Could Brexit revive a British union beyond the seas?
The question was actually rather off topic. It came in a mist of warm verbal embraces from the lectern, where the speaker was placing New Zealand in a Scandinavian welfare-narrative of social security, ethnic and religious tolerance and climate awareness - and all other kinds of shared values.
Winston Peters, New Zealand’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, was on a European charm offensive to cement ties between the outer pacific and Scandinavia. When he was suddenly asked for his view on the UK and Brexit. And unlike probably every other person in the room, Winston Peters beamed with enthusiasm over the divorce.
“That’s not to say we are not great admirers of the European Union and its post-War security in terms of peace and economic progress – it’s been absolutely stunning,” the foreign minister said, before painting a less-than-flattering portrait of the divorce proceedings.
“We could be seeing the sad implosion of the UK itself,” he said. “We said back in January 2016 that the Commonwealth should be getting ready for the change that is coming. Because the alternative is a trade bloc much larger than Europe, that is the Commonwealth itself, with an average growth rate of 5.5 percent and a population of 2.2 billion. That might seem like an extreme long-term prospect, but that’s what the future should look like, or could possibly look like, if the British were to leave.
A new pancontinental super state
Europeans across the continent see Brexit is seen as an unmitigated disaster unfolding in real time, and a symbol of crumbling global systems. But this is far from a universal perspective. Some are eyeing it as an opportunity. And after Theresa May announced that she would be stepping down as prime minister, leaving her throne to Boris Johnson, former foreign minister and all-round instigator of mayhem in British politics, the bad boys of Brexit are very much in the driving seat of UK foreign policy.
But what do the Brits really want once they leave the EU?
Global Britain’ is an empty slogan, so CANZUK could possibly add some direction
With the rise to power of Eurosceptic Brexiteers also comes the responsibility of formulating a coherent political vision for the UK’s future place in the world. Strengthening the Commonwealth’s historic ties has been presented as one possible scenario. And out of this arises the proposal for CANZUK – an acronym for a new union of English-speaking nations: Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. This is the union that the New Zealand foreign minister supports. And he’s not alone – Andrew Scheer, leader of the opposition in Canada, has also voiced his support.
“Absolutely, I very much support a trade deal with those countries. Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom have a similar basis of law, they have a common democratic system, they have the same types of legislation and regulations around investment and trade. Those are the types of things we don’t enjoy with China,” the Conservative Party leader said six months ago, when he declared himself a supporter of both Brexit and CANZUK, alongside a number of prominent Australian politicians.
Most CANZUK proponents however can be found in the UK, where they are lobbying for the vision to become official Conservative Party policy. And Boris Johnson in power they now have a window of opportunity.
“Boris Johnson has expressed interest in CANZUK, even though he has not officially declared his support yet,” says Srdjan Vucetic, Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, and author of ‘The Anglosphere’ (Stanford University Press, 2011).
“Boris Johnson throws around a lot of ideas, and most of them aren´t very well thought through. But as mayor of London he spoke warmly in favour of free movement with Australia, so I would not be surprised if he declared himself a CANZUK supporter within the next year,” says Vucetic, who last week visited DIIS for a conference on Britain’s post-Brexit identity and geopolitics.
The Canadian professor does not think that increased trade with these three nations can in any way replace what the UK loses from leaving the EU. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
“The grand vision is to create a new super state that spans the world’s oceans: an English-speaking super state. A sort of European Union for Brits and former British colonies,” he explains, but adds: “There is absolutely no way that three former Commonwealth nations can replace the UK’s trade with the EU.”
“We might have closed the distance between these countries, but it’s still far more expensive to transport goods from Australia to the UK, than from Denmark for example. It simply cannot be compared,” he says.
“The only market that is really interesting for the UK is the US, and the US is not going to give the UK a good trade deal. It will most likely be a worse deal than the one they have through the EU. A fundamental argument for CANZUK is to stand up to American dominance. But Canada and Australia are small economies – it’s why CANZUK is a total utopia.”
An idea that captures that moment?
Still, it seems as though the time is right for this political idea. The British parliament and political system has proved itself to be totally ill equipped to overcome the domestic political rivalry that has prevented it from reaching a compromise with Brussels on the conditions to leave the EU. But the lack of a coherent foreign policy is an even more pressing issue.
Vucetic points to the so-called Lancaster House speech that Theresa May gave in early 2017, six months after the Brexit vote. And it was an apt setting to give a speech that laid out her vision of a “Global Britain” – the decadent mansion was originally built for the Duke of York and has long been used as a backdrop for movies set in the both height and aftermath of the British Empire.
“’Global Britain’ is an empty slogan, so CANZUK could possibly add some direction,” he says.
“Supporters of CANZUK argue that it’s a perfect arrangement for a post-EU UK, as it offers political goals and economic strategy. The UK also needs new trading partners to make up for the lost or limited markets. The narrative behind the vision has an appeal: Here’s a viable alternative, shouldn’t we pursue it? It is easy to frame as a possible path,” he says, adding that CANZUK supporters are a limited group of intellectuals, journalists and activists in a number of different organisations and think tanks.
“If they can find a financial backer who is willing to invest in lobbying governments in the four countries, and an institute willing to develop the ideas, it could quickly gain momentum,” he says.
“History is full of ideas that started out at the fringes of the political spectrum but which – because the conditions were right – drifted into the mainstream. And many of the proponents see themselves as the Jean Monnet of CANZUK integration,” he says, referring to the chief architect of European integration and a founding father of the EU.
“I have watched this idea grow out of nowhere to now be supported by entire political parties. When I first wrote about it, it was an absolute fringe movement. But now it’s front and centre. It’s uncertain where it’s going to go,” he explains.
“In many ways, the right wing has lost its sense of direction. They’ve fallen for xenophobic and nativist politics. In which case CANZUK offers a solid alternative. It’s not nativistic because they want to keep the borders between these four countries open. And why? Because they have common legal systems and values, they find it easy to work together, and they speak the same language. It would be easy to integrate around the narrative that says, ‘we are not xenophobes, we want open borders – but just with these countries. And maybe also countries such as Denmark and Holland because they are practically English speaking anyways, so why not?’”
There is no ‘I’ in CANZUK
So, what’s the general problem with that approach, one might ask? CANZUK might seem unrealistic, but the UK would still be better off belonging to a community of close trading partners with shared values, than braving it as island all alone in the world.
CANZUK’s vision isn’t xenophobic, unlike many of the worrisome movements that are gaining traction across Europe, even if it has the potential for hijacked for these causes. Instead, the Canadian researcher argues it’s more like a neoliberal offshoot.
Still, the idea of that the UK would unite with a handful of former colonies, has shocked some critics – not least because of British history.
“It harks directly back to the British Empire,” says Srdjan Vucetic. “A number of conferences on this very same idea were held in Sydney, Ottawa and London during the 1880s and 1890s and through to the Edwardian period. The question at the time was how to unite and strengthen the Empire. Modern CANZUK supporters try to distance themselves from this comparison, saying, ‘we are not imperialists, we don’t even want to be associated with the Commonwealth. We want something completely new’. I agree with critics who see this as a red herring. It’s ahistoric to claim CANZUK is a brand-new idea, and wrong to claim history has no meaning in this context,” he says, pointing out the project’s inherent whiteness – though former Australian PM Tony Abbott has called for the inclusion of “economically-developed Commonwealth countries”.
It’s fascinating that it is so far limited to these four countries. Why not Ireland, for example? It doesn’t make sense. The only reasonable explanation is that Ireland has a Catholic heritage, while the rest of CANZUK is Protestant
The question is to what extent CANZUK is a rational union based on interests, values or culture. Or whether it’s a union built around something else entirely. Srdjan Vucetic isn’t sure how they’ve decided to draw its boundary.
“It’s fascinating that it is so far limited to these four countries. Why not Ireland, for example? It doesn’t make sense. The only reasonable explanation is that Ireland has a Catholic heritage, while the rest of CANZUK is Protestant. But Ireland has the same hallmarks as the other four countries. And yet there is no ‘I’ in CANZUK. This undermines the argument that the union is built on modern ideas such as the independent judiciary, liberal democracy, and so on. A free trade deal with the Republic of Ireland could even be a solution to the backstop [the arrangement outlined in the UK’s withdrawal agreement in the EU to prevent a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland once the UK leaves the Single Market and Customs Union, ed.]. But no. CANZUK is about culture – it’s not rational,” he says.
A zombie proposal
The Canadian researcher is unsure whether CANZUK will ever become more than a thought experiment.
“In reality, CANZUK is no more than a series of bullet points jotted down on a piece of paper by a Canadian political party a year ago. No one has managed to formulate a concrete proposal on free movement between the countries, for example, which wouldn’t be very complicated. A number of different opinion polls have shown a lot of support for the idea, especially among younger people,” he says.
But while free movement would be the first step, a political union would be the tenth.
“I’m surprised that it has not yet been proposed, but I also would not be surprised if it arrived within the next 12 months. We might then have conservative leaders in both Canada and the UK who are open to very radical ideas and big thinking,” he says, pointing out that the four countries already cooperate extensively together as the Five Eyes – a once secret surveillance cooperation that was revealed by Edward Snowden. The fifth member, the US, is excluded from CANZUK due to its established dominance.
“The question is how to move from a security and immigration cooperation to a political cooperation? Or even from a security cooperation to an economic cooperation? No one has presented a plan for this yet,” he says.
“Free movement of labour and security cooperation are completely realistic, but perhaps no more than that. But is that enough for CANZUK to remain a viable political vision, ready to be activated? Why not do more? Why not expand it?” he asks.
“It’s a zombie proposal that refuses to die.”