This panel brings together papers studying changes to both the content (trade, financial services) and process of policy making in the UK after Brexit - is the UK de-Europeanising or disengaging from the EU acquis communautaire and ways of doing? Or is it trying to re-engage? And how does this differ across policy areas?

This paper examines the impact of Brexit on UK financial services policy, explaining recent reforms to the domestic financial regulatory framework and assessing the prospects for future divergence from EU rules. Deploying the lens of de-Europeanisation, we show that the failure to include financial services in the final UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement necessitated major institutional changes, including the complete repatriation of competences, the delegation of additional rulemaking powers to domestic regulatory agencies, and attempts to strengthen regulators’ accountability to elected officials. By contrast, there has been very limited change with respect to policy, despite the government launching an extensive review of existing financial regulation and promising to tailor EU rules in order to exploit new Brexit opportunities. What emerges is therefore a pattern of disengagement without de-Europeanisation – or deferred de-Europeanisation – that is shaped by competing and conflicting adaptational pressures among key domestic actors: elected officials, financial regulators, and the financial industry. In particular, we argue that the limited policy change to date reflects internal financial industry divisions, regulators’ demands for autonomy, and capacity constraints within government and Parliament.

Brexit created an imperative for the UK to develop an independent trade policy. In its first years UK trade policy has been determined by three key factors: 1) minimising changes in trading relations; 2) ideological commitments to free trade; 3) symbolism of performing an independent trade policy. Drawing on DIT policy papers and parliamentary documents, this article charts new agreements, the institutions and practices that have evolved to negotiate and them. Their content also reveals the priorities of the Government’s trade policy. This article focuses more specifically on UK priorities in new post-Brexit trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand, which given their recent nature, have yet to be scrutinised by the literature. The analysis suggests that the imperatives of performing an independent trade policy, and delivering symbolic outcomes have been driving forces behind these initial agreements rather than economic gains, or developing a consensus around future trade policy.