Meanwhile, back to the topic of the thread. Here’s Jack Dart’s Substack analysis of the position the the post-Brexit UK now finds itself in regarding Trump’s threats and bullying over his intention to ‘acquire’, by fair means or foul, the island of Greenland. Very astute, I believe he has his finger right on the pulse…

”Britain Must Rejoin the EU, Trump Has Shown How Weak We Are Alone.
Trump’s tariffs and imperial bullying have exposed the lie of Brexit sovereignty, leaving Britain isolated outside Europe’s shield at exactly the moment strongmen start treating allies as leverage.
JACK DART
JAN 18, 2026

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European Commission President Ursula von der LEYEN receives the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Sir Keir STARMER in Brussels, Belgium on October 2 , 2024.

Donald Trump has just demonstrated, with brutal clarity, what Brexit Britain refused to accept. In a world where power is exercised through coercion, tariffs, and threats, a medium sized democracy standing alone becomes a target, and Trump’s willingness to punish allies over his Greenland fantasy shows that the United States under his leadership treats partners as disposable.

He can flatter Nigel Farage on television, pose for photographs, and talk about shared instincts, but none of that alters the hierarchy Trump lives by. When American supremacy collides with British interests, Britain loses, every time, because Trump’s politics are transactional, narcissistic, and contemptuous of constraint. His tariff threats aimed at the UK and European allies are not a negotiation tactic in the normal sense, they are an assertion that other democracies should pay a price for refusing to comply with his demands, and he has never hidden the fact that he views economic pain inflicted on others as proof of strength.

That is the strategic trap Brexit created. Britain left the EU’s trading and regulatory bloc, then tried to compensate with nostalgic mythology about the Anglosphere and a “special relationship” that has always been conditional. Outside the single market, outside the EU’s collective leverage, Britain carries more exposure and fewer shields, and any future American administration with Trump’s instincts can squeeze the UK in ways that are hard to deter and harder to answer. The people who sold Brexit as sovereignty did not deliver control, they delivered vulnerability, and the cost lands on workers whose jobs depend on stable export markets, on families whose bills rise when supply chains seize, on patients when public finances tighten and services get cut back, and on young people whose opportunities shrink when cooperation turns into paperwork.

This is the point the right wing refuses to face because it blows up their story. They needed the EU to be collapsing, they needed Europe to be falling apart, they needed the post Brexit world to reward Britain’s self isolation with instant deference. Europe has instead moved further into shared capacity, shared rules, and shared currency, because hard power has returned to the continent and serious governments respond by building institutions, not dismantling them. Croatia joined the eurozone in 2023, Bulgaria is adopting the euro in January 2026, and that pattern matters because countries do not sign up to a shared currency if they think the project is about to fail.

The Union is widening as well as deepening, and it is widening for the most sober reason imaginable, security. Ukraine and Moldova have candidate status, accession talks have advanced, and the Western Balkans remain on a path that, however uneven, still points towards membership because the EU represents shelter, leverage, and a rules based order that makes coercion harder. The states that sit outside the EU, especially those close to Russia’s shadow or dependent on US goodwill, have started arguing more openly about joining precisely because they can see what Britain tried to deny, which is that sovereignty without power becomes dispossession, and power in this era is built through blocs.

The claim that the EU economy is failing because Germany and France are struggling to adapt is another bad faith dodge. Germany’s industrial model faces the end of cheap Russian energy, France wrestles with political fragmentation, and Europe has real structural challenges around productivity, energy transition, and demographic change, yet none of that points towards collapse, it points towards the normal stresses of modernisation that every advanced economy is confronting. The EU continues to use its scale to set standards, to negotiate trade agreements, and to protect its members in ways that Britain cannot replicate alone, because a market of hundreds of millions has bargaining power that a mid sized state does not.

Britain’s partial steps back towards cooperation already admit the truth. Horizon again, Erasmus+ from 2027, warmer language around alignment and practical cooperation, these moves happen because ministers know the economic damage is undeniable and the geopolitical weather has turned violent. Students lose years of mobility and networks when exchange routes are cut, researchers lose partnerships and funding when Britain tries to stand apart, and small businesses pay in friction and delay when trade becomes a maze, so even cautious governments edge back towards the structures that work.

Keir Starmer’s government, if it wants to govern seriously, has to go further and stop pretending that incremental patches are a destination. A Britain that remains outside the EU will keep discovering that its choices are constrained by other people’s decisions, whether those decisions are made in Brussels, Washington, or Beijing, and Trump has shown how quickly Washington can decide that British interests are irrelevant. The next time the US wants leverage, it will find an exposed Britain and apply pressure, because that is what strongmen do and that is what Brexit enabled.

The honest conclusion is uncomfortable for the people who built careers on Brexit, which is why they will keep lying about Europe’s supposed demise and keep selling the public a story about lone wolf strength. Britain needs to rejoin the EU because the world has entered an era of economic coercion and democratic erosion, and the only credible answer for a country of our size is to lock in protection through shared rules, shared capacity, and collective power. The choice is not between proud sovereignty and European cooperation, but between being a participant in a bloc big enough to defend its people, or being a spectator while others decide the terms, and Trump has just reminded us which side gets punished.

Link to Jack Dart’s Substack Article