Despite promises of a new post-Brexit Global Britain, the UK has fallen into its old habits which draw uncomfortable parallels with Kwame Nkrumah’s work on neo-colonialism, writes Mark Langan

As the British General Election draws closer, the Conservative Party hopes to capitalise upon the ‘Global Britain’ success stories of the Brexit era. Kemi Badenoch, as UK trade minister, will point to multiple Brexit trade agreements, such as the UK-Nigeria economic partnership signed in February 2024. The opposition Labour Party, meanwhile, will focus on rebuilding Britain as ‘the gold standard in international development’, as recently claimed by Labour Shadow Minister Lisa Nandy.

Since the Brexit referendum campaign, Conservative politicians, such as the now Home Secretary, James Cleverly, promised that the UK would use the powers of Brexit to offer fairer trade and aid provisions to African nations inside the Commonwealth ‘family’. Proponents of a ‘Hard Brexit’ such as May and Johnson effused about the potential of Global Britain to stimulate development in Africa. This was evident in May’s ‘dancing tour’ of Africa in 2018, and the UK Africa Investment Summit in 2020.

By articulating pro-development narratives about the African continent, Conservative politicians have sought to justify Brexit as an outward, not insular, event. UK officials have presented the Global Britain project as one that offers a corrective to the protectionist instincts of the EU, through programmes such as the Common Agricultural Policy, which has historically discriminated against African countries.