After Brexit: New Opportunities for Global Good in the National Interest

Please note: this is a draft of a forthcoming paper and has been peer reviewed internally.

This paper considers new UK policy opportunities for global development that arise from Brexit. We look for the “triple win”: what policy opportunities, enabled or enhanced by Brexit, are good for the world, good for the UK, and also good for the UK process of negotiating out of the EU? In doing so, we find four clear winners and four runners-up. Namely, the winning opportunities are 1) better trade for development, 2) fighting modern slavery and people trafficking, 3) climate change leadership, and 4) better migration controls, while the runners-up are 1) UK agricultural subsidies, 2) a new UK Development Bank, 3) a UK-owned “Smart Sanctions” mechanism, and 4) more cost-effective humanitarian assistance.