Britain's Doomed Romantic Notions

With today’s Britain on the verge of embracing Brexit (the latest polls show the “Leave” camp rapidly closing the gap with the previously unassailable “Remainers”), there are some in the Euroskeptic wing of David Cameron’s government yearning for exactly what Acheson said was inadvisable—greater ties between Anglophone nations worldwide in lieu of formalized empire. Party grandees such as Boris Johnson, Daniel Hannan and David Willetts see this “Anglosphere” as their best escape from a run-aground European project they consider to be stultifying, patronizing and trespassing on Parliament’s sovereignty. Therefore, in choosing to bail out, this faction of the British right views this not so much as advocating surrendering a “new role” in the EU as recycling an old, albeit reengineered, role.