Following the failure of formal negotiations in mid-2018, the European Commission confirms that the United Kingdom — having voted in 2016 to leave the EU — will be barred from Galileo's encrypted Public Regulated Service after Brexit, despite the UK having contributed close to £1.4 billion to the programme and built core ground-segment hardware.
London responds by spending close to £100 million on a feasibility study for an indigenous sovereign GNSS, ultimately abandoned in 2020 in favour of a £400-million stake in OneWeb and other alternatives. The political memory in Westminster is durable: cooperation in space, when the political weather turns, is not insurance — it is exposure.