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The Anglosphere

There\’s a simple answer to this:

That raises a painful question. If Australians, Indians, Canadians, and even Americans can recognise the Anglosphere as a new factor in world politics, why is it something from which the Brits themselves shy?

It\’s that Brits themselves don\’t shy from dealing with the Anglosphere. As the very article itself points out, what creates the thing itself is that we all engage with it. However, the political classes are hesitant to even admit that it exists. There\’s been a 50 year "campaign" (not the right word, I don\’t mean to imply that everyone involved is consciously working towards this aim, rather that it\’s a general assumption) to detach the UK from that Anglosphere, from those cultural links, and attatch the country to Europe.

The stupidity of the aim itself becomes clear if we consider trade. The idea of barrier free trade across the continent is a good one. The larger a free trade area, the more specialisation there will be and thus the greater the wealth created. Unfortunately, at the same time we were told that we must raise barriers to our trade with the wider world, that Anglosphere. Again, the thought that places geographically close to each other should trade with each other is a reasonable one. But the decision to raise the barriers to long distance trade was signed up to only 6 months after the invention of container shipping: something which completely changed the economics of such long and short distance trade. As long as you\’re on the network (Brad Delong\’s done an excellent review on this) geographic distance now means very little: Bristol to Brindisi costs about the same as Bristol to Brisbane.

So the political move to more local trade began just as the very concept of "local" with respect to trade became moot.

Politicians are like Generals, always ready to fight the last war. Which is, of course, why we shouldn\’t allow them to plan the future for us.

3 thoughts on “The Anglosphere”

  1. Where does “new factor” come from? Isn’t the Anglosphere like, centuries old, and secondly, the quote you use says “in world politics” but you then talk about trade. So I’m all agreed on free trade etc, but it’s hardly a fisking to completely change the topic.

  2. This sounds like something with a close a grasp of reality as the Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson Society.

    A “British-led” Anglosphere, really.

    I wonder what the Americans and Indians would think about that. Or the Australians and West Indies come to think about it.

    As has always been the problem with the concept of the ‘Anglosphere’ it is either stating the obvious (there are close historical ties based on British rule), missing the unfortunate fact that the key country in such a grouping (the USA) has never shown much interest in anything like it, and/or too ill-defined to be of any use – when they start talking about India and ‘Asia’ you know something’s gone wrong.

  3. The anglosphere exists.
    This is NOT racist it is a Darwinian “fact”.
    The future economic impact of the rise of engineering and high level maths in India and Pakistan will ensure anglosphere dominance in the middle part of this century. I predict it will be critical for the outcome of the coming north south war.

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