Robert Duigan: The nobility and danger of CANZUK

A captured, progressive federation could be a poisonous source of left-wing radicalism and draconian global governance.

When the British Empire was at its peak, some of the most influential imperialists gathered together to lobby for a federated imperial core. The proposal comprised the Dominions, the largely white, English-speaking territories whose systems of government had attained parity with Great Britain: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, Ireland, and Britain itself.

This movement lasted from the early 1880s until it withered in the fire of the Great War. But for a brief time, even those at the apex of political influence considered it not just a romantic notion but a useful and even vital means of consolidating British rule across the globe. It resulted in important common trade and migration policy agreements under Joseph Chamberlain’s tenure as colonial secretary, and saw grand imperialists in Rhodes’s Round Table Group, now the Royal Institute of International Affairs, supporting Irish Home Rule as a means of preparing the ground for a working imperial federalism.

As strident as their sales pitches were, including “federate or disintegrate”, the federalists had their merits, such as balancing autonomy with union, increasing and diversifying economic intercourse, and growing loyalty and nationalism across the empire.

However, all of these merits are speculative. Frustratingly enough, a real test of its utility and function would have provided an answer to a more recent proposal to revive it. Unfortunately, the first experiment was cut short by Britain’s foolish involvement in the First World War and the eclipse of the British Empire by the American-dominated global system.

This mostly forgotten aspiration to imperial federalism has now been revived in a new form under the misbegotten acronym CANZUK (Canada–Australia–New Zealand–United Kingdom). After Brexit, the UK’s place in the world has become as peculiar as that of the other former Dominions. All now quietly exist in the submissive orbit of the United States and serve the American intelligence community through the Five Eyes network.

Present CANZUK suggestions include provisions similar to those in the process that formed the European Union (EU): free trade and free movement of people, as a prelude to greater union, but with greater cohesion, given that several shared policymaking bodies already exist. The post-imperial federation would be the third-largest economy on the planet, the tenth most populous, with 140 million citizens, $8.5 trillion in GDP, and the third or fourth greatest overall military capacity.

It is important to ask just what sort of problem this project would solve before one becomes dazzled by big numbers.

The elite question

Ironically, it is the old Round Table Group, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, which has taken the lead in rejecting the framework proposal. Its Australian branch has a politely sceptical take on the matter, but following Pierre Poilievre’s March statements, it has also made some positive noises. But the UK branch of Chatham House has been completely mum on the matter.

The Fabian Socialist network that took over the old Round Table Group in the 1920s is more forceful in its rebuke of post-imperial federalism than perhaps anyone else. The London School of Economics (LSE) blog hosted a piece by Duncan Bell (English) and Srdjan Vucetic (Canadian) that ridicules the notion. They treat it with deadly seriousness, as if it were some kind of evil revanchist imperial fantasy, and focus on connections to Brexit as signs that it is a nasty and doomed enterprise.

Given the historical and institutional influence of the Fabian Society, any such project would need buy-in from these players to have any serious hope of success. Without this deep “centre-left” support, it is profoundly unlikely to succeed any more than Brexit, which was undermined from both within and without. Brexit eventually achieved the opposite of its primary intentions and resulted in a collective agreement from elites to commit to terminal decline.