Tensions rise in Britain’s departure from EU

LONDON — Few people on either side of the English Channel believed that Britain’s exit from the European Union would go off without a hitch. So when horror stories surfaced about rotting shellfish, empty delivery trucks and eye-popping customs fees, many reacted less with shock than grim resignation.

But Britain and the European Union have also fallen out politically and diplomatically, with a speed and bitterness that has surprised even pessimists about the relationship. While these strains are less tangible to Britons than having to pay extra costs for imported coffee from Italy, they could have an equally corrosive long-term effect.

“These are not purely teething problems,” said Kim Darroch, who served as Britain’s permanent representative to the European Union and later as ambassador to Washington, citing the government’s all-purpose explanation for Brexit problems. “They are structural problems that arise from not being in the single market. This is what a ‘hard Brexit’ looks like.”

Tensions have flared on matters large and small since a new trade agreement formalized Brexit on Jan. 1. The British refused to grant full diplomatic status to the European Union’s envoy to London. European leaders lashed out at shortages in the supply of a British-made coronavirus vaccine and briefly threatened to rip up the agreement governing trade with a post-Brexit Northern Ireland.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson replaced the minister responsible for dealing with Brussels, Michael Gove, an ambitious politician known for his emollient manner, with David Frost, a more rough-edged functionary who hammered out the trade agreement between Britain and the European Union.

In a recent speech that sketched out his vision of a “global Britain,” Johnson pledged to deepen trans-Atlantic ties and even build Britain’s presence in the Pacific. But he barely mentioned the European Union. When he did, it was to emphasize how much Britain would gain by severing ties with it.

“The U.K. really needs a special relationship, a deeply interlinked relationship, with the EU,” said Jeremy Shapiro, research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a research institute in London. “But this government has defined itself ideologically as not needing the EU for anything.”

Some of these tensions are the inevitable result of what was, after all, an acrimonious divorce, 4½ years in the making. The trade agreement was less a springboard for future cooperation than a bare-bones severance deal that left many issues, including the future of London’s mighty finance industry, to be thrashed out later.

In a sign of the battles to come, the Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, warned last week of a “serious escalation” in tensions between London and Brussels if the European Union tried to force banks to move the clearance of euro-denominated derivatives trading from London to the continent.