Foreign Policy Under Theresa May

Abstract

This chapter considers Theresa May’s attempts to navigate some of the complex sets of foreign policy challenges her government faced. The decision to withdraw from the EU had opened up a series of critical questions and challenges relating to the UK’s future trade and security priorities, its relationships with other nations—most notably the remaining 27 countries of the EU, the USA and Ireland—and its status and power on the global stage. In examining how May’s government attempted to manage these and other issues, we show that the government struggled to respond coherently to its own decision to leave the EU. Policy became driven by confused and often empty concepts such as the slogan ‘Brexit means Brexit’ and the ambitiously vague idea of ‘Global Britain’. This paralysing lack of strategic direction represented a largely performative approach to policymaking driven often by party management decisions than by any substantive foreign policy plan. The result was that Britain’s post-Brexit foreign policy direction remained in flux throughout May’s premiership and has continued to remain so under her three immediate predecessors.