Within hours of Britain’s declaration of war on 3 September 1939, Michael Joseph Savage, New Zealand’s first Labour prime minister,
made a statement from his hospital bed (he was to die seven months later).
“Both with gratitude for the past and confidence in the future, we range ourselves without fear beside Britain. Where she goes, we go. Where she stands, we stand.”
With how many nations do we have such a bond, an alliance so instinctive and automatic that it needs no explanation? The list is a short one, but it surely includes
the three countries with whom we truly do have a special relationship, namely Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
We are linked by language, culture and kinship. We share a legal system, drawing on one another’s precedents. We have similar parliamentary forms, complete with maces, state openings, green benches, the works. We salute the same king.
The modern campaign to knit the four chief realms into a closer association was launched in British Columbia in 2015, and
goes under the acronym CANZUK, a term
first coined by UN officials because the four nations almost always voted en bloc.
CANZUK campaigners want closer diplomatic and defence collaboration, an automatic right to work in each other’s countries and a common market based on mutual recognition of standards in goods, services and professional qualifications.
For a decade, CANZUK was treated by politicians as a worthy idea, but not an urgent one. Then came the second Trump term, the tariff wars and the upending of US foreign policy. Both main Canadian parties have warmed to a CANZUK-type deal, as have all three coalition parties in New Zealand. In Britain, too, the idea is gaining in popularity. And you can see why.
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