Waleed Ali is clutching at his Brexit pearls today:
This trick of rebuilding globalisation through lots of new bilateral agreements is really designed to preserve the mythology of national sovereignty: to say Britain will remain in the global economy, but on its own terms.
Sure, that’s a bit false, since free trade agreements typically require some kind of diminution of sovereignty anyway, and since Britain’s involvement in the EU was an act of sovereignty in the first place. But it remains nonetheless an attempt to reconcile the “hyperglobalisation” and “national sovereignty” limbs of Rodrik’s trilemma. And it is coming at the cost of democracy – to the extent Britain is prepared to suspend its own Parliament to achieve this.
