“England and America are two countries separated by the same language,” George Bernard Shaw once remarked. Post-Brexit, why allow any barriers to stand between the world’s two greatest allies?
During debate over the United Kingdom referendum to exit the European Union, Remain supporters argued that British trade would suffer; Leave campaigners countered that Britain had the world as its oyster, pointing to her proud history of overseas trade during which the “second” British Empire flourished. But why should Britain limit herself? Why not include her “first” imperial American offspring?
For even as the War of Independence created the worst relations imaginable between the two countries, with peace America wasted little time in renegotiating trade deals with her former mother country.
When the United States became tangled up in Britain’s conflict with revolutionary France upon the high seas, President Washington sent John Jay as his envoy to London, resulting in the eponymous treaty which resumed trans-Atlantic “amity, commerce, and navigation.”
Disagreement at the climax of the Napoleonic conflict brought the two nations to arms again during the short-lived, fairly inconsequential War of 1812. But tranquility and, more important, a dynamic alliance, has reigned ever since. Now another opportunity presents itself.
“Of all the many splendid opportunities provided by the British people’s heroic Brexit vote,” British historian Andrew Roberts writes, “perhaps the greatest is the resuscitation of the idea of a Canzuk Union.”
Roberts foresees the time is ripe for the Canzuk ideal: “The Crown countries of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom need to form a new federation based upon free trade, free movement of peoples, mutual defence, and a limited but effective confederal political structure.”
One question only remains of its organizers: Why limit Canzuk to its represented countries? Why not include the United States?
The New York Sun is America’s principal advocate of such a liberty bloc of nations, united by rule of law and the common law tradition, free markets, and mobility of capital, goods, and labour. Canzuk’s own numbers tell the story of its combined economic strength and political liberties. America’s addition would compound the benefits, considering her population, financial, and military advantages.
