AUKUS deal exposes Boris Johnson and Global Britain’s post-Brexit desperation

The question of what’s in it for Britain has attracted less attention, but this aspect is crucial to grasping the depths of Gallic fury with the Morrison government.

Ten years ago we wrote The Unknown Nation, a work that charted Australia’s hesitant path out of Empire in the 1960s and ’70s, as Britain withdrew its military from south-east Asia and looked to join the European Community.

It has reinforced perceptions that Australia’s default strategic impulse is to cleave to wartime loyalties.

Seen from one perspective, the Morrison government has been canny in exploiting Johnson’s neediness.

The same could, and will, be said about AUKUS – that Australia has secured a massive upgrade to its military capabilities, with very little other than political, and ultimately illusory, benefits for global Britain.

Seen in this light, Australia is successfully exploiting the wreckage of Brexit.

The British government’s evident delight in poking Paris in the eye (not least Mr Johnson’s call on the French government to “prenez un grip” and “donnez-moi un break”) provides vivid testimony to the mess Australia risks buying into.

Such buffoonery plays well with Johnson’s Europhobe Brexit base.

It has reinforced perceptions that Australia’s default strategic impulse is to cleave to wartime loyalties.

Professor Stuart Ward heads the Saxo Institute at Copenhagen University and is author of Untied Kingdom: A Global History of the End of Britain (forthcoming in 2022).