As Russia is poised to invade Ukraine, with a build-up of as many as 100,000 troops on the border and a concurrent supply of blood banks, commentators are concerned with what this might mean for the rest of the European continent. It may seem selfish to consider the impacts on Western Europe of a ground war in Ukraine, but an inability to think clearly about such ramifications led to a series of ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East, a refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, and the precipitation of homegrown terrorism.
A recent Spectator article, from Owen Matthews, considered that economic sanctions on Russia would likely be enough to deter any invasion, as Putin does not want or need ‘more chunks of Ukraine – there’s no strategic, political or economic upside in fighting an attritional war over open country’. Perhaps not, and the cost of war would certainly be prohibitive, but this presumes that the gas lines to Europe will be turned off, at any point; Russia would not want that, as it would help to cover any military spending, and Europe cannot even consider it, as Germany closes down her nuclear plants and British energy bills are set to soar.
But Russia can destabilise Europe in other ways; and the easiest way is to cause a refugee crisis.
There are three main reasons why this is a likely possibility at this point. First, the Russian style of warfare is one that easily displaces populations: their typical attack plan is to besiege and pummel cities into submission, either with artillery or air support, and concurrently blockade ports until the population submits. The experiences of Russian tactics in Chechnya and Syria are evidence of this: in 2000, before nine years of attritional warfare would see Chechnya reincorporated into the Russian Federation, the Siege of Grozny decimated the city to an extent not seen since the Second World War. An estimated half a million people lived in Grozny by the time of the siege; today, there is just over half that number.
Syria is the same story, with a few details changed. Rather than commit a ground presence, Russia engaged itself in the Syrian Civil War mostly in the air, with what was ultimately a five-year campaign that targeted anti-government positions, but killed as many as 2,000 civilians within the first six months. The refugee fallout of the Syrian Civil War cannot be laid solely at Putin’s door, but it is undeniable that the Russian style of warfare played a significant role in its creation.
Then there is the actual population of Ukraine. Any ground war will not be a repeat of 2014, for a number of reasons, but the most important is the lack of support Russia and Putin experience amongst the Ukrainian population. The Annexation of Crimea was justified somewhat on the historical basis of Russia’s connections to the population and the resurgent separatism in the region; in Western Ukraine, there is no such support, and only 17% of the population hold any warm feelings towards Russia.
Whilst it is never a certainty that a Russian invasion would displace the near-60% of Ukrainians who hold negative attitudes towards Russia, the rules of migration have drastically changed, and populations across the world are much more prepared to leave their homelands if forced to. Moreover, of the 25 million Ukrainians who hold negative attitudes, if only 1% of that number – 250,000 – decided to head West, Eastern European nations would be facing a series of very difficult questions indeed.
Which brings us to the third reason why a refugee crisis is likely; Ukrainians are already heading West, and have done for some time. Economic trends across Europe have seen improved national economies in the Eastern European nations, the Visegrad Group, to the extent that they are actually facing a labour shortage. Consequently, worker flows to Western Europe have slowed, and itinerant workers from Romania and Ukraine have increased in number; so much so, that there are over 300,000 Ukrainians in Poland alone.
This figure has been manageable because of its gradual growth. The same number turning up on the Polish border would not be met with the same warmth; indeed, we already see this with the crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border. Accusations that the Belarusian government has been engineering the crisis are credible, but not the whole picture: Lukashenko stands by Putin very closely, and has accused the West of trying to ‘drown the region in blood’. It would not be beyond the bounds of possibility for the Russian regime to be orchestrating the refugee crisis on the Polish border, but even if they are not, who is to say that they will not in future?
Almost no-one is discussing the reality that the next European refugee crisis is brewing in Ukraine, and the hardest truth to face up to is it might not even need Western nations’ involvement to erupt. The hard questions Europe has faced for nearly a decade are about to get harder.
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Right Place, Right Time, Wrong Movement
During an interview for the H. L. Mencken Club, writer Derek Turner described political correctness as a ‘clown with a knife’, combining more petty nanny state tendencies with a more totalitarian aim, thereby allowing it to gain considerable headway as no-one takes it seriously enough. In a previous article, the present author linked such a notion to the coverup of grooming gangs across Britain, with it being one of the most obvious epitomes of such an idea, especially for all the lives ruined because of the fears of violating that ‘principle’ being too strong to want to take action.
The other notion that was linked was that of Islamic terrorism, whereby any serious attempts to talk about it (much less respond to it in an orderly way) is hindered by violating political correctness – with both it and Islamic extremism being allowed to gain much headway in turn. Instead, the establishment falls back onto two familiar responses. At best, they treat any such event with copious amounts of sentimentality, promising that such acts won’t divide the country and we are all united in whatever communitarian spirit is convenient to the storyline.
At worst, they aren’t discussed at all, becoming memory-holed in order to not upset the current state of play. Neither attitude does much good, especially in the former’s case as it can lead, as Theodore Dalrymple noted, to being the ‘forerunner and accomplice of brutality whenever the policies suggested by it have been put into place’. The various ineffective crackdowns on civil liberties following these attacks can attest to that.
However, while there is no serious current political challenge to radical Islam, there was for a time a serious enough alternative movement that was, and despite it not being completely mainstream, certainly left its mark.
That was Britain’s Counter-Jihad movement, a political force that definitely lived up to the name for those who could remember it. Being a loud and noisy affair, it protested (up and down the country) everything contingent with Islamism, from terrorism to grooming gangs. It combined working-class energy with militant secularism, with its supposed influences ranging as far as Winston Churchill to Christopher Hitchens. It was often reactionary in many of its viewpoints but with appeals to left-wing cultural hegemony. It was as likely to attack Islam for its undermining of women’s and LGBT rights as for its demographic ramifications through mass immigration.
While hard to imagine now, it was the real deal, with many of its faces and names becoming countercultural icons among the British right. Tommy Robinson, Anne Marie Waters, Paul Weston, Pat Condell, Jonaya English, as well as many others fitted this moniker to varying degrees of success. It had its more respectable intellectual faces like Douglas Murray and Maajid Nawaz, while even entertaining mainstream politics on occasion, most notably with Nigel Farage and UKIP (especially under the leadership of Gerard Batten) flirting with it from time to time.
While being a constant minor mainstay in British politics for the early part of the 21st century, it was in 2017 when it reached its zenith. The numerous and culminating Islamic terrorist attacks that year, from Westminster Bridge to Manchester Arena to the London Borough Market as well as the failed Parsons Green Tube bombing had (cynically or otherwise) left the movement feeling horribly vindicated in many of its concerns. Angst among the public was high and palpable, to the point that even the BBC pondered as to whether 2017 had been ‘the worst year for UK terrorism’. Douglas Murray released his magnum opus in The Strange Death of Europe, of which became an instant best-seller and critical darling, all the while being a blunt and honest examination of many issues including that of radical Islam within Britain and much of the continent itself – something that would have previously been dismissed as mere reactionary commentary. And at the end of the year, the anti-Islam populist party For Britain begun in earnest, with its founder and leader in Anne Marie Waters promising to use it as a voice for those in Britain who ‘consider Islam to be of existential significance’.
In short, the energy was there, the timing was (unfortunately) right and the platforms were finally available to take such a concern to the mainstream. To paraphrase the Radiohead song, everything (seemed to be) in its right place.
Despite this, it would ironically never actually get better for the movement, with its steep decline and fall coming slowly but surely afterwards. This was most symbolically displayed in mid-2022 when For Britain folded, with Waters citing both far-left harassment and a lack of financial support due to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis in her decision to discontinue. This came shortly after its candidate Frankie Rufolo quite literally jumped for joy after coming last in the Tiverton and Honiton by-election, the last the party would contest. All the movement is now is a textbook case of how quickly fortunes can change.
What was once a sizeable movement within British politics is now just as much a relic of 2017 as the last hurrah of BGMedia, the several jokes about Tom Cruise’s abysmal iteration of The Mummy (half-finished trailer and film alike) and the several viral Arsenal Fan TV videos that have aged poorly for… obvious reasons. Those in its grassroots are now alienated and isolated once more, and are presumably resorting to sucking a lemon. Why its complete demise happened is debatable, but some factors are more obvious than others.
The most common explanation is one the right in general has blamed for all their woes in recent years – what Richard Spencer dubbed ‘The Great Shuttening’. This conceit contended that reactionary forces would eventually become so powerful in the political arena that the establishment would do all it could to restrict its potential reach for the future. This was an idea that played out following the populist victories of Brexit and Trump, largely (and ironically) because of the convenient seppuku that the alt-right gave to the establishment following the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, leading to much in the way of censorship (on social media especially) with that event and the death left in its wake being the pretext.
Needless to say, it wasn’t simply Spencer and his ilk that were affected, confined to either Bitchute or obscure websites in sharp contrast from their early 2010s heyday. Counter-jihad was another casualty in the matter, with many of its orgs and figureheads being banned on social media and online payment services, limiting the potential growth that they would have had in 2017 and beyond. In turn, the only access they now had to the mainstream was the various hit pieces conducted on them, which unsurprisingly didn’t endear many to these types of characters and groups.
But if they couldn’t gain grassroots support (on social media or off it), it might be for another obvious reason for the collapse: the movement itself was not an organically developed one, of which made its downfall somewhat inevitable. This is because much of the movement’s main cheerleaders and backers were that of the conservative elite (or Conservatism Inc., for pejorative purposes), on both sides of the Atlantic, rather than the public at large. For Tommy Robinson in particular, the movement’s unofficial figurehead for the longest time, this was most apparent.
On the British end, it was a matter of promoting Robinson in differing ways. At best, they tactfully agreed with him even if disagreeing with his behaviour and antics more broadly, and at worst, they promoted him as someone who wasn’t as bad as much of the press claimed he was. That he had friendly interviews in the Spectator, puff pieces written for him in the Times, all the while having shows from This Morning and The Pledge allowing right-wing commentators to claim that he was highlighting supposed legitimate contentions of the masses demonstrated much of this promotion.
American conservative support came through similar promotion. This mostly came during his various court cases in 2018 and 2019, whereby many major networks framed him as a victim of a kangaroo court and a political prisoner (all the while failing to understand basic British contempt of court laws as they did so under ‘muh freedom’ rhetoric). However, most of the important American support was financial. This often came directly from neoconservative think tanks, mainly the Middle East Forum which gave Robinson much financial support, as did similar organisations. To what end is unknown, but given the war-hawk views of some involved (including MEF head Daniel Pipes), it is reasonable to assume something sinister was going on with that kind of help.
This in turn compounded another central reason as to the movement’s collapse: the genuine lack of authenticity in it as a whole. This is because the movement’s pandering to secularism and left-wing thought as expressed earlier are acceptable within mainstream political discourse. This sharp contrast between the inherently left-wing Robinson and Waters and their ideologically reactionary base made the movement unstable from the get-go. Much of it was a liberal movement designed to attack Islam as undermining the West as defined by the cultural revolution of the 1960s, not a reactionary one attacking that revolution as a whole as well much to the chagrin of its supporters.
Counter-jihad was therefore just simply a more radical version of the acceptable establishment attack on Islamism. As Paul Gottfried wrote in a recent Chronicles column, ‘Those who loudly protest that Muslims oppose feminism and discriminate against homosexuals are by no means conservative. They are simply more consistent in their progressive views than those on the woke left who treat Islamic patriarchy indulgently’. It is for this reason that the mainstream right were far kinder to counter-jihad and Robinson in the early 2010s than the likes of actual right-wingers like Nigel Farage and the Bow Group under its current leadership.
It is no surprise then that a movement with such inauthentic leadership and contradictory ideology would collapse once such issues became too big to ignore, with Robinson himself being the main fall guy for the movement’s fate. With questions being asked about his background becoming too numerous, the consistent begging for donations becoming increasingly suspect and people eventually getting fed up of the pantomime he had set up of self-inflicted arrests and scandals, his time in the spotlight came to a swift end. His former supporters abandoned him in droves, all the while his performance in the 2019 European Elections was equally dismal, where he came in below the often-mocked Change UK in the North West region, to audible laughter. Following his surprise return to X, formerly Twitter, and his antics during Remembrance Day, scepticism regarding his motives, especially amongst people who would otherwise support him, has only increased.
Now this article isn’t designed to attack British Counter-Jihad as a movement entirely. What it is meant for is to highlight the successes and failings of the movement for better attempts in the future. For one example, as other have discussed elsewhere, when noting the failings of the 2010s right, having good leadership with a strong mass movement and sound financial backing is key.
Those that can get this right have been successful in recent years. The Brexit campaign was able to do this through having moderate and popular characters like Nigel Farage, eccentric Tories and prominent left-wingers like George Galloway be its face, all the while having funding from millionaires like Arron Banks and Tim Martin, who could keep their noses mostly clean. The MAGA movement stateside is a similar venture, with faces like Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Tucker Carlson being its faces, with Peter Thiel as its (mostly) clean billionaire financier.
The British Counter-Jihad movement had none of that. Its leadership were often questionable rabble rousers, which while having some sympathy among the working class, often terrified much of the middle England vote and support needed to get anywhere. Its grassroots were often of a similar ilk, all the while being very ideologically out of step with its leadership and lacking necessary restraint, allowing for easy demonisation amongst a sneering, classist establishment. The funny money from neocon donors clearly made it a movement whose ulterior motives were troublesome to say the least.
Hence why counter-jihad collapsed, and its main figurehead’s only use now is living rent free in the minds of the progressive left and cynical politicians (and even cringeworthy pop stars), acting as a necessary bogeyman for the regime to keep their base ever so weary of such politics reappearing in the future.
However, this overall isn’t a good thing for Britain, as it needs some kind of movement to act as a necessary buffer against such forces in the future. As Robinson admitted in his book Enemy of the State, the problems he ‘highlighted… haven’t gone away. They aren’t going away.’ That was written all the way back in 2015 – needless to say, the situation has become much worse since then. From violent attacks, like the killing of Sir David Amess, to the failed bombing of Liverpool Women’s Hospital to the attempted assassination on Sir Salman Rushdie, to intimidation campaigns against Batley school teachers, autistic school children accidentally scuffing the Quran and the film The Lady of Heaven, such problems instead of going away have come back roaring with a vengeance.
In turn, in the same way that the grooming gangs issue cannot simply be tackled by occasional government rhetoric, tweets of support by the likes of actress Samantha Morton and GB News specials alone, radical Islam isn’t going to be dealt with by rabble rouser organisations and suspicious overseas money single-handedly. Moves like Michael Gove firing government workers involved with the Lady of Heaven protests are welcome, but don’t go anywhere near far enough.
Without a grassroots org or a more ‘respectable’ group acting as a necessary buffer against such forces, the only alternative is to have the liberal elite control the narrative. At best, they’ll continue downplaying it at every turn, joking about ‘Muslamic Ray Guns’ and making far-left activists who disrupt peaceful protests against Islamist terror attacks into icons.
As for the political establishment, they remain committed to what Douglas Murray describes as ‘Rowleyism’, playing out a false equivalence between Islamism and the far-right in terms of the threat they pose. As such, regime propagandists continue to portray the far-right as the villains in every popular show, from No Offence to Trigger Point. Erstwhile, the Prevent program will be given license to overly focus on the far-right as opposed to Islamism, despite the findings of the Shawcross Review.
In conclusion, British Counter-Jihad was simply a case of right place, right time but wrong movement. What it doesn’t mean is that its pretences should be relegated or confined to certain corners, given what an existential threat radical Islam poses, and as Arnold Toynbee noted, any society that doesn’t solve the crises of the age is one that quickly becomes in peril. British Counter-Jihad was the wrong movement for that. It’s time to build something new, and hopefully something better will take its place.
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Nature vs Nurture: The Failing of Black Caribbean Pupils in Education
According to the race report published last year, 63% of Black caribbean households are single parent households, as opposed to the black african community who is at 43%, the UK’s rate is 14.7%. The culture for the black community in the UK is quite similar to the US which also has problems with black on black crime, low literacy rates and father absence. The larger question that has raged between left and right for centuries is nature or nurture? How much control does an ethnic minority have over their fate?
What we are discussing is not an issue exclusive to the black community. “Redneck culture” , a term used by Thomas Sowell to describe a subculture prevalent in ghettos, encourages a way of life and mentality that is not conducive to the success of any community. A quote from his book White Liberals and Black Rednecks used to describe the southern white population follows: “ proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity… reckless searches for excitement, lively music and dance etc” This is only a short sample from a long list of cultural behaviours that without knowing the topic of focus, would be thought exclusive to the black community.
What the leftist intelligentsia often leave out of conversations about race are the effects of culture and values within a community. Not every ill can be attributed to the supposed “effects of capitalism”. The left’s obsession with proving that racism causes inequality has meant that many problems that could be solved independent of the state, are used as incentives to garner the black vote.
With the data available by comparing the different ethnic communities in the UK we should be able to see the effect that values have on a community, which largely shows that the Black African community does much better in education and has lower rates of expulsion for pupils alongside better mental health. This is especially outstanding as the things mentioned above are named as social behavioral problems, arising from single parenthood. As the lack of a paternal and/or maternal influence are proven to negatively affect emotional control for example higher levels of aggression. Could this be why Caribbean pupils are twice as likely to get temporarily excluded at 10.2% compared to 4.2%. They also have the highest rates of detention under the mental health act.
The black community in Britain faces a large issue of knife crime where between 2017 and 2020 black people aged 15-17 made up 47% of homicide victims. Sadiq Khan even predicts a rise in violent crime in London due to the cost of living crisis.
Aside from behavioral problems, Caribbean pupils are also far more likely than African students to do worse in education. Which should be the top priority for growth in any community as it leads to higher paid jobs. Although black pupils as a whole are more likely to go to university than white pupils. Black Caribbean students are the most likely to go into high tariff universities. Could this possibly be because there is a lack of educational importance in the Caribbean community, which means that African pupils progress further? 10.9% of black caribbean compared to 17.3% of African pupils gain 3 A’s at A Level.
Now immigrants do tend to do better in education, but not all immigrants do equally well. 42% of the Chinese population gained 3 A’s and 33.2% of Indians followed by 26% of white students. Which indicates that their fate is not fixed but contrary, and that immigrant children often outperform white students.
What the black community has is not primarily an issue of race but of culture, which requires steady homes and values to fix, that which conservatism provides.
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AUKUS and The Path Towards an Anglosphere Bloc
In 2023, the international order seems completely up-ended. Moscow has reverted to imperialism with its invasion of Ukraine, China’s regime is unrelenting in its designs towards Taiwan and Iran is edging closer to acquiring a nuclear weapon. Three decades on since the end of the Cold War and it would seem that Western intentions for a peaceful world now lie in tatters.
Yet we Westerners face our own set of problems. The UK remains more or less directionless on the world stage, its economy and reputation in freefall. On the continent, Hungary and Poland seem determined to stall EU centralisation efforts and the once ironclad relationship between Paris and Berlin appears to be weakening. Meanwhile, the US is mired in a state of total electoral chaos that one would normally associate with a banana republic. Perhaps the next leader of the free world will be running the show from a prison cell. At this point, who really knows?
Recent years have seen the UK, like the US, be radically transformed into a viscerally divided country. Although the polls seemingly indicate a majority now regret Brexit and would seek to reverse it, little thought has been given to how willing the British public would be to adopt the Euro or join Schengen – both of which Brussels would force upon us if we were to rejoin. Yet staunch Brexiteers haven’t exactly had much to offer us either. Since leaving, we’ve just about managed to re-secure the existing trade agreements we already had as an EU member and have joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) – which is predicted to grow the UK economy by just 0.08% over the next decade. Evidently, any future success we will enjoy as an isolated, declining power remains very unclear.
What is clear though is that the UK desperately needs bolder vision if it wants to drag itself out of the quagmire it is currently sinking into. It needs a new, invigorating national project that can unite its splintered political factions and galvanise support towards a stronger future. The UK has just exited one of the most successful blocs the world has seen, yet it may have already joined an even greater one – AUKUS.
AUKUS – an acronym of its member countries of Australia, the UK and the US – was formed in 2021 to act as a deterrent to Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific. As a military pact, its initial moves have been to assist Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines as well as to step up information sharing on AI, quantum and hypersonic technologies.
Although originally hesitant about joining, New Zealand’s government has now expressed interest in becoming AUKUS’s fourth member, with Canada quickly following suit. The addition of these countries makes sense given that both have economic and geopolitical interests in the Pacific and equally view China as a threat. Furthermore, being members of the ‘Five-Eyes’ intelligence pact, neither would seek being shut out of any agreements involving information sharing.
However, their compatibility with AUKUS goes beyond military and security concerns. With a shared democratic ethos and a common system of governance, AUKUS represents not just a strategic pact, but also a values-based alliance uniting all of its members, including potential additions Canada and New Zealand. As such, the potential for AUKUS to welcome even broader collaboration seems apparent already.
Proposals for stronger ties between the five countries are nothing new. By far the most popular concept to be imagined has been ‘CANZUK’. Yet another acronym for its member states, this would involve a hypothetical trade and cooperation bloc comprising all aforementioned countries – with the notable exception of the US. Focusing strictly on expanding economic, security and foreign-policy collaboration, its proponents dismiss the idea of any political union. Crucially, free movement would be implemented, however – just not the kind we associate with Schengen. For it would bar anyone with a criminal record, an infectious disease or those considered to be a national security risk.
Its advocates certainly sell the CANZUK vision well. As they point out, with a population of at least 135 million and a combined GDP of over $6 trillion, CANZUK would be among the top four economic powers in the world. It would comprise an area of 18,187,210 km, making it larger than the Russian Federation. Moreover, with similar levels of development, the potential for the kind of one-sided migration occurring between poorer and affluent member states, as witnessed in the EU, would be minimised. It also helps that free-movement treaties are already in effect between some of these countries – notably the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement (TTTA) between Australia and New Zealand.
Yet for all its great potential, proponents have glossed over one major problem – trade. Whilst these countries combined make up a significant chunk of the global economy, commerce among them is minimal. As of last year, the UK was New Zealand’s ninth largest trading partner, Canada’s fifth and Australia’s eighteenth. Similarly, Canada ranks low on trade with Australia and New Zealand and vice versa. However, what they each have in common are strong trade links with the US – ranking anywhere from first to third largest trading partner among them. For this reason alone, an Anglosphere bloc without the US does not make sense economically.
This takes us neatly back to AUKUS – or more precisely, the need for its evolution. Embracing the aforementioned ideals of economic integration, foreign-policy coordination and the establishment of a common travel area would undoubtedly turbocharge AUKUS’s power and completely reshape global politics. The addition of Canada and New Zealand into the mix certainly aids this. AUKUS has already shown it is prepared to respond to a crisis, namely China. The looming threat of a Chinese-dominated century being the driving force behind a gradual transformation of AUKUS into an Anglosphere bloc should not be underestimated. Beijing’s potential to start to outpace the West economically, technologically and even militarily would naturally bring Australia, the UK, the US, Canada and New Zealand into each other’s arms.
Washington’s involvement would be vital for many reasons, including reducing the group’s dependency on trade with China, something that Australia has already declared it seeks to implement. Yet whilst the need for closer cooperation with a behemoth like the US is clear, it would be naïve to suggest that the US could afford to forgo such an arrangement. Indeed, the US needs the Anglosphere now more than ever. The initial reluctance of NATO members France and Germany to step up their support towards Ukraine and Macron’s comments about the EU distancing itself from American policy on China raises big concerns about Europe’s ability to commit to enforcing global security.
The EU itself is riddled by infighting over immigration, enlargement and the contentious issue of ‘ever-closer union’, casting doubt on its survivability. In short, America cannot rely on Europe in the long-term. The EU’s lethargic reaction to the Ukraine crisis underlines this. With multiple, often clashing, foreign-policy objectives among its member states, the prospect of a united Europe, ready to take on the geopolitical challenges of the 21st century, looks remote. If it took the continent as long as it did to pull together and reinforce its eastern frontier against invasion from its most immediate adversary, Russia, then little hope can be expected from future interventions either.
Contrast this with the response from the UK and the US. Both were quick to provide Ukraine with military support, whilst France and Germany sat back and hoped a diplomatic solution would prevail. For Berlin and Paris, their economic ties with Moscow greatly weakened their resolve for a more direct response, to the ire of the Anglosphere as well as fellow EU member Poland. The US, like the UK, now has to accept that its partners on the European continent do not always share its economic or geopolitical interests, nor are they fully capable of putting theirs aside for a common cause. Again, this further highlights the necessity of AUKUS for the US – and in many ways, it renders its expansion into an official bloc more of an inevitability than a hypothetical concept.
For the UK, the conclusion is self-evident. AUKUS is the only realistic option on the table for a directionless UK left out in the global cold. The alliance will continue to be crucial for the UK given our post-Brexit pivot to the Indo-Pacific. But the UK must push for something much larger than a military pact if it hopes to remain relevant in the 21st century. It must call for AUKUS’s expansion into a fully-fledged trade and cooperation bloc, encompassing the totality of the Anglosphere. There may well be push-back and the notion that this could happen overnight would be folly. Nevertheless, the UK will need to start somewhere if it wishes to shake off the Brexit blues. It must step up and begin to take charge of its destiny.
Dreams of a return to the EU are just that – dreams. The mere political unpalatability of having to surrender our currency and control over our borders makes a return to the EU simply incompatible with most British voters. There would be no chance of a rebate over the UK’s financial contributions either. We would need to be all in, or stay out. Nor should we presume that Brussels will be eager to welcome back a country that so openly defied it, for fear of sparking similar exits. We could expect similar reactions from member states such as France, which twice vetoed the UK’s application to join back in the 1960s, as well as Spain, which would no doubt force us into concessions on Gibraltar. The UK must now accept this new relationship with the continent and simply move on.
AUKUS provides the UK with a chance to reinvent its beleaguered image, both at home and abroad. It paves a way out of the tangled forest of confusion and division over our place in the world and heralds a return to a more optimistic and confident UK. The economic benefits it would bring, combined with the chance to rekindle ties with Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and repair our fractured ‘special relationship’ with the US, make it simply too good an opportunity to pass up.
With the EU, Russia and China now having all put their cards on the table, the need for an official Anglosphere bloc has never been more immediate. All that is missing now is the willpower to make it happen.
