CANZUK, the EU, and the Future of the West

As I write these words, June 10 was not too long ago, but being before the European, British, and French elections, in some ways it feels like an eternity ago. June 10 is White Rose Day, the day on which, in 1688, the de jure King James III and VIII of England, Scotland, and Ireland was born. It precipitated the overthrow of his father in the so-called Glorious Revolution, the ongoing subjection of the British Monarchy to the political factions dominating Parliament, and the Jacobite uprisings so dear to song and story. In commemoration of the day, this writer had lunch with several other like-minded folk.

But that was not my only social engagement that day. In the evening, there was to be a reception at the Carlton Club in honour of the kickoff of a new Tory ginger group, Conservatives for CANZUK, at which one of my lunchmates and several other notables, including former Australian PM Tony Abbott, were to speak. All of this will require, perhaps, a little unpacking, as the expression goes. The Carlton Club is the private London club which is considered to be the social body for Conservative Party members. I have a particular fondness for it; back in 2013, a Russian ball I was to attend at the Banqueting House suddenly had to change venue because a ‘Gay Pride’ parade made it impossible for guests and tradesmen to reach the place. The organisers switched to the Carlton Club that very afternoon! The word went out, and the staff handled the whole affair so professionally that you would think they had spent months planning it. Regardless of one’s politics, that efficient club bears watching.

In any case, as might be expected, this particular reception went very well under the watchful eyes of the supremely confident staff, although when the proceedings were finished, one somewhat inebriated journalist excoriated me for giving a long and pointless talk and declared that it was people like me who would ruin the organisation. My luncheon companion pointed out that I had not in fact made a speech at all, although he himself had, and his was short and to the point. Unsatisfied by this response, the journalist limped off.

But just what is CANZUK? In brief, it is the drawing closer together—especially in the wake of Brexit—of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom into an economic, military, cultural, and, to some degree, political bloc. This would allow them to face the European Union, Russia, China, and the United States from a much stronger position than any of them could do separately.

There are certainly factors in place that would argue strongly for this position. For one thing, all of these four countries share the same Sovereign, King Charles III, although constitutionally he is four separate beings (this reality comes from the 1931 Statute of Westminster, which is why, although at war with Germany from 1939 to 1945 as King of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, and Emperor of India, George VI was neutral as King of Ireland). Not only do Governors-General represent His Majesty in Ottawa, Canberra, and Wellington, but there are likewise viceregal figures in every Canadian provincial and Australian state capital, all busily doing what the King would do were he in residence. They share the Westminster System and the Common Law; the regiments of their armies have alliances with each other; and they have a common language, history, literature, religious structure, and culture. Of course, a great many Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders also have ancestors from the British Isles. Their economies are, in many ways, complementary. All the speakers argued that this would not be a renewed British Empire but a gathering of equals.

Even in the days of the British Empire, however, the idea had forerunners. The whole notion of an Imperial Federation began in the 1880s and featured several creative versions. Basically, the idea involved an Imperial Parliament in which the Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and South African provinces and colonies would be represented with equal stature to England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. This was also seen as solving the emerging Celtic nationalism issues; although effectively buried by the World Wars, the idea of CANZUK surfaced briefly under other names during the campaign against Britain entering the European Economic Community (the precursor to the EU) back in 1971. When the British did join, there were many in the three other realms who felt betrayed; it was the beginning of serious republican movements in each of those countries. With the UK leaving the EU, it was inevitable that the idea would make a comeback.

Although the notion makes perfect sense to this writer, it certainly faces a great deal of opposition in all four realms, and as COVID shows, where political consensus and common sense clash, the latter rarely wins. Yet it really does seem like the only way for the CANZUK countries to survive in the long run. It will be anathema to many of my French-Canadian relations, but the sad truth is that without Canada, the assimilation that overcame French New England awaits Quebec. Without CANZUK, the same faces Canada as a whole.

One of the speakers said something that certainly caught my attention. He compared the four nations of CANZUK and their innumerable bonds, which he said would permit subsidiarity with the 27 EU countries. He declared the 27 countries had nothing in common with each other, hence the need for Brussels to become despotic if the EU was to function. The more I thought about this, however, the more inaccurate it seemed.

Certainly, it is true that Brussels has become a despotism—precisely in order to make the EU function as it does. But this is not because there is no deep underlying unity within the European nations; it is because, due to who they are as people and as ideologues, not only the Eurocrats but most of those staffing the national governments are forced to deny and even attack the real sources of European unity. It is as though CANZUK was to include abolishing the Monarchy, the Westminster System, Common Law, the teaching of English literature and history, the vague association of Christianity with the State, and so on. What would be left would be a soulless machine, incapable of capturing the imagination and loyalty of its subjects. Such is the EU to-day.

Those concerned with precisely those beliefs and loyalties (I do not call them values) that created Europe in the first place—altar, throne, subsidiarity, solidarity, and the notion of Christendom itself—often appeal to the Imperial Idea, the Reichsidee, as a model and contrast it with the British Empire. That is certainly fair enough if one thinks of the British in India and Africa. But it is rather different with the ideas of the Imperial Federationists, which in a real sense underlie CANZUK. The comparison between the British and Holy Roman Empires, which interested people such as Otto von Habsburg in our time, also interested them in theirs, and some came to rather intriguing conclusions.

In the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, distinguished historian Sir Ernest Barker’s article on “Empire” informs us that:

In England, of recent years, the term ‘Empire’ and the conception of imperialism have become prominent and crucial. To Englishmen to-day, as to Germans before 1870, the term and the conception stand for the greater unity and definitely federal government of a number of separate states. For the German, indeed, Empire has meant, in great measure, the strengthening of a loose federal institution by the addition of a common personal superior: to us it means the turning of a loose union of separate states already under a common personal superior—the King—into a federal commonwealth living under some common federal institutions. But the aim is much the same: it is the integration of a people under a single scheme which shall be consistent with a large measure of political autonomy. We speak of imperial federation; and indeed, our modern imperialism is closely allied to federalism. Yet we do well to cling to the term empire rather than federation; for the one term emphasizes the whole and its unity, the other the part and its independence. This imperialism, which is federalism viewed as making for a single whole, is very different from that Bonapartist imperialism, which means autocracy; for its essence is free co-ordination and the self-government of each co-ordinated part. The British Empire (q.v.) is, in a sense, an aspiration rather than a reality, a thought rather than a fact; but, just for that reason, it is like the old Empire of which we have spoken; and though it be neither Roman nor Holy, yet it has, like its prototype, one law, if not the law of Rome—one faith, if not in matters of religion, at any rate in the field of political and social ideals.

Of the Holy Roman Empire, the same source tells us:

Of the larger question of the influence of the Empire on Europe, we can here only say that it worked for good. An Empire which represented, as a Holy Empire, the unity of all the faithful as one body in their secular, no less than in their religious life—an Empire which, again, as a Roman Empire, represented with an unbroken continuity the order of Roman administration and law—such an empire could not but make for the betterment of the world. It was not an empire resting on force, a military empire; it was not, as in modern times empires have sometimes been, an autocracy warranted and stamped by the plébiscite of the mob. It was an empire resting neither on the sword nor on the ballot-box, but on two great ideas, taught by the clergy and received by the laity: that all believers in Christ form one body politic, and that the one model and type for the organization of that body is to be found in the past of Rome. It was indeed the weakness of the Empire that its roots were only the thoughts of men; for the lack of material force, from which it always suffered, hindered it from doing work it might well have done—the work, for instance, of international arbitration. Yet, on the other hand, it was the strength and glory of the Empire that it lived, all through the middle ages, an unconquerable idea of the mind of man.

In a word, it is that unconquerable Empire which lies behind the visions of both CANZUK and those—whether, ironically, they be Paneuropa or Patriots for Europe—who would see a free, Christian, and united Europe. For while the latter certainly must oppose what the EU has become, the true patriot of any European country, whether in the Mother Continent or the diaspora, who really loves his country, loves what created it. In every case, these are Christianity, Greek Philosophy, and Roman Law, as they acted upon each given people’s pre-existing manners and customs. But these are also the roots of Europe as a whole, which are to-day routinely attacked by its rulers.

So it is that I find the title of the new European Parliament group “Patriots for Europe” supremely encouraging—we shall see what the reality will be. By the same token, I do not see in CANZUK an enemy or rival to Europe, for all that it may be to the EU as currently constituted; rather, if it succeeds, I see an eventual victory for the real Europe—and one that would be greatly augmented if the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Belgians look similarly at their daughter countries.