A discreet debate in the diplomatic and political undergrowth is raising new questions about the UK’s post-Brexit relationship with the European Union. It reflects wider challenges which face both the EU and the trans-Atlantic NATO alliance as they seek a common response to the emergence of potential new global super-powers – notably China.
The volatile US Trump Presidency continues to raise questions about the very foundations of the Atlantic partnership. These were recently given stark expression in the wake of Trump’s assertion of the US right to colonise Danish Greenland. It even, very briefly, led to fears of a possible trans-Atlantic military confrontation.
Thus far, the aggressive language used by Trump about his sense of injustice in EU/US trade relations, remains just that … a purely verbal threat. But does his questioning of America’s traditional commitment to Atlantic security and defence reveal a deeper desire for some kind of post-NATO world?
In the UK, the silence of hard-line Euro-hostile factions in the Reform and Tory parties should not be thought surprising given the potential of global disorder. The UK Labour government and the EU have already agreed an outline for closer cooperation in security and defence. The orthodoxy on both sides of the Atlantic is that the Trump regime will only prove to be a permanent headache.
They assume that the drift to a more assertive US economic and political nationalism is purely tactical and will decline and eventually expire. But this is to ignore the strident US “real politik” which now inspires many Republican and even some Democrat politicians. There are even some on the radical Republican right who argue for a long-term global US-Russian ‘understanding’ which, they believe, should define their respective spheres of influence.
Both in the US and in Russia there are those who believe they have a common interest in curbing and, if possible, undermining any emerging Chinese world super-power. But these are issues which have received only limited public attention among non-specialists in either the EU or the UK.
The domestic problems facing both the UK Labour government and the Tory opposition have discouraged them from engaging publicly with these questions. But this may change if, after the next UK general election, the Tories face marginalisation at the hands of the hard right Reform Party and Labour loses substantial support to a significantly more left oriented Green Party.
Polling evidence suggests Labour is already losing swathes of disillusioned voters to the Green Party. The basic landscape of British politic has already undergone some other seismic shocks. The devolution-driven changes in UK governance have led to a distinct shift of power from London to Scotland and Wales. Something similar may soon involve the English regions. Meanwhile Northern Ireland has already taken some significant steps towards closer unity with the Irish Republic.
Thus far neither Reform nor the Green party have set out their future foreign and security policy goals in any detail. The Greens are the more likely of the two to initiate such a debate. This should encompass how a future EU/UK common foreign and security policy should react to these global developments and what they imply for Europe’s own constitutional future.
The EU’s Common European Foreign and Security policy rests on foundations set half a century ago but which cannot remain embalmed indefinitely. Given the direction of travel in the both the US and Russia, a further strengthening of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy seems overdue.
John Palmer is a member of the Another Europe is Possible National Committee and a former European editor of the Guardian and former political director of the European Policy Centre
19th February 2026