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The big picture

It won’t have escaped your attention that Donald Trump was elected US president last week, an event that will not be without consequences. The one that interests us is: what will it mean for the government’s Brexit strategy?

The short answer is: nobody really knows. First, Trump seems happy to change his mind fairly often about most things, and it’s not clear how far we should interpret his campaign rhetoric as statement of firm policy intent.

Theresa May and Donald Trump. Composite: Getty/Rex

Second, beyond “getting the best possible deal for Britain” the government doesn’t seem to have much of a Brexit strategy quite yet, and what it has, it isn’t telling us about. (According to a leaked memo, it has no single plan, is working on 500 Brexit projects, and may need 30,000 extra civil servants to deal with the workload.)

That said, as my colleague Patrick Wintour suggested, two base scenarios present themselves – one a potential opportunity, the other a threat. The tricky thing is, Theresa May doesn’t have much time to decide which way it will play.

Broadly, Trump – who raised doubts during his campaign about the US’s commitment to Nato – could be good news for May if the EU 27 become concerned about the geopolitical and security consequences, for example when dealing with Russian expansionism or the terrorist threat.

In that case, Britain’s military strength and intelligence capabilities might look more valuable to the bloc, prompting it to make Brexit concessions. Eastern member states particularly worried by Russia, for example, may prove more flexible on Britain’s aim to curtail free movement.

Crispin Blunt, chair of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, put it this way:

Within the negotiations on exit terms is going to be a negotiation on common security policy. It’s an obvious common interest that we should be fully engaged.

But there are equally strong reasons why the EU may not roll over. It might feel that the risk from the anti-establishment forces that drove Brexit and Trump is so great that only a harsh Brexit will show the Eurosceptics likely to do well in next year’s Dutch, French and German elections that leaving the EU is a seriously bad idea.

Trade could go either way. It’s possible that Trump, as he has signalled, will sign up for a future US-UK trade deal – which could strengthen the UK’s negotiating hand. On the other hand, he has blamed free-trade deals for all America’s economic woes, and could be spoiling for a tariff war with China.



If a Trump-led US, and subsequently the world, do take an inward-looking, protectionist turn, Britain could find itself quitting the EU’s single market and customs union and looking for favourable new trade deals at precisely the same moment as everyone else is shunning them.

Diplomatically, things could fall between the same cracks. In this context, Britain’s early and enthusiastic welcome to Trump – compared, for example, with German chancellor Angela Merkel’s cautious and very conditional reception – is unlikely to go down well with an EU 27 deeply alarmed by the prospect of populist contagion.

All of which prompted Ian Bond of the Centre for European Reform to offer the government this post-Trump Brexit advice:



The UK should focus on leaving the EU with the minimum damage to its relations with its European partners. That argues for minimising its demands and trying to achieve a quick agreement … If the UK is not to take a big economic hit, it needs to stay inside the single market. It should not make cutting EU migration its top priority, and try to salvage what it can of its market access.

Trump, the unexpected and unpredictable new leader of a country Britain has long considered its greatest ally, has changed the Brexit dynamics. Quite how, though, we will have to wait and see.

The view from Europe

Among a number of likely responses to the Republican’s unexpected triumph that could have an eventual impact on Brexit, the union is bent on bolstering its capacity to respond to conflicts and crises on its borders.

Although it dialled back plans for an EU defence HQ, Federica Mogherini, the bloc’s foreign affairs chief, said the union is a “superpower” indispensable for world peace. Manfred Weber, the influential chairman of the conservative EPP group in the European parliament, struck a similar note:

Trump will force Europe to grow up … We must be able to defend ourselves, and do so quickly. He will strengthen the need to establish a European defence community – and the EU states will finally take responsibility.

How the UK responds to this ambition could well prove critical to the goodwill – notably lacking, for the time being – that will be necessary on both sides for obtaining a Brexit deal that Britain can consider favourable.

Britain has in the past sworn to oppose anything resembling a “European army”, with the defence secretary, Michael Fallon, only last month sparking fury on the continent with his promise to veto any such move:

That is not going to happen. We are full members of the EU and we will go on resisting any attempt to set up a rival to Nato.

Meanwhile, back in Westminster …

Even with the Commons in recess last week, MPs and ministers were busy coping with the second seismic political shock of recent months – though they could at least take comfort in the knowledge that Trump’s win was not chaos of their own making.

Back in their constituencies, all cast their minds back. Had they criticised Trump? Did it matter if they had? Should they start doing so if they hadn’t? How problematic does a president-elect need to be before the much-vaunted (in London, anyway) “special relationship” no longer applies?



The provisional answer appears to be to metaphorically stick both fingers in your ears and pretend everything is normal – plus some displacement activity, mainly centred around Nigel Farage and busts of Churchill.



Theresa May shrugged off the snub/compliment/random act of chance of being telephoned by Trump after a dozen other leaders. On Monday, the prime minister made a speech promising that the UK would “adapt to the moment” and take on the global mantle of a leader in free trade.

Downing Street was dismissive of the idea that Farage and the rest of his delegation of self-styled “Brex Pistol” UK hangers-on could somehow be envoys from London to the new Washington, with even diehard Tory Brexit fans unimpressed. “This is an ego trip, not a diplomatic one,” noted Iain Duncan Smith of Farage in New York.

Oh, and just before the Trump thing happened, the Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, announced that should it come to it, his party would not vote in favour of triggering article 50 in parliament unless the government promised a second referendum on the terms of the exit deal.

Tim Farron attends a service at the cenotaph for Remembrance Sunday, with Michael Fallon, David Cameron and Chris Grayling. Photograph: Euan Cherry/Avalon

This may not seem too much of an issue in the Commons, where the Lib Dems have just eight MPs, but in the Lords they have more than 100 peers – and any bill authorising article 50 will need to pass both houses. Brexit minister David Jones said Farron was seeking to subvert democracy.

You should also know that:

Read this:

In the Guardian, Tim Farron explains his controversial warning that his party will vote against triggering article 50 unless there is a second referendum once the Brexit terms are known:

Since nobody has set out what Brexit would look like, and nobody – neither MPs nor the public – has had a say on what should come next, how is it undemocratic to demand that people should be given a say? ... We trusted people to vote for departure. Now we must also trust people to vote for a destination.

Polly Toynbee calls Brexit and Trump’s victory signal a “whitelash” that politicians must absolutely not pander to and the left has to tackle head on:

Demagogues seize on voters’ contradictions: people want Swedish public services on Trump-like low taxes; the cheap benefits of Primark and Lidl globalised trade, but to keep British jobs for British people. There are no magic solutions: not Brexit, not Trump. Labour needs to find the language to express these universal truths that most people know in their heart of hearts: you get what you pay for, and foreigners are not to blame for the failings of our shrinking state.

In the New Statesman, Tom Nuttall, who writes the Economist’s Charlemagne column, recounts a voyage round a dozen European countries, most of them increasingly aghast at the turn Brexit is taking in the UK. But there is acknowledgment, too, that this is a crunch moment for the EU:

Even Britain’s allies are starting to marvel at the daily horrors across the Channel. “The Tories are in the hands of nutcases,” a UK-friendly EU official told me after the Conservative party conference. “Poor Britannia.” The antics of the cabinet’s Three Brexiteers are monitored with morbid fascination … But what keeps Berlin up at night, a German official recently told me, is not the UK-EU relationship, but the question of whether European integration has run its course. “Everything else is peanuts,” he said.

Tweet of the week:

Sorry about this one ...