Global Britain: Imaginaries,identities,and ontological security

Abstract

This article analyses the imaginaries and identities that comprised the idea of Global Britain in the post-Brexit period. Global Britain emerged as a re-articulation of the United Kingdom’s place in the world following the vote to leave the European Union in 2016. Drawing on six discrete but related articles, this Special Issue on Global Britain shows what drove this idea and how audiences, domestic and international, responded to its narrative with a mixture of enthusiasm, mockery, disdain, and even anger for this renewed vision of Britain and its place in the world. From internal disputes within the Conservative Party to attitudes towards the Monarchy, via foreign policy formation, technological innovation, and message reception among foreign media, Global Britain was articulated in order to mitigate the sense of ontological insecurity generated by the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union and the new geopolitical environment of the 2020s. Part foreign policy, part national narrative, it was not the first such re-articulation of England, Britain, and the United Kingdom, nor will it be the last. This is because such narratives are not only broad foreign policy frameworks but are national narratives that seek to provide a sense of ontological security at a moment of geopolitical change.

Introduction

The term ‘Global Britain’ first emerged in government speeches in the wake of the vote to leave the European Union (EU) in 2016. It appeared in Theresa May’s speech to the 2016 Conservative Party conference and in the ‘Lancaster House Speech’ of 2017. The speech, delivered on 17 January 2017, illustrated May’s ‘Plan for Britain’ after Brexit (May, 2017b). It proposed a ‘hard Brexit’ which would involve leaving the Single Market and Customs Union to gain control over laws, borders, and trade. At the same time, it promoted something called ‘Global Britain’; a United Kingdom keen to engage in international trade deals with countries beyond the EU, while remaining linked to the EU as an external partner, and Europe as a security actor. It was articulated in a more bombastic style by Boris Johnson when he was Foreign Secretary (2016–2018). In late 2016, he argued that:

Brexit emphatically does not mean a Britain that turns in on herself. Yes – a country taking back control of its democratic institutions. But not a nation hauling up the drawbridge or slamming the door. A nation that is now on its mettle. A nation that refuses to be defined by this decision. A country galvanised by new possibilities and a country that is politically and economically and morally fated to be more outward-looking and more engaged with the world than ever before. (Johnson, 2016)

Johnson’s speech was one of various attempts to fill the idea of ‘Global Britain’ with meaning and translate that vision of the United Kingdom’s place in the world into foreign policy. The term ‘Global Britain’ was something of an empty vessel into which resonant meaning had to be poured. Whatever Global Britain was it had to operate on several different, and at times contradictory, levels. It had to link the post-Brexit UK with its pre-EU past; it had to present itself as a forward-looking foreign policy frame and narrative, assuaging concerns about disruption while reassuring erstwhile partners that the United Kingdom was still engaged and friendly; and it needed to speak to a domestic audience that was commonly understood as deeply divided between those mourning the loss of EU membership and those energised by the possibilities of the post-EU future.

This Special Issue of Politics offers a deep analysis of the imaginaries, continuities and discontinuities that informed the emergence and brief existence of ‘Global Britain’ from the period leading up to the Brexit referendum in 2016 until the idea and term were quietly dropped ahead of the 2024 UK General Election. Nonetheless it remains important to understand Global Britain as an instance of the re-articulation of a foreign policy national narrative that sought to overcome instances of ontological insecurity at a time of geopolitical dislocation. It was not the first instance of such a re-articulation of the United Kingdom’s place in the world; nor will it be the last. The articles that comprise the Special Issue show how Global Britain was framed either as nostalgia or agency (or both simultaneously), as politicians and publics sought to understand the United Kingdom’s changing place in the regional and world order. During an unusually turbulent period of British politics the articles herein show how a mixture of policies, practices, institutions and symbols have provided the United Kingdom with a sense of ontological security – in other words, security in its self-identity (Steel, 2008) – while the country was experiencing significant geopolitical change. Based on papers originally presented at workshops at Warwick University in 2023 and at the Monash University Prato Campus in 2024, supported by Monash-Warwick Activation funding awarded to Matteo Bonotti, James Brasset, Christopher Browning, and Ben Wellings, the Special Issue also shows how audiences, domestic and international, responded to the Global Britain narrative with a mixture of enthusiasm, mockery, disdain, and even anger for the vision of Britain and its place in the world that the concept elicited. From internal disputes within the Conservative Party to attitudes towards the Monarchy, via foreign policy formation, technological innovation, and reception among foreign media, Global Britain was articulated in order to mitigate the sense of ontological security generated by the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU.

What is – or was – Global Britain?

Global Britain has been described as ‘a phrase which encapsulates the attempt to pitch Brexit as a choice between a narrow and partial loyalty to a failing EU and a more expansive geopolitical economic outlook’ (Kenny and Pearce, 2018: 205). The discursive aim was to position Britain as something with wider horizons than the EU. During the 2016 referendum campaign, this framing of Britain as ‘global’ and the EU as ‘regional’, and hence parochial, went largely unchallenged, notwithstanding the EU’s considerable global reach through its extensive trading relationships. From this perspective, Global Britain was not solely a foreign policy framework for a post-Brexit UK, but it was as much a way of imagining and articulating Britain’s new – or renewed – place in the world, drawing upon a set of cultural, economic, and political links which have deep historical (imperial) roots. As such, it has attracted significant criticism as unrealistically nostalgic, neo-imperialistic, or both. But as Oliver Turner (2019) argued, the idea of Global Britain is best understood as ‘purposefully marketable rather than unwittingly delusional’ although it requires ‘knowledges of past imperial “successes,” and accepting images of empire amongst the British public to appear meaningful and justifiable’ (pp. 727–728). Thus, Global Britain is as much an idea and a national narrative as it is a substantive policy. ‘At its core’, Global Britain sought to ‘reassert the United Kingdom’s relevance and influence on the world stage post-Brexit, positioning the country as outward-looking, confident, and cooperative’ (Houde, 2025: 3).

Global Britain was often seen as a compensation for the relative decline of the United Kingdom in regional and world orders. In some ways, this was nothing new. Since the apogee of the British Empire in the 1920s, Britain has always been in decline (Parker, 2023). ‘Decline-ism’ was a powerful way of seeing Britain in the 1950s and 60s, and was partly responsible for the United Kingdom’s entry to the European Communities as a way to restore ‘greatness’. It was an important part of the Thatcherite project that gestated in the same decade, allowing the Thatcherites to solve the problem of the United Kingdom’s decline that they had so consistently articulated. Thatcher’s claim that after victory in the Falklands Conflict, Britain was a ‘nation no longer in retreat’ was illustrative of this politics. Nor was this decline-ism confined to the Conservative side of politics. The Blairite ‘New Labour, New Britain’ also sought to save Britain from itself, while David Cameron’s ill-defined ‘Big Society’ was predicated on social disintegration caused by the long-term entrenchment of neoliberal policy frameworks. Global Britain is therefore initially best understood as part of a tradition in which Britain’s long-standing efforts to live up to an idealised image of itself ‘always remains just out of reach’ (Browning, 2019: 231).

Yet the specific context for the formulation and articulation of Global Britain matters. As was widely recognised, the Brexit referendum crystallised a sense of ontological crisis across parts of British society and especially among the Remain-dominated echelons of the political and cultural Establishment. Yet while the referendum result may have been experienced as unexpected, profoundly shocking and destabilising by many, ultimately it encapsulated a growing sense of disaffection and alienation experienced by many Britons with the respect to government and the ruling political and economic elite (McKenzie, 2017). At the time, and supported by subsequent analyses of the referendum, this was manifest in a sense of loss of agency and national decline that was ultimately encapsulated in the leave campaign’s agentic appeals to ‘take back control’ and varyingly implicit and explicit nostalgic futurism.

But the referendum also manifested consequences for the United Kingdom’s international relations in practical, reputational, and emotional/ontological terms. Practically, the country now had to begin an arduous (and still ongoing) process of disentanglement from the political and economic governance structures of the European Union. Reputationally, the country was subjected to ridicule in much international commentary, with Brexit assumed to entail a devastating loss of international status and standing while entailing a form of national economic self-harm (Houde, 2025). Emotionally and ontologically, this was in turn experienced as deeply destabilising and shaming by many in the political establishment. They tended to agree with these international jibes and perceptions and often felt the need to personally ‘apologise’ for what ‘we’ (i.e. ‘they’ – the Leave voters) had done. Almost a decade after the event, it is worth recalling the sense of apologetic embarrassment that gripped a political, social and economic elite whose assumptions of agentic rule had been dethroned, and who were now themselves experiencing their own sense of alienation with respect to a Britain (and fellow Britons) they often professed to no longer recognise or understand (Browning, 2018).

Grappling with the destabilisation of the referendum result, the idea of ‘Global Britain’ soon emerged as a relatively neutral placeholder of hoped for gravitational coalescence (May, 2017b). Domestically, it was positioned as a slogan around which it was hoped a politically fractured – and fractious – nation might find common ground. Nostalgic futurism was apparent in the concept with ‘Global Britain’ designed to activate nostalgia for a time when ‘Great Britain’ had a high-status international role and weighty responsibilities, was positively recognised, was economically powerful, and, in short, mattered (Curanović and Szymański, 2022; Daddow, 2019; Haugevik and Svendsen, 2023). Yet, the reference to ‘global’ rather than ‘great’ also projected a more futuristic image of a cosmopolitan nation fully at home with globalisation and multiculturalism, a vision of the country it was hoped Remain voters and political elites could also get behind, and where any sense of loss and dislocation could be compensated with a ‘buccaneering spirit’ that would revive flagging national confidence (Schapps, 2016). Internationally, this aspect of Global Britain was also designed to reassure foreign audiences that the country was not about to become isolationist and that it would remain an international player.

Neither Brexit nor the United Kingdom’s resignification in terms of Global Britain took place in a geopolitical vacuum. Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election only a few months after the Brexit vote almost immediately challenged the hope that aspects of an Anglospheric reorientation might be unproblematically centred around a rejuvenated ‘Special Relationship’, with Trump’s victory suggesting a more isolationist orientation in US foreign policy, and certainly a more unilateralist one (Browning et al., 2021; Martill and Chryssogelos, 2025). Likewise, a turn towards a bolstered emphasis on the Commonwealth was itself set against a growing ideologically decolonial mood in the former colonies that has created a more critical (and demanding) attitude towards the former colonial metropole and the imperial lineages and symbols of the British state (Browning and Howe, 2025; Wellings et al., 2025). Yet, broader global geopolitical reorientations via a declining EU, the rise of BRICS countries, and especially a much more geopolitically active China in the Indo-Pacific and beyond have also created new opportunities and post hoc legitimations for the United Kingdom’s decoupling from Europe, with this most clearly evident in the United Kingdom’s AUKUS agreement with Australia and the United States (Holland and Staunton, 2024). The United Kingdom’s de-anchoring from the EU therefore required new expressions of ontological security in a context of a set of shifting regional and global orders (Brusenbauch-Meislová and Glencross, 2023).

Importantly, though, to appear convincing at home and abroad, projections of Global Britain required recognition from others if they were to deliver the status dividend and ontological re-anchoring and pride invested within the imaginary. Key external others in this regard have been the United States and Australia via the AUKUS pact, the broader community of ‘Anglosphere’ nations, and the Commonwealth. These salient others were therefore invited to embrace a similar geopolitical vision and sense of commonality to those found in the discourse of Global Britain. Theresa May’s 2017 speech to the Republican Party conference in Philadelphia that introduced Global Britain to a US audience was a full blown pitch to try and tempt the United States to reinvest in the Special Relationship by positioning the United States and the United Kingdom – two nations uniquely tied together, in a neo-Churchillian formulation, by ‘kinship, language and culture’ (May, 2017a) – as the primary defenders of the post-war ‘normative world order’ and the free world (Browning et al., 2021: 124). Inherent within such invitations, of course, is the possibility and vulnerability that such recognition is not forthcoming, potentially producing a new round of ridicule and destabilisation.

Structure of the special issue

The purpose of this special issue is therefore to reflect on the transformative and turbulent post-Brexit period of 2016–2024. Specifically, the issue aims to unpack and examine the constitutive ideas and identities that have permeated narratives of Global Britain since 2016. The novelty of the special issue is in the fact that it offers a reflection on the idea of ‘Global Britain’. This is understood not only as a renewed emphasis on foreign policy and cooperation with members of the Anglosphere and the Commonwealth at the expense of the EU, but also as a way of investing UK foreign policy with political hopes and expectations about Anglo-British nationhood, thus trying to find in it a source of ontological security. It also explores legacies of Global Britain by considering the concept’s stated aims with regard to the United Kingdom’s self-perceptions, and others’ perceptions of the United Kingdom, thereby pointing to the politics of recognition and some of the inherent vulnerabilities of this geopolitical imaginary.

The papers are therefore divided into two sections along these lines. Starting with domestically focused debates, three articles focus on the politics of the rebuilding of Anglo-British nationhood in different contexts. In the first article and pointing towards the sense of dislocation within the country following the referendum, Agnès Alexandre-Collier and Richard Hayton focus on internal attempts within the Conservative Party to articulate a post-Brexit vision for the country (Alexandre-Collier and Hayton, 2025). Specifically, they highlight how different narratives of Global Britain (cultural, affective, functionalist, and idealist) became evident among ethnic minority MPs within the party. This helped shape both the developing parameters of British Conservatism but also demonstrated how Global Britain was invested with hopes of regained status, identity, and pride in very particular ways. Here, while many discussions of Global Britain emphasised its Anglospheric dimensions and, indeed, often see Global Britain as an updated (and possibly more acceptable) replacement for the idea of the ‘Anglosphere’ (Bell and Vucetic, 2019; Vucetic, 2021) the article instead highlights the role of the Commonwealth among ethnic minority MPs who, in many cases, became standard bearers for subtly different visions of Global Britain. Rejecting the idea that Brexit marked the categorical end of the Cameron government’s attempt to modernise the Conservative Party ‘to better reflect the values and aspirations of 21st-century British society’, Alexandre-Collier and Hayton show how different narratives envisioned a variety of relationships with former colonised countries that have marginalised the traditional Powellite ethno-nationalist understanding of Britishness that has sometimes been ascribed to Global Britain (e.g. Melhuish, 2024) by extending the Anglosphere beyond its historically embedded ‘white’ racialised connotations (Holland, 2025). Yet, in this process, the relationship with the outside has often had an instrumentalist and utilitarian connotation that ironically has at times replayed legacies of colonial hierarchy.

But did the Global Britain narrative resonate with wider publics in the United Kingdom?, In the second article, John Denham, Conor Gaughan, and Tim Oliver consider how Brexit, Global Britain, and UK foreign policy more broadly need to be understood as the product of a pluri-national state that, because of size differentials and the constitutional settlement, always has the potential to foreground English views over that of the other constituent nations. Foreign policy – traditionally a preserve of the British state’s elites – seemingly takes us far from the idea of England as a political community. However, while the Anglo-centric nature of the United Kingdom’s constitution is evident (Kenny and Sheldon, 2021) and while this can result in a problematic conflation of the interests of England with those of the United Kingdom more broadly (Wincott et al., 2021), Denham et al. demonstrate that public attitudes across the different nations are generally aligned, with notable differences evident on only a few issues. For instance, English respondents appear more focused on issues of sovereignty than Scottish respondents. Yet across the constituent nations there seems to be only limited support for the globalised, free trading vision of Global Britain promoted by the Conservative government between 2016 and 2024, or even for deeper relations with the Anglosphere (Denham et al., 2025: 9). The article then considers how such an approach to UK foreign policy is dependent on elite advocates of Global Britain’s ability to mobilise voters around a much narrower set of issues, which in the case of Brexit happened thanks to a focus, especially in England, on immigration and national sovereignty. The article therefore demonstrates how major change in UK foreign policy can become possible when foreign policy issues are connected strongly with domestic concerns, especially with domestic concerns resonant in England.

In the third article, Francesca Melhuish (2025) also asks what exactly was British about Global Britain? She points to the continuing constitutive role of historic conceptions of self-identity in driving, mobilising, and legitimating visions of Global Britain in the present, underpinned by, for its proponents at least, a radical nostalgia that ‘emphasised hope and modernity over melancholia and loss’ (p. 4). Specifically, she focuses on the creation in 2023 of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) under the auspices of Global Britain – an agency, she argues, that is infused with ‘Anglofuturist’ nostalgia. Contending that Anglofuturism comprises both online activist communities and mainstream political discourses proposing a ‘novel’ mental framework for reimagining Britain’s prospects, Melhuish situates the emerging Anglofuturist movement within a longer history of ‘past futures’. She argues that Anglofuturism derives partly from a (gendered) 20th-century lineage of ideas of an English ‘new Elizabethanism’ (Elizabeth I was never queen of Scotland) in which advocates harked back to the exploits of the ‘great men’ of the first Elizabethan age in the aim of projecting forward a new youthful modernity. Melhuish (2025) shows how supportive discourses therefore invest ARIA with long-standing aspirations of ‘renewing Britain’s world leadership in science and technology’, spearheaded by ‘great men’ (pp. 5–6).

Yet, despite all the optimism, such future-oriented nostalgias designed to remedy an otherwise pervasive sense of decline also have a ‘dark side’. More understanding, she argues, is required of exactly how current manifestations of Anglofuturism may be shaping how Global Britain, and cognate imaginaries such as Anglo-America, are envisaged. Within strands of Anglofuturist discourse, Melhuish (2025) detects a suggestively eugenicist component that is often reframed in cultural terms, but which connects with the renewed interest in ‘race science’ currently being embraced by the transatlantic ‘new tech right’ – this itself manifesting an imperial nostalgia, ‘a longing to reconnect the nation with a particular trajectory of greatness’ (p. 9). This is a nostalgia that downplays the violence of empire to instead embrace a much more inspirational imperial history but one that may ultimately mask longings for a reassertion of racial hierarchies in the process of reinvigorating the nation out of its decline.

The remaining articles then shift focus to consider different aspects of Global Britain’s relationship with key audiences. As noted, recognition dynamics and questions of reception and resonance are ultimately fundamental to the ability of Global Britain – and the foreign policy agenda it has established – to provide the dividends of status enhancement and ontological repositioning invested in it. In this respect, the following articles, to differing degrees, all consider the legacies upon which Global Britain draws. The idea of Britain – and its state-based manifestation of the United Kingdom – has enough salience for other publics and those governing states to have an opinion about it, but this opinion is not always positive. The (strained) optimism of the Global Britain narrative competes with the ascription of frequently pessimistic or mocking views about a post-EU UK from abroad and within the Remain-voting British electorate.

In the fourth article, Anne-Marie Houde (2025) investigates ‘the disjuncture between the rhetorical ambitions of Global Britain and the emotionally charged international responses it has elicited’ (p. 2) in the international press, with further consideration of what consequences might stem from the perceived reputational damage. Contributing to literature on the politics of emotion, she articulates the relevance of two concepts, ‘emotional ascription’ and ‘emotional expectations’, with these referencing not what subjects are actually feeling but what others anticipate they will be feeling. As she notes, ‘emotional expectations refer to normative assumptions about how a state should respond emotionally to a given event, while emotional ascriptions involve attributing specific emotions to the state, regardless of whether they are genuinely felt’ (Houde, 2025: 6). Houde therefore argues that humour has been a central medium through which these emotional anticipations have circulated, with the United Kingdom often ‘portrayed as feeling despair, regret, or humiliation’ with it being implied that this is what the United Kingdom should be feeling, even if it did not. In this respect, Houde highlights how the outward-looking internationalist rebrand has generally fallen flat, with the United Kingdom subject to remorseless pitiful mocking and assumptions that, cut adrift from the EU, the country must be embarrassed, depressed, and with little hope. Such emotional anticipations therefore have significant potential to derail the United Kingdom’s efforts to project strength and stability on the global stage, pointing towards the unanticipated emotional geopolitics of major upheavals like Brexit that foreign policy reorientations such as Global Britain need to address if they are to be successful.

Article five is the first of two that looks at Global Britain via the role of the British monarchy and the broader legacy of colonialism. Following on from Houde’s consideration of mocking humour, Ben Wellings, Matteo Bonotti and Steven Zech consider the highly emotionalised politics of (in)civility that emerged following the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the ascension and coronation of Charles III. Given that claims about soft power pervaded articulations and justifications of Global Britain, the centrality of the royal family – arguably the country’s number one soft power asset – was foregrounded precisely by the transition precipitated by the Queen’s passing. In short, 2022–2023 quickly emerged as a test case for this soft power and the broader resonance of Global Britain, especially across the Commonwealth nations and occasioned questions about the ‘correct’ forms of behaviour at such moments. Civility, they argue, has three dimensions (politeness, moral civility, justificatory civility). These dimensions operate at different levels and raise questions about civility’s ability to perform disciplinary and oppressive roles and the (sometimes) desirable potentials of uncivil behaviour. In short, should civility be associated with politeness and/or with the furtherance of the public good, and how did this play out in the transition period from marking the Queen’s death to the coronation of Charles III in a context of recent investment in Global Britain? As they show, not everyone across the Commonwealth was content to remain silent about colonial legacies even – or especially – during a period of international salience for the royal family and Global Britain.

The last article further discusses Global Britain in the context of the British monarchy. Adopting a psychoanalytical approach Christopher Browning and Tom Howe highlight how the Royal Family operates as an idealised target of national vicarious identification and ontological (in)security, and unifying icons of the British experience. Drawing on Lacan, they highlight how, as individuals, the royal family provide targets of identification and act as conduits for a fantasy of sovereign agential community. Thus, in times of crisis and uncertainty – as evident over Brexit and a sense that Global Britain may itself be increasingly symbolic of decline and a fracturing British identity – the royals are often invested in as a fantasised image and a coping mechanism (Browning and Howe, 2025: 2) to (re)unify the nation and the national project. They therefore highlight how set-piece royal events – the Queen’s funeral, Harry and Meghan’s wedding, William and Kate’s Caribbean tour – were staged to reignite the country’s global ambitions and counter the pervading sense of diminishment, decline and disunity. However, in different ways these events have also served to crystallise tensions. Thus, while royal events provide opportunities for national vicarious identification, status enhancement, and ontological security, the seeds of ontological insecurity appear increasingly evident, both internally and with respect to key others in the United States, the Commonwealth, and Europe, hence the sensitivities that can be identified around staged royal events.

Conclusion

While being particularly associated with the conservative governments of Theresa May and Boris Johnson, and with some continuities during Liz Truss’s time as Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, Global Britain has now disappeared from the official lexicon of British governance. However, it lives on in popular discussion and imaginations, speaking to and activating the role of foreign policy in the geopolitical imaginary of the United Kingdom, even if it has at times been satirised as a further manifestation of post-imperial myopia (Turner, 2019). Yet, as a geopolitical imaginary, it has not only entailed a re-envisioning of the United Kingdom and its place in the world, but it has also tempted various other countries into possible role identities and communities of being in response to the United Kingdom’s geopolitical reorientation after Brexit, with this most evident in connections drawn between Global Britain and historical notions of the Anglosphere and Commonwealth nations.

Collectively, the articles in the Special Issue have shown some of the aspirations and limitations of the Global Britain idea and how these visions contend with each other among target audiences required for the recognition and validation of new – or renewed – identity narratives. It is difficult to be taken seriously as ‘Queen of the World’ (Hardman cited in Wellings et al., 2025: 8) when your kingdom is also seen as ‘Banana Island’ (Der Spiegel cited in Houde, 2025: 8). Thus, Global Britain sought to allay and offset some of these criticisms for the post-Brexit UK and its place on the world stage. Foreign policy narratives need to be credible to be effective. Yet, emerging from a period in which a strategic question of foreign policy reshaped domestic politics, Global Britain never quite managed that. The rhetorical inflation associated with Boris Johnson and the utopian and even eugenicist futurism of others could not mask the political instability of the Global Britain years. In this way, Global Britain remained another unfulfilled fantasy for people who needed Britain to matter in the world.

Finally, on a different note, we have to acknowledge the passing of our dear colleague and contributor to this Special Issue, Agnès Alexandre-Collier. A few months before this special issue was published, Agnès passed away following a short and devastating illness. Through her research on the Conservative Party, populism and Brexit in particular, Agnès played a crucial role in elevating research on British politics within French universities. She was also a pillar of the Conservatism group in the Political Studies Association in the United Kingdom. Her groundbreaking work on Euroscepticism continues to be an important point of reference, as does her book on David Cameron. Agnès was a respected and much-loved colleague who is dearly missed.