain well below their level prior to the 2008 financial crisis. Homeowners in desirable areas have enjoyed a prolonged boom but only at the cost of ever higher inequality among regions. During the 2010s, house prices in London, for instance, increased twice as fast as they did in the rest of Britain.
It was voters from those left-behind areas, including small post-industrial towns in northern England like Consett and Wigan, that propelled Johnson back to power in Britain’s recent election.
It was voters from those left-behind areas, including small post-industrial towns in northern England like Consett and Wigan, that propelled Johnson back to power in Britain’s recent election. The Conservative leader now heads an ungainly coalition, bringing together genteel and traditionally Tory suburbs in southern England with once solidly socialist northern cities. In what amounts to a realignment of British politics around a Remain-Leave axis, Johnson united two groups that voted strongly to leave: older, affluent social conservatives on the one hand and the lower-skilled working classes that used to back the opposition Labour Party on the other.
Keeping this grouping together is now one of Johnson’s trickier political challenges. Much more difficult, though, will be finding answers to the questions Brexit posed about the failures of Britain’s economic model.
Globalization tends to be portrayed as a uniform process, where all nations must follow similar rules. But in truth each country globalizes in its own peculiar way, as industries with competitive advantages duke it out on the world stage. That process helped Britain become the world’s second largest exporter of services, behind only the United States. London’s status as a European and global financial center was a big part of this. But British firms also thrive in trading services such as advertising and management consulting, telecommunications, information technology, and business. U.K. services exports are worth almost twice as much as its goods exports, according to McKinsey, a consultancy.
Globalization’s advances also helped some British manufacturers recover from the traumas of Thatcherism—the free market, small-government policies of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Policies promoting deregulation and competition during the 1980s pushed U.K. manufacturing down from about a quarter of GDP to less than a 10th today. Yet advanced manufacturing revived during the 1990s and 2000s, notably in areas like car-making, where companies such as Honda and Nissan built huge factories to export cars to Europe. Aircraft parts and pharmaceuticals did well too as Britain became a base from which international investors could access the EU’s so-called frictionless single market.
Yet these British successes came at a cost, not least a pronounced hourglass-shaped labor market with a squeezed middle class. The era of hyperglobalization created plenty of good jobs at the top in both services and advanced manufacturing. Britain’s flexible labor market also churned out poorly paying low-skilled jobs at the bottom, leaving millions of workers barely out of poverty. But middle-skilled jobs, such as factory machinists, were caught in the middle, falling by around a 10th in the decade before the 2008 financial crisis.
Johnson’s Brexit promise is that Britain can now continue these positive economic trends in services and advanced manufacturing while reversing the economic divisions that came alongside them. To do this, he says he wants a post-Brexit “Canada-style” trade deal with the EU, similar to the one Canada signed in 2016. This appeals to the British public, who are well-disposed toward Canada. It appeals to Johnson too, given it would allow regulatory “divergence,” meaning Britain once again would set its own rules in areas like environmental and labor standards.
Much of the recent Brexit debate has focused on how “soft” or “hard” a future EU trading relationship would be. A Canada-style deal is undeniably hard, involving the reintroduction of customs checks and possibly tariffs. Negotiating such a deal will not be easy: Canada’s took seven years, a feat Britain now hopes to achieve in less than one, according to Johnson’s self-imposed deadline. Set against the backdrop of the coronavirus crisis, with both British and European political elites overwhelmingly preoccupied with outbreak management, the odds of meeting this timetable look worse than ever.
Of the plausible deals Britain could have struck, Johnson’s also threatens the greatest disruption to trading patterns, short of crashing out of the EU entirely. A Canada-style deal will leave Britain’s economy 3.5 percent smaller in a decade, according to the London-based National Institute of Economic and Social Research—a decline that amounts to $90 billion, or about $1,100 per person per year forever.
Yet Johnson’s true Brexit conundrum is that these new frictions will hit some sectors harder than others. As the author and economist Martin Sandbu argued: “A hard Brexit … stands to exacerbate the polarising characteristics of the UK’s existing economic model and harshen the social tensions to which it has given rise.”
How might this happen? A hard Brexit will hurt British-based manufacturers that use the U.K. as a base from which to plug into European supply chains, like Nissan or Jaguar Land Rover, owned by India’s Tata Motors. These companies rely on sending parts and widgets back and forth across Europe’s borders. Intermediate goods traded with Europe alone now make up roughly a quarter of Britain’s imports and exports, according to McKinsey.
When we speak of globalization, this is what we mean: components flying between countries via the webs of production that trade economists call “global value chains,” often based on models of “just in time” delivery. In this sense, much of Britain’s recent globalization is actually best understood as a process of Europeanization. A hard Brexit will undo much of this, adding costs to companies via trade barriers and delays through new custom checks.
Few British industrial manufacturing firms are likely to replace contracts lost in France or Germany with others in South Korea or Thailand.Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, tried to avoid this problem with her “Chequers” deal—named after the country residence of sitting British prime ministers—which preserved frictionless trade in goods. Johnson rejected this because it meant keeping common EU rules, in effect choosing to sacrifice car- and drugmakers on the altar of sovereignty. Nor are U.K.-based manufacturers likely to be able to replace lost EU business. The cost of moving goods over long distances remains a powerful force shaping trade patterns. Apple can ship lightweight electronics from factories in China, but in heavier industries like auto and aviation, production tends to be regional, for instance in North America or East Asia, rather than truly global. Few British industrial manufacturing firms are likely to replace contracts lost in France or Germany with others in South Korea or Thailand.
Brexit will hit trade in services too. More than half of exported U.K. services end up in Europe, where they will lose access to the single market, for instance when the city of London loses the so-called “passporting” rights that let banks sell services into the single market without needing extra licenses. Global financial centers grow by servicing regional markets, as New York does for the United States or Hong Kong for China, so London will suffer as it distances itself from its European base as banks and brokerages shift divisions to Frankfurt or Dublin.
Services are still likely to be more resilient than manufacturing, however. Trade in services is still growing strongly around the world, in contrast to the exchange of goods, which is stagnant or declining. If Britain manages to sign post-Brexit trade deals with countries like the United States and Japan, it is likely to seek favorable conditions for its services industries. Services trade is also less troubled by problems of distance, meaning British banks or consultants are more likely than manufacturers to be able to replace lost European business elsewhere in the world, for instance in Asia.
Not all British factories will move: Nissan, which operates Britain’s largest car factory in the northern city of Sunderland, recently pledged prior to the coronavirus crisis to stay even under a hard Brexit scenario, although whether this hope remains in place for Nissan and other major international manufacturers now depends on the severity of the coming economic downturn and potentially government support to offset huge falls in demand. Falls in the value of sterling prior to the crisis helped workers and factories regain lost competitiveness, although again these effects have now been swamped by the economic turbulence brought on by the pandemic. Still, when the coronavirus crisis subsides, thousands of manufacturing jobs, built up slowly over decades, are likely to shift gradually (or potentially at an accelerated rate due to the crisis) to countries like Poland and the Czech Republic, where access to Europe is easier. Foreigners who might once have brought new factories to Britain will head to Europe too, just as Elon Musk recently began a new Tesla Gigafactory in Germany. Britain, he said, was too risky.
Just a fraction of Britain’s manufacturing employment comes via high-quality exporters. Even so, those jobs are often to be found in left-behind regions, while services jobs in banks or advertising agencies are overwhelming concentrated in cities. Manufacturing jobs have knock-on effects too, supporting other employment, suggested Richard Baldwin, a trade economist known for his work on global value chains. “If you lose a few hundred jobs in London, no one notices,” he said. “But if you lose a few hundred of these good jobs in left-behind areas, the secondary effects can be devastating.”
This, then, is Johnson’s Brexit dilemma, namely that by pursuing a hard Brexit, he threatens to damage a manufacturing sector that has been a rare bright spot in Britain’s struggling regions. Two contradictory visions of Britain’s future have emerged to attempt to overcome this dilemma.
The first is “Singapore-on-Thames,” or, to its more boisterous backers, “Singapore-on-steroids”—a vision of an ultra-competitive island of rock-bottom taxes and lax rules, which would tempt European companies to shift business to the U.K. in search of easier regulation or indeed to relocate entirely.
There were elements of this vision in Johnson’s Greenwich speech, in which he painted himself as that most unusual of animals: an ardently free-trading populist, rather than the protectionist variety represented by U.S. President Donald Trump. Yet Britain’s Singaporean future remains unlikely for three reasons, the first being its misunderstanding of the country on which it is based. Singapore is undeniably a low-tax, competitive economy. But rather than Singapore being a haven for deregulation, its economic management is interventionist, with a state that owns stakes in almost everything, including telecom providers and airlines. Rather than undercutting regional rivals, Singapore prospered by offering relatively high regulatory and legal standards, winning investment from poorer neighbors like India, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
Then there is the second matter: Europe. Anxious about Britain’s Singaporean instincts, the EU plans to make a “level playing field”—meaning comparable social and environmental standards —central to its Brexit negotiations. Britain can push for regulatory divergence if it wants. But Europe can then respond by raising trade barriers or with retaliatory tariffs, in effect negating any benefit the U.K. might gain from undercutting European rules.
The final barrier to Singapore-on-Thames comes via the British public. The U.K. already has one of Europe’s most deregulated labor markets. Polls show scant support for lowering standards further, for instance by cutting the
minimum wage or lowering environmental and food safety rules. The long-term public response to the coronavirus is certain to play into this too, by radically expanding the scope of state intervention in the economy and increasing public demand for higher spending in core public services, especially health care.
Indeed, it is mostly for these reasons that Johnson had begun prior to the pandemic to push a second post-Brexit strategy, which was far more statist and populist and designed to appeal to Brexit-backing voters in poorer regions. Some of this effort was symbolic, including mooted plans to relocate Britain’s upper house of Parliament, the House of Lords, to the north of England. But there were also serious proposals to rejuvenate declining northern areas via a new $100 billion infrastructure spending pledge and to build a long-promised high-speed rail line between London and Manchester, all funded by higher public borrowing.
More radical still were the ideas of Dominic Cummings, a Brexit architect and Johnson’s quixotic political advisor, to shake up the British state. Cummings attracted derision with a job advert inviting “weirdos and misfits with odd skills” to apply to join his Downing Street team. He planned to lead a group of self-styled insurgents at the heart of government, launching bold forays to scrap some state bodies and build others in their place, for instance a U.K. version of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is responsible for developing cutting-edge military technology.
Cummings’s plans are eye-catching, but they require deft state direction that would be highly unusual in recent British history.
The idea here, attractive on its face, is that Britain can innovate its way into a new period of prosperity. Government economic measures unveiled in response to the pandemic may create further space for radical ideas too. Cummings imagines a radically different education system as part of this, with a focus on science, creativity, and problem solving. Britain’s recent decision to defy Trump and permit the Chinese firm Huawei to play a part in its future 5G rollout was part of this picture too, as Johnson and Cummings prioritized next-generation telecom infrastructure over favorable ties with the United States.
Yet this second approach also comes with problems. Cummings’s plans are eye-catching, but they require deft state direction that would be highly unusual in recent British history. Johnson will have less money to spend either way, given the damage the coronavirus response is likely to do to national finances.
Politically, Johnson has the rest of his coalition to think about, which includes plenty of traditional Tories keen on low taxes and worried about expensive white elephant infrastructure schemes. Even if they can be convinced, in part by rebranding these plans as pandemic stimulus measures, Britain’s underlying economic structure has proved surprisingly durable, from its flexible labor market to its deep regional inequalities and low investment levels. As the economist Diane Coyle has argued, even the sums Johnson presently plans to spend are nowhere close to what would be needed to shift this pattern fundamentally.
Britain’s post-Brexit position is far from hopeless. Predictions from prominent Remainers that leaving would plunge the U.K. into recession have not come to pass, even if the pandemic brought this about anyway. Britain’s growth rate has been well above those of Germany and France over recent years. The U.K. is likely to remain one of the world’s 10 largest—and most competitive—economies for many decades.
Over time Britain will adjust to its new circumstances too. The Harvard University economist Dani Rodrik talks about the “political trilemma” of globalization, in which deep global integration is incompatible with both national sovereignty and democratic accountability. Nations, he suggests, must pick two of these three things. Britain has decided to make its own rules and run its own institutions but at the cost of forgoing the economic benefits that hyperglobalization often brings.
Johnson rejects this trilemma, claiming Britain can now become more economically open and more in control of its own destiny. More circumspect Brexit backers think leaving the EU might create a new Britain that grows more slowly but is more democratic and equal. Such a bargain, they think, is probably worth having, so long as it begins to heal some of the wounds that caused Brexit in the first place.
The coronavirus outbreak will change this trajectory in complex but significant ways. In the face of the worst global public health crisis in a generation, Britain’s public might rediscover some affection for multilateralism, especially after a crisis that has seen precious little international coordination. But it is of course sadly possible that, as the pandemic deepens, Britain’s ties with Europe will be strained further, making Brexit negotiations far more difficult.
In the long run, there are many ways in which Brexit could turn out to be a good deal. The EU as an institution may prosper over the coming decade. But if it does not, Britain’s decision to leave will seem fortuitous. More to the point, while there is no single template for national economic development, countries that control what Rodrik dubs their own “policy space” are often better able to figure out new routes to prosperity, as South Korea and Singapore have done. This is a tough process with few guarantees of success. But Britain at least has the potential to become a leader in the kinds of industries that will underpin future global growth, from renewable energy and artificial intelligence to online education.
Yet even this cautiously optimistic vision comes with risks, namely that a process promised as a cure to globalization’s ills may still end up worsening the disease. Brexit is described as a divorce for good reason. If globalization was the heady, romantic rush of economic integration, then deglobalization is the slow, awkward, and painful unpicking of decades of trading relationships. Almost every respectable estimate suggests this will leave Britain poorer outside the EU. Indeed, its economy is already about 3 percent smaller than it would have been had it voted to stay.
Brexit itself was a radical democratic act, but its effects are likely to be felt in a gradual and painful process of relative economic decline for a decade at least. As Britain’s economy adjusts, the erosion of manufacturing in particular threatens to harm many of those who put their faith in Johnson’s promises. At its worst, Britain could face a Mediterranean future similar to countries like Italy, which have long struggled economically and whose politics have grown more unstable as a result. Rather than an act of national liberation and transformation, Brexit risks leaving Britain alone to navigate a more complex and uncertain global era, feeling more out of control than ever.
This article appears in the Spring 2020 print issue.


foreignpolicy--2020-04-03--I Knew Coronavirus Denier Landon Spradlin. His Death Wasn’t A Punchline.

On March 25 , an old friend of my family died of pneumonia and coronavirus .
The next day , his story went viral .
The local blues musician and small-time street preacher became a symbol and a punchline , presented as a pandemic-denying Trumpist evangelical who got what he deserved .
But Landon Spradlin wasn ’ t killed by his misguided religious beliefs , and he deserves better than to be remembered as a punchline .
He died because he came from a casually conservative rural America that has become worryingly detached from reality over the pandemic , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Landon was always a strange and controversial figure , even among the dominant conservative Christians of my hometown of Chatham , Virginia .
He ’ d “ witness ” on street corners and try to get people to kneel on the sidewalk and accept Jesus , even if they ’ d been lifelong church-goers .
He ’ d go to parties , condemn the drinking , and try to “ save souls.
” My earliest memory of him was the loud baptisms he performed in the lake in front of my neighbor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ obnoxious and self-righteous at times .
But he wasn ’ t some prosperity gospel huckster or wealthy megachurch pastor .
He was a traveling musician who frequently went out of his way to help the forgotten and the downtrodden , and he never had much money .
He condemned drugs and alcohol , but he tried his best to help addicts recover and give them a place to stay when they had nobody else .
I have no idea what he thought about me , the left-wing transgender niece of one of his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said anything negative to my family .
I certainly preferred his preaching and music over the sheer hatred spewed in some of the churches around here .
Later in life , he ’ d moderated his tone somewhat and focused on secular music , though he maintained his beliefs and continued his mission trips .
He loved playing the blues , and he loved people .
He went to New Orleans , where he caught the coronavirus , in a misguided attempt to save souls , but he also wanted to see his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s absolutely fair to criticize Landon for his reckless decision .
He put himself and his family at risk .
If his condition had worsened only a couple of days later , he might have inadvertently started an outbreak in my hometown and put my immunocompromised relatives at risk .
He was a grown man who made a terrible choice and paid an awful price .
But he was no different from the average Republican in my hometown .
They may not share his religious views , but they expressed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and some still congregate in public places without regard for social distance .
They aren ’ t doing it because they think God will give them immunity to disease , and they aren ’ t going out to restaurants to save souls .
They ’ re doing it because they don ’ t take the problem seriously enough , thanks to right-wing media outlets that downplayed the pandemic even as the numbers ticked up .
Some of them were shocked by Donald Trump ’ s nomination and election , and a few have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But the majority see him as just another president , a victim of crooked political smear campaigns spread by ridiculous jealousy-crazed liberals .
When he told them that Russian meddling was a hoax , that climate change was overblown , that what happened in Ukraine was just typical diplomacy , they easily accepted it .
To them , it was just common sense that Democrats were always going to lie and blow things out of proportion .
It ’ s not something they spend all their waking hours thinking about .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ learned from their parents as children and rarely question .
It ’ s frustrating and baffling , and arguing with them rarely gets anywhere .
Usually the damage done by these convictions is slow and long-term .
But the pandemic posed a much more immediate threat .
When Landon shared a meme calling the coronavirus pandemic an overblown hoax , he was following in the footsteps of millions of other conservatives who made the mistake of trusting the president of the United States and their favorite media outlets .
Landon even acknowledged that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thought it would come and go with little effect .
He probably doubted he ’ d ever be exposed .
Around the same time Landon was preparing for Mardi Gras , Trump was claiming that he had the coronavirus under control and that cases were decreasing in the United States .
He implied only a tiny handful would get the virus and that most Americans would never need to worry about it .
Anyone who saw Trump as a normal president and relied on Fox News and Facebook posts from their like-minded friends @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the coronavirus wasn ’ t a big deal .
Like many evangelicals in the charismatic tradition , Landon thought that God would likely protect him from any serious disease .
It ’ s a nonnegotiable belief for that subset of evangelical Christianity , and some believers even deliberately put themselves at risk as an expression of faith .
But even that belief has limits .
I don ’ t know what Landon was thinking , but I can ’ t believe that he would have put himself and his family at risk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ began feeling sick sometime after Mardi Gras , but a coronavirus test returned a false negative .
On his way home , he suddenly collapsed .
Another test came up positive .
He spent his last days in a strange city , sedated and face down in a desperate effort to keep him breathing .
Whatever mistakes he made , nobody deserves that .
I ’ m angry and heartbroken at his death and worried about the millions of others who continue to laugh off the virus .
These beliefs continue even after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the virus .
I don ’ t know how to convince people that Trump was lying to them or get certain evangelicals to stop putting themselves at risk .
Maybe they ’ d be more cautious if they imagined their families mourning them , unable to even see them in person in their last days .
Maybe evangelicals will realize that if a sincere believer like Landon can get sick while witnessing to crowds , nobody has unconditional protection from God .
This situation is infuriating , and I understand why people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ random street preacher .
But we ’ re all in this together , and the virus doesn ’ t distinguish between conservatives and progressives .
We need to stop the spread , even if that means swallowing legitimate anger and reaching out to the misinformed and reckless .
There will be plenty of time for blame after this is over .

On March 25, an old friend of my family died of pneumonia and coronavirus. The next day, his story went viral . The local blues musician and small-time street preacher became a symbol and a punchline, presented as a pandemic-denying Trumpist evangelical who got what he deserved. But Landon Spradlin wasn’t killed by his misguided religious beliefs, and he deserves better than to be remembered as a punchline. He died because he came from a casually conservative rural America that has become worryingly detached from reality over the pandemic, and thousands of others could follow his path.
On March 25, an old friend of my family died of pneumonia and coronavirus. The next day, his story went viral. The local blues musician and small-time street preacher became a symbol and a punchline, presented as a pandemic-denying Trumpist evangelical who got what he deserved. But Landon Spradlin wasn’t killed by his misguided religious beliefs, and he deserves better than to be remembered as a punchline. He died because he came from a casually conservative rural America that has become worryingly detached from reality over the pandemic, and thousands of others could follow his path.
Landon was always a strange and controversial figure, even among the dominant conservative Christians of my hometown of Chatham, Virginia. He’d “witness” on street corners and try to get people to kneel on the sidewalk and accept Jesus, even if they’d been lifelong church-goers. He’d go to parties, condemn the drinking, and try to “save souls.” My earliest memory of him was the loud baptisms he performed in the lake in front of my neighbor’s house. He could be obnoxious and self-righteous at times.
But he wasn’t some prosperity gospel huckster or wealthy megachurch pastor. He was a traveling musician who frequently went out of his way to help the forgotten and the downtrodden, and he never had much money. He condemned drugs and alcohol, but he tried his best to help addicts recover and give them a place to stay when they had nobody else. I have no idea what he thought about me, the left-wing transgender niece of one of his closest friends, but he certainly never said anything negative to my family. I certainly preferred his preaching and music over the sheer hatred spewed in some of the churches around here.
Later in life, he’d moderated his tone somewhat and focused on secular music, though he maintained his beliefs and continued his mission trips. He loved playing the blues, and he loved people. He went to New Orleans, where he caught the coronavirus, in a misguided attempt to save souls, but he also wanted to see his old friends and experience another Mardi Gras.
Landon Spradlin and his wife were on their way home from a mission trip in New Orleans when he collapsed. He was taken to a hospital in Concord and tested positive for COVID-19. Spradlin was put on a ventilator but his health took a bad turn Tuesday. He died a short time later pic.twitter.com/fEeUhrlLzz — Joe Bruno (@JoeBrunoWSOC9) March 26, 2020
It’s absolutely fair to criticize Landon for his reckless decision. He put himself and his family at risk. If his condition had worsened only a couple of days later, he might have inadvertently started an outbreak in my hometown and put my immunocompromised relatives at risk. He was a grown man who made a terrible choice and paid an awful price.
But he was no different from the average Republican in my hometown. They may not share his religious views, but they expressed the same skepticism regarding the pandemic, and some still congregate in public places without regard for social distance. They aren’t doing it because they think God will give them immunity to disease, and they aren’t going out to restaurants to save souls. They’re doing it because they don’t take the problem seriously enough, thanks to right-wing media outlets that downplayed the pandemic even as the numbers ticked up.
Some of them were shocked by Donald Trump’s nomination and election, and a few have left the party or sought alternatives. But the majority see him as just another president, a victim of crooked political smear campaigns spread by ridiculous jealousy-crazed liberals. When he told them that Russian meddling was a hoax, that climate change was overblown, that what happened in Ukraine was just typical diplomacy, they easily accepted it. To them, it was just common sense that Democrats were always going to lie and blow things out of proportion. It’s not something they spend all their waking hours thinking about. It’s just a set of beliefs they learned from their parents as children and rarely question. It’s frustrating and baffling, and arguing with them rarely gets anywhere.
Usually the damage done by these convictions is slow and long-term. But the pandemic posed a much more immediate threat. When Landon shared a meme calling the coronavirus pandemic an overblown hoax, he was following in the footsteps of millions of other conservatives who made the mistake of trusting the president of the United States and their favorite media outlets. Landon even acknowledged that the coronavirus was real, but he thought it would come and go with little effect. He probably doubted he’d ever be exposed.
Around the same time Landon was preparing for Mardi Gras, Trump was claiming that he had the coronavirus under control and that cases were decreasing in the United States. He implied only a tiny handful would get the virus and that most Americans would never need to worry about it. Anyone who saw Trump as a normal president and relied on Fox News and Facebook posts from their like-minded friends was seeing a constant stream of reassurances that the coronavirus wasn’t a big deal.
Like many evangelicals in the charismatic tradition, Landon thought that God would likely protect him from any serious disease. It’s a nonnegotiable belief for that subset of evangelical Christianity, and some believers even deliberately put themselves at risk as an expression of faith. But even that belief has limits. I don’t know what Landon was thinking, but I can’t believe that he would have put himself and his family at risk had he known the truth.
He began feeling sick sometime after Mardi Gras, but a coronavirus test returned a false negative. On his way home, he suddenly collapsed. Another test came up positive. He spent his last days in a strange city, sedated and face down in a desperate effort to keep him breathing. Whatever mistakes he made, nobody deserves that. I’m angry and heartbroken at his death and worried about the millions of others who continue to laugh off the virus.
These beliefs continue even after the president dropped his own previous claims about the virus. I don’t know how to convince people that Trump was lying to them or get certain evangelicals to stop putting themselves at risk. Maybe they’d be more cautious if they imagined their families mourning them, unable to even see them in person in their last days. Maybe evangelicals will realize that if a sincere believer like Landon can get sick while witnessing to crowds, nobody has unconditional protection from God.
This situation is infuriating, and I understand why people are taking out their frustrations on this random street preacher. But we’re all in this together, and the virus doesn’t distinguish between conservatives and progressives. We need to stop the spread, even if that means swallowing legitimate anger and reaching out to the misinformed and reckless. There will be plenty of time for blame after this is over.


foreignpolicy--2020-04-03--Flying Home During the Pandemic: Expensive, Demanding, and Dangerous

Flying Home During the Pandemic : Expensive , Demanding , and Dangerous I realized I ’ d lost my passport halfway through our desperate trip back to Australia .
Ashen-faced , I pulled my bag off the floor and groped around inside , shoving aside sweaters and snacks .
Nothing .
The mistake would have been costly at the best of times .
Even worse now , I was escorting my pregnant wife home during a worldwide pandemic .
Would I have to watch the birth of my first child over Skype ?
We had left our home in Laos—a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Thailand and Vietnam—due to concerns about health care .
“ The standard of medical care [ in Laos ] is extremely poor and medical evacuation to other countries is now very difficult , ” the Australian government said in a statement on March 23 .
“ The land border into Vietnam is now closed .
All borders with Thailand … will be closed , except for some commercial traffic.
” Vietnam has been extremely strict in enforcing its border closures , even splitting up families .
Vietnamese officials separated Javier Zuñiga Segura from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ho Chi Minh airport on March 20 .
“ I was held for 10 hours , ” Segura told me .
“ In the end , they gave me two options : Go back to Thailand or Spain.
” Vietnam has been extremely strict in enforcing its border closures , even splitting up families .
“ I could understand if they didn ’ t want to give visas to foreigners from Europe , but I ’ ve been living and working there , ” Segura said .
“ I have a family and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pay $ 300 for a flight back to Bangkok and missed his son ’ s first birthday .
On March 17 , the trips we normally took from Laos to Thailand for doctors ’ visits were already looking unlikely .
The border closures that have proved so chaotic were still looming .
The same day , the Australian government strongly recommended that anyone wishing to return to Australia should do so immediately .
Officially , there were more coronavirus cases in Australia—5,350 as of April 3 compared with 10 in Laos , though @ @ @ @ @ @ @ figured the Australian health care system had a better chance of coping with the crisis .
Flights were already filling up and ticket prices rising .
The Singapore Airlines website crashed several times before we eventually secured a flight on March 19 .
Wattay Airport in the Laotian capital , Vientiane , was quiet when we arrived .
Half the flights on the screen read “ cancelled.
” But ours was still good—for now .
Ben Spaul , a British tourist , and his friends stood under the departures screen wearing matching black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to make it to Australia after cutting their trip around Southeast Asia short .
The measly number of available flights meant they were going to have to spend 12 hours at the Singapore airport , fly to Bali , and from there go to Cairns , Australia , where all six young men expected to be quarantined together .
When I checked in with them later , they had made it to Singapore before the airline axed their connecting flight .
“ We had to fly to Sydney from Singapore , ” Spaul @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we still haven ’ t got our bags.
” The French backpackers planned to hunker down in Indonesia , one of the few countries that was still accepting French visitors .
French backpackers Descot Pablo and Alice ( who withheld her last name ) planned to hunker down in Indonesia , one of the few countries that was still accepting French visitors after cases in France spiked—64,338 as of April 2 .
“ We arrived in Laos on March 12 , and everything started to change , ” Pablo told me .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cambodia , but the day we arrived , Cambodia and Vietnam started to deny French people visas .
There was all kinds of information flying around , and it was very worrying.
” “ We booked flights that arrived in Indonesia on Saturday the 21st , but we heard they were closing the borders , ” Pablo explained .
“ We had to book another flight to get there before the borders closed at midnight [ on March 19 ] .
We lost 400 euros on that.
” [ Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and learn how it ’ s affecting countries around the world . ]
In early March , the initial spread of the coronavirus caused airlines to slash prices to encourage fretful passengers to travel to destinations that were , at that time , deemed safe .
But recent border closures have caused prices to spike .
It ’ s difficult to get exact numbers , as there ’ s no system that reliably tracks airline fares .
However , Haydn Long of the Australian travel company Flight Centre , said our observation of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” “ In February and [ early ] March , there were really cheap fares , ” Long said .
“ Then the border restrictions were applied , and airlines cut capacities back significantly .
Seats have been at a premium because you went from having a price war to having very few seats available.
” Travel agents and airlines have struggled to cope with the wild fluctuations .
The Australian airline Qantas and its low-cost subsidiary Jetstar announced that 90 percent of international flights and 60 percent of domestic services would be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the University of Queensland in Brisbane , had been in Bali for a surf competition but struggled to pay for a flight home after the event was canceled .
“ I couldn ’ t afford flights , and I had to get on the phone to my parents , and we booked a flight , ” she said .
“ But that got canceled , so we had to change it and pay AU $ 300 [ Australian dollars , or about $ 180 ] more .
My dad just started working @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 1,200 [ about $ 720 ] he paid is not easy money.
” Budget airlines usually offer one-way flights between Australia and Bali for about $ 100 .
She has taken to walking around the apartment with a wild look in her eyes , trying to take her temperature with her own hand .
At the Singapore Airlines desk , an exhausted staffer looked around to try to find my passport before shaking his head .
He said he hadn ’ t had a break in 12 hours .
At the next @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with another fatigued staffer .
The couple were desperate to get back to Los Angeles to pick up their two young children .
They had been on vacation in Thailand , leaving their kids with relatives .
It was supposed to be a trip of a lifetime—but now they were waving credit cards , desperately trying to get on one of the few remaining flights home .
I returned to my wife empty-handed just as the information desk put out an announcement to see if anyone had found my passport .
When she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ passport with an apologetic look .
It had been in her bag .
She had taken it for safekeeping .
It was 10 a.m. in Brisbane when we arrived , nine hours before Australia closed its borders .
As we walked off the plane , two people in green hospital gowns , gloves , and plastic face shields stood at the top of the jet bridge .
They had forms for everyone to fill out and formally declare their good health .
At the time of writing , I ’ m in self-quarantine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Queensland coast .
Luckily , my wife and I get on well .
No fights as of yet .
She has taken to walking around the apartment with a wild look in her eyes , trying to take her temperature with her own hand .
I ’ m just glad I got here at all .

I realized I’d lost my passport halfway through our desperate trip back to Australia. Ashen-faced, I pulled my bag off the floor and groped around inside, shoving aside sweaters and snacks. Nothing.
I realized I’d lost my passport halfway through our desperate trip back to Australia. Ashen-faced, I pulled my bag off the floor and groped around inside, shoving aside sweaters and snacks. Nothing.
The mistake would have been costly at the best of times. Even worse now, I was escorting my pregnant wife home during a worldwide pandemic. Would I have to watch the birth of my first child over Skype?
We had left our home in Laos—a landlocked nation of 7 million people between Thailand and Vietnam—due to concerns about health care. “The standard of medical care [in Laos] is extremely poor and medical evacuation to other countries is now very difficult,” the Australian government said in a statement on March 23. “The land border into Vietnam is now closed. All borders with Thailand … will be closed, except for some commercial traffic.”
Vietnam has been extremely strict in enforcing its border closures, even splitting up families. Vietnamese officials separated Javier Zuñiga Segura from his Vietnamese wife and son at the Ho Chi Minh airport on March 20. “I was held for 10 hours,” Segura told me. “In the end, they gave me two options: Go back to Thailand or Spain.”
Vietnam has been extremely strict in enforcing its border closures, even splitting up families.
“I could understand if they didn’t want to give visas to foreigners from Europe, but I’ve been living and working there,” Segura said. “I have a family and a five-year visa.” He had to pay $300 for a flight back to Bangkok and missed his son’s first birthday.
On March 17, the trips we normally took from Laos to Thailand for doctors’ visits were already looking unlikely. The border closures that have proved so chaotic were still looming. The same day, the Australian government strongly recommended that anyone wishing to return to Australia should do so immediately.
Officially, there were more coronavirus cases in Australia—5,350 as of April 3 compared with 10 in Laos, though some question Laos’s numbers—but we figured the Australian health care system had a better chance of coping with the crisis. Flights were already filling up and ticket prices rising. The Singapore Airlines website crashed several times before we eventually secured a flight on March 19.
Crew members wear facemasks to prevent the spread of the coronavirus on one of the few remaining flights from Laos to Singapore on March 19. Passengers hoped to return to New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Australia from there.
Wattay Airport in the Laotian capital, Vientiane, was quiet when we arrived. Half the flights on the screen read “cancelled.” But ours was still good—for now. Ben Spaul, a British tourist, and his friends stood under the departures screen wearing matching black face masks. They were also hoping to make it to Australia after cutting their trip around Southeast Asia short.
The measly number of available flights meant they were going to have to spend 12 hours at the Singapore airport, fly to Bali, and from there go to Cairns, Australia, where all six young men expected to be quarantined together. When I checked in with them later, they had made it to Singapore before the airline axed their connecting flight. “We had to fly to Sydney from Singapore,” Spaul texted me via Whatsapp. “But we still haven’t got our bags.”The French backpackers planned to hunker down in Indonesia, one of the few countries that was still accepting French visitors.
French backpackers Descot Pablo and Alice (who withheld her last name) planned to hunker down in Indonesia, one of the few countries that was still accepting French visitors after cases in France spiked—64,338 as of April 2. “We arrived in Laos on March 12, and everything started to change,” Pablo told me. “We planned to go to Vietnam and Cambodia, but the day we arrived, Cambodia and Vietnam started to deny French people visas. There was all kinds of information flying around, and it was very worrying.”
“We booked flights that arrived in Indonesia on Saturday the 21st, but we heard they were closing the borders,” Pablo explained. “We had to book another flight to get there before the borders closed at midnight [on March 19]. We lost 400 euros on that.”
[Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak: Get daily updates on the pandemic and learn how it’s affecting countries around the world.]
In early March, the initial spread of the coronavirus caused airlines to slash prices to encourage fretful passengers to travel to destinations that were, at that time, deemed safe. But recent border closures have caused prices to spike. It’s difficult to get exact numbers, as there’s no system that reliably tracks airline fares. However, Haydn Long of the Australian travel company Flight Centre, said our observation of sharply higher prices was “spot on.”
“In February and [early] March, there were really cheap fares,” Long said. “Then the border restrictions were applied, and airlines cut capacities back significantly. Seats have been at a premium because you went from having a price war to having very few seats available.”
Travel agents and airlines have struggled to cope with the wild fluctuations. The Australian airline Qantas and its low-cost subsidiary Jetstar announced that 90 percent of international flights and 60 percent of domestic services would be cut.
A volunteer hands out “isolation guidance” to passengers arriving at Brisbane International Airport in Australia on March 20.
Brea Wright, a student at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, had been in Bali for a surf competition but struggled to pay for a flight home after the event was canceled. “I couldn’t afford flights, and I had to get on the phone to my parents, and we booked a flight,” she said. “But that got canceled, so we had to change it and pay AU$300 [Australian dollars, or about $180] more. My dad just started working as a nurse, and the AU$1,200 [about $720] he paid is not easy money.” Budget airlines usually offer one-way flights between Australia and Bali for about $100.
She has taken to walking around the apartment with a wild look in her eyes, trying to take her temperature with her own hand.
At the Singapore Airlines desk, an exhausted staffer looked around to try to find my passport before shaking his head. He said he hadn’t had a break in 12 hours. At the next desk, an American couple was arguing with another fatigued staffer. The couple were desperate to get back to Los Angeles to pick up their two young children. They had been on vacation in Thailand, leaving their kids with relatives. It was supposed to be a trip of a lifetime—but now they were waving credit cards, desperately trying to get on one of the few remaining flights home.
I returned to my wife empty-handed just as the information desk put out an announcement to see if anyone had found my passport. When she saw me coming, she raised my passport with an apologetic look. It had been in her bag. She had taken it for safekeeping.
It was 10 a.m. in Brisbane when we arrived, nine hours before Australia closed its borders. As we walked off the plane, two people in green hospital gowns, gloves, and plastic face shields stood at the top of the jet bridge. They had forms for everyone to fill out and formally declare their good health.
At the time of writing, I’m in self-quarantine in a tiny rental apartment somewhere on the Queensland coast. Luckily, my wife and I get on well. No fights as of yet. She has taken to walking around the apartment with a wild look in her eyes, trying to take her temperature with her own hand. I’m just glad I got here at all.


foreignpolicy--2020-04-03--U.N. Agencies Struggle to Carry On Remotely

The coronavirus pandemic has seen a mass migration of office workers and students to Zoom , Google Classroom , and other online apps to work and study .
But at the United Nations , the shift to virtual meetings has been a long slog .
The U.N. Security Council lost more than a week tackling a host of technical difficulties and political disputes—Russia initially insisted all council decisions be taken at U.N. headquarters—before it settled on a strategy for approving U.N. mandates .
The U.N. Human Rights Council—which shuttered its operations indefinitely on March 12—is still struggling to conduct its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an internal meeting by the U.N. Human Rights Council bureau , which includes representatives of key regional groups and a senior official with the U.N. Office at Geneva ( UNOG ) , which manages operations in the United Nations ’ Swiss headquarters .
“ UNOG stressed that conducting meetings via an online platform would be labour intensive and require a significant amount of human resources , thus under the current circumstances UNOG would only be able to service one meeting per day , ” according to the minutes of the April 1 meeting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and which will serve as this week ’ s Document of the Week .
The director of UNOG ’ s Division for Conference Management informed the member states that the United Nations ’ Geneva headquarters , the Palais des Nations , would remain “ open only to a limited number of essential staff and would not likely open for regular business within the next weeks , ” according to the document .
IT technicians at the U.N. are testing various online options to determine whether they can securely encrypt sensitive diplomatic discussions and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.N. cybersecurity .
The U.N. is also striving to facilitate formal meetings of the rights council , complete with live , virtual interpretation of discussion in the six official languages—Arabic , Chinese , English , French , Russian , and Spanish .
Informal meetings , without simultaneous interpretation , will not come online before the end of next week .
For the time being , the rights council bureau—which is led by Austria ’ s UNOG ambassador , Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger , and includes four envoys representing Africa , Asia , Latin America , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their April 1 session , the bureau members examined a variety of options to address the human rights implications of the pandemic .
They agreed to hold online meetings of the bureau every two weeks .
They also have tentative plans to hold an online meeting with the U.N. high commissioner for human rights , Michelle Bachelet , on April 9 .
Meetings with other key players , including the U.N. special rapporteurs , will be arranged as soon as the technology allows .
“ While acknowledging the many unknowns related to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ developing situation in all regions of the world , the Bureau also discussed various options , along with their challenges and implications , for resuming the 43rd session and continuing the Council ’ s programme of work for the year , ” according to the document .
But much of the council ’ s work will have to wait .
On March 27 , the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen , which monitors human rights abuses in the war-wracked Middle Eastern nation , informed the bureau that it would not be able @ @ @ @ @ @ @ final report on the crisis during the fall .
The bureau responded that only the Human Rights Council had the authority to decide whether a deadline extension was possible .
But that would have to wait until the council was able to meet .
“ [ S ] uch a decision could not be envisaged under the current circumstances , ” the bureau concluded .

The coronavirus pandemic has seen a mass migration of office workers and students to Zoom, Google Classroom, and other online apps to work and study. But at the United Nations, the shift to virtual meetings has been a long slog.
The coronavirus pandemic has seen a mass migration of office workers and students to Zoom, Google Classroom, and other online apps to work and study. But at the United Nations, the shift to virtual meetings has been a long slog.
The U.N. Security Council lost more than a week tackling a host of technical difficulties and political disputes—Russia initially insisted all council decisions be taken at U.N. headquarters—before it settled on a strategy for approving U.N. mandates.
The U.N. Human Rights Council—which shuttered its operations indefinitely on March 12—is still struggling to conduct its business, according to the minutes of an internal meeting by the U.N. Human Rights Council bureau, which includes representatives of key regional groups and a senior official with the U.N. Office at Geneva (UNOG), which manages operations in the United Nations’ Swiss headquarters.
“UNOG stressed that conducting meetings via an online platform would be labour intensive and require a significant amount of human resources, thus under the current circumstances UNOG would only be able to service one meeting per day,” according to the minutes of the April 1 meeting, which were obtained by Foreign Policy and which will serve as this week’s Document of the Week.
The director of UNOG’s Division for Conference Management informed the member states that the United Nations’ Geneva headquarters, the Palais des Nations, would remain “open only to a limited number of essential staff and would not likely open for regular business within the next weeks,” according to the document.
IT technicians at the U.N. are testing various online options to determine whether they can securely encrypt sensitive diplomatic discussions and guard against hacks and other threats to U.N. cybersecurity.
The U.N. is also striving to facilitate formal meetings of the rights council, complete with live, virtual interpretation of discussion in the six official languages—Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. Informal meetings, without simultaneous interpretation, will not come online before the end of next week.
For the time being, the rights council bureau—which is led by Austria’s UNOG ambassador, Elisabeth Tichy-Fisslberger, and includes four envoys representing Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe—is meeting online.
In their April 1 session, the bureau members examined a variety of options to address the human rights implications of the pandemic. They agreed to hold online meetings of the bureau every two weeks. They also have tentative plans to hold an online meeting with the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, on April 9. Meetings with other key players, including the U.N. special rapporteurs, will be arranged as soon as the technology allows.
“While acknowledging the many unknowns related to the duration of the COVID-19 crisis and the developing situation in all regions of the world, the Bureau also discussed various options, along with their challenges and implications, for resuming the 43rd session and continuing the Council’s programme of work for the year,” according to the document.
But much of the council’s work will have to wait. On March 27, the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen, which monitors human rights abuses in the war-wracked Middle Eastern nation, informed the bureau that it would not be able to meet its deadline for delivering a final report on the crisis during the fall. The bureau responded that only the Human Rights Council had the authority to decide whether a deadline extension was possible. But that would have to wait until the council was able to meet. “[S]uch a decision could not be envisaged under the current circumstances,” the bureau concluded.