Britain, as soon as once more, stands at a crossroads. Torn between the US and Europe after Donald Trump's return to the White Home, voices each inside and outdoors the Authorities have urged Sir Keir Starmer to select one or the opposite.
Labour has thus far toed a skinny line between placating the tariff-happy President and chasing a relations "reset" with the EU – each of that are set to come back to a head in only a few weeks' time.
However calls are rising for the UK to look a 3rd method – one which neither dangers a "Brexit betrayal" neither is tied to an more and more unreliable America.
There are simply three international locations with whom "it’s unthinkable that Britain would ever quarrel". Three which Britain "can actually belief".
That's the message of Lord Hannan, the Tory peer and fierce proponent of a four-nation alliance, certain by one King, which might redefine the UK's place on this planet.
Within the Lords, he warned that "our world has tilted on its axis". The US now sides with "delinquent" Russia on the UN, he stated – whereas the EU, which must be "bending over backwards" to attract Britain right into a defence and safety association, is hung up over fishing rights.
"On whom can we rely?" he requested. The reply, some imagine, is straightforward.
Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Britain's "strongest supporters and closest allies", are poised to step ahead and stand tall alongside the UK on the world stage.
"The one factor I can say with certainty, is that 30 or 40 years from now, we is not going to be quarrelling" with the three massive Commonwealth realms, Hannan advised friends final month.
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And throughout the 4, a cross-party, cross-border motion is blossoming to cement the previous allies collectively in an unshakeable bloc: "Canzuk".
Canzuk stands for Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK – however actually, Hannan stated, it "stands for nearer co-operation, navy and strategic, amongst these 4 international locations, in addition to free motion of labour – the best to take a job out of the country – and an enhanced free market".
International Workplace Minister Baroness Chapman has hinted that Labour would hear sympathetically to any proposal – however for now, Canzuk's cheerleaders can mainly be discovered among the many Tories and Liberal Democrats.
The Tory grouping, Conservative Buddies of Canzuk, is led by Lord Hannan himself and likewise boasts Shadow International Minister Andrew Rosindell, Shadow Housing Secretary Kevin Hollinrake and ex-Brexit negotiator Lord Frost amongst its ranks.
Regardless of pushing for nearer ties with Brussels, Sir Ed Davey publicly backed Canzuk within the Commons – and recommended Britain ought to look to a brand new strategic bloc alongside Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
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Whereas at a launch occasion final yr – which was finally derailed by Rishi Sunak's Normal Election timing – former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott lent his assist to the trigger.
A subsequent Labour landslide, and mass turfing-out of Tory MPs, compelled the Canzuk-ers to regroup – they usually lastly got here collectively in March 2025 for a proper relaunch.
Conservative Buddies of Canzuk director Elliott Malik advised GB Information that Brexit means the UK now has the "freedom to truly exit and make the offers" with its true pals throughout the seas.
"We've already achieved it with Australia and New Zealand," Malik stated, "and despite the fact that we're nonetheless utilizing the legacy EU rollover settlement with Canada, hopefully we will type one thing out."
Talking to the Folks's Channel shortly after Trump's preliminary tariff rollout some days in the past, he stated the levies "actually exhibit that we will't depend on the previous order".
"We will't even depend on international locations who you'd thought might be shut allies. You need to discover one thing new," Malik added.
Malik additionally forged apart issues that Canzuk might be seen as a reformation of the British Empire – which might current a political problem among the many 4 international locations' rising younger multicultural voter bases.
And Lord Hannan himself has acknowledged that some may even see the concept as "imperial nostalgia or, worse, a pining for the White Commonwealth".
"It rests on financial similarities, comparable safety ties, comparable diplomatic pursuits, comparable international coverage pursuits. And sure, there may be cultural heritage, however that's solely a part of it," Malik stated.
And whereas he left the door open to the concept of developed allies like Singapore becoming a member of the bloc, he confused that Canzuk works as a "gang of 4" because the quartet "are nearly an identical in so some ways".
"That, actually, is what it boils right down to," he added.
Throughout the Atlantic, polling is surging behind the concept.
Some 94 per cent of Canadians surveyed by main marketing campaign group Canzuk Worldwide and Kolosowski Methods backed a Canzuk free commerce settlement – with assist hovering previous 90 per cent in every province, and amongst supporters of all three main political events.
Extra broadly, the concept has persistently polled at round two-thirds assist within the 4 would-be constituent international locations.
Canadian premier Mark Carney has stated his nation's Aussie, Kiwi and Pom cousins "shall be important" in deterring tariff threats from his southern border.
And it’s a comparable story within the Antipodes – and although Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, at the moment dealing with down a federal election, has not campaigned on Canzuk, his predecessor-twice-removed Abbott vowed that collectively, the 4 international locations "can change the world for the higher".
In the meantime, New Zealander Minister David Seymour has stated the "timing is ideal" for Canzuk – and his Cupboard colleague Judith Collins has backed the Westminster system as a "key tie which binds us".
Lord Hannan, writing in The Telegraph final month, stated: "For a decade, Canzuk was handled by politicians as a worthy thought, however not an pressing one.
"Then got here the second Trump time period, the tariff wars and the upending of US international coverage… The leaders of the opposite Anglosphere democracies have been left stranded, like governors of outlying Roman provinces when the Everlasting Metropolis was sacked."
"It's by far the preferred coverage that governments might feasibly implement – however haven't."
In his column, he harked again to the phrases of New Zealand's Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage following Britain's declaration of struggle on Nazi Germany.
And it’s these phrases which, if Canzuk campaigners are proper, might make clear the UK's true pals in its time of want.
"Each with gratitude for the previous and confidence sooner or later, we vary ourselves with out worry beside Britain," Savage had vowed on the eve of struggle. "The place she goes, we go. The place she stands, we stand."
GB Information has approached No10 for remark.