Professor Anne Deighton comments on the viability of Britain replacing the EU with the Commonwealth

Anne Deighton was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor (17 January) in an article entitled Could Britain move away from EU and toward the Commonwealth?.

In it she said, The old empire-commonwealth dream is really just that, adding, It has long roots among British Conservatives, roots that go back to the 1950s, but it was not viable then, and is not now.

She also referred to a point in the early 1960s when Britain first applied to join what was then the European Economic Community, causing Australia to kick up a terrible fuss.

By the time of the late 60s, they [Australia] had done the sensible thing and reoriented their trade policies to their own region, and away from the UK. In security and defense, they turned away from the UK to the US, as the dominant power.

The full article can be read here.