Berlin Great Britain should become a “global player” again: With this promise, Boris Johnson was elected Prime Minister in 2019. Now, however, the British Prime Minister is making the painful experience: “All politics is local.” The sharp rise in the cost of living at home and the newly escalated dispute with the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol are overshadowing the appearance of “Global Britain” on the world stage.
Johnson’s Europe Minister James Cleverly describes the dilemma in an interview with the Handelsblatt. “We have to find a way to deal with this domestic political pressure, and we also have to help Ukraine.” Given the scarce financial resources, this becomes a challenge.
Cleverly is visiting Berlin to discuss with Germany and the other partners of the seven largest economies (G7) how these states can quickly provide Ukraine with economic and financial support. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the country attacked by Russia will need around 15 billion dollars in the next three months alone. Post-war reconstruction is likely to take many times that amount.
It’s about helping the Ukrainians “keep their country running.” That means extensive money transfers that have to be shouldered jointly by the allies. So far, however, the willingness to do so seems limited.
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Cleverly’s cabinet colleague, British Finance Minister Rishi Sunak, has now pledged a loan guarantee of 50 million dollars to Ukraine at the G7 meeting. That helps, but is not enough, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen criticized the financial aid from the international community this week. “The bilateral and multilateral support announced so far will not be enough to meet Ukraine’s needs, even in the short term,” she said.
Great Britain is struggling with high inflation
One reason for this is that the West has to solve several challenges at once: it is supporting Ukraine militarily and financially against the invaders from Russia, while governments and central banks have so far tried in vain to contain the war-driven inflation caused by the supply bottlenecks during the pandemic to get a grip. “Inflation is very high in all economies in the world,” states Cleverly. In Great Britain, the inflation rate in April was nine percent, the highest of all G7 countries.
In London, therefore, the pressure on Prime Minister Johnson and Finance Minister Sunak is increasing almost daily to cushion the price pressure on consumers with state aid. “Hard” months are ahead of the British, said the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Consumer confidence fell to its lowest level in 50 years in May. The proposals that cabinet members are now putting forward, without consulting each other, range from heating subsidies for the poorest to tax cuts for everyone.
The cost of living isn’t the only thing holding back Johnson’s global ambitions, however. The ongoing dispute with the EU over trade with Northern Ireland, which has flared up again, threatens to jeopardize European unity in the face of Russian aggression and has also caused irritation among the US government in Washington.
House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi has threatened to block a free trade deal with Britain if London unilaterally withdraws from the Northern Ireland Protocol. Under pressure from unionists loyal to London, the British government wants to force changes to the protocol in Belfast in order to reduce the agreed customs controls between the province and the rest of Great Britain. In this case, Brussels threatens a trade war.
“The fact that we have this residual problem in Northern Ireland is frustrating and we want to solve it,” says Cleverly. His country has already proposed some solutions. However, the trust of the EU is still lacking.
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In Cleverly’s words, there isn’t much time left for that: “The pressure in Northern Ireland has been building for some time,” he reports. The traditional protestant unionist marches, which have often led to outbreaks of violence in the past, will soon begin in the province.
Meanwhile, government formation in Northern Ireland is faltering after the recent elections. Cleverly says these have shown that the entire unionist community in Northern Ireland, and not just the leading Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), is dissatisfied with the protocol.
In London’s opinion, a revised Northern Ireland protocol could solve the problem of forming a government in Belfast. “It doesn’t work in its current form,” says Cleverly, calling for more flexibility from the EU. The touchstone for the protocol must be whether all parties in Northern Ireland “are able and willing to form a new government in Belfast”.
More: ‘Was never set in stone’: London threatens to breach Northern Ireland Protocol