Keir Starmer faces ‘make-or-break choice between Donald Trump and EU’… Some believe Britain’s future may lie elsewhere entirely
Britain, once again, stands at a crossroads. Torn between the US and Europe after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, voices both inside and outside the Government have urged Sir Keir Starmer to pick one or the other.
Labour has so far toed a thin line between placating the tariff-happy President and chasing a relations “reset” with the EU – both of which are set to come to a head in just a few weeks’ time.
But calls are rising for the UK to look a third way – one which neither risks a “Brexit betrayal” nor is tied to an increasingly unreliable America.
There are just three countries with whom “it is unthinkable that Britain would ever quarrel”. Three which Britain “can truly trust”.
Calls are rising for the UK to look a third way – one which neither risks a ‘Brexit betrayal’ nor is tied to an increasingly unreliable America
PA
That’s the message of Lord Hannan, the Tory peer and fierce proponent of a four-nation alliance, bound by one King, which could redefine the UK’s place in the world.
In the Lords, he warned that “our world has tilted on its axis”. The US now sides with “delinquent” Russia at the UN, he said – while the EU, which should be “bending over backwards” to draw Britain into a defence and security arrangement, is hung up over fishing rights.
“On whom can we rely?” he asked. The answer, some believe, is simple.
Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Britain’s “strongest supporters and closest allies”, are poised to step forward and stand tall alongside the UK on the world stage.
“The only thing I can say with certainty, is that 30 or 40 years from now, we will not be quarrelling” with the three large Commonwealth realms, Hannan told peers last month.
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Tory peer Lord Hannan is a fierce proponent of the four-nation alliance
PA
And across the four, a cross-party, cross-border movement is blossoming to cement the old allies together in an unshakeable bloc: “Canzuk”.
Canzuk stands for Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK – but really, Hannan said, it “stands for closer co-operation, military and strategic, among those four countries, as well as free movement of labour – the right to take a job in another country – and an enhanced free market”.
Foreign Office Minister Baroness Chapman has hinted that Labour would listen sympathetically to any proposal – but for now, Canzuk’s cheerleaders can chiefly be found among the Tories and Liberal Democrats.
The Tory grouping, Conservative Friends of Canzuk, is led by Lord Hannan himself and also boasts Shadow Foreign Minister Andrew Rosindell, Shadow Housing Secretary Kevin Hollinrake and ex-Brexit negotiator Lord Frost among its ranks.
Despite pushing for closer ties with Brussels, Sir Ed Davey publicly backed Canzuk in the Commons – and suggested Britain should look to a new strategic bloc alongside Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
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While at a launch event last year – which was ultimately derailed by Rishi Sunak’s General Election timing – former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott lent his support to the cause.
A subsequent Labour landslide, and mass turfing-out of Tory MPs, forced the Canzuk-ers to regroup – and they finally came together in March 2025 for a formal relaunch.
Conservative Friends of Canzuk director Elliott Malik told GB News that Brexit means the UK now has the “freedom to actually go out and make the deals” with its true friends across the seas.
“We’ve already done it with Australia and New Zealand,” Malik said, “and even though we’re still using the legacy EU rollover agreement with Canada, hopefully we can sort something out.”
Speaking to the People’s Channel shortly after Trump’s initial tariff rollout some days ago, he said the levies “really demonstrate that we can’t rely on the old order”.
“We can’t even rely on countries who you’d thought could be close allies. You have to find something new,” Malik added.
Donald Trump’s tariffs ‘really demonstrate that we can’t rely on the old order’, Elliott Malik said
REUTERS
Malik also cast aside concerns that Canzuk could be seen as a reformation of the British Empire – which could present a political challenge among the four countries’ growing young multicultural voter bases.
And Lord Hannan himself has acknowledged that some may see the idea as “imperial nostalgia or, worse, a pining for the White Commonwealth”.
“It rests on economic similarities, similar security ties, similar diplomatic interests, similar foreign policy interests. And yes, there is cultural heritage, but that’s only part of it,” Malik said.
And while he left the door open to the idea of developed allies like Singapore joining the bloc, he stressed that Canzuk works as a “gang of four” as the quartet “are virtually identical in so many ways”.
“That, truly, is what it boils down to,” he added.
Across the Atlantic, polling is surging behind the idea.
Some 94 per cent of Canadians surveyed by leading campaign group Canzuk International and Kolosowski Strategies backed a Canzuk free trade agreement – with support soaring past 90 per cent in each province, and among supporters of all three major political parties.
Canadian premier Mark Carney has said his country’s Aussie, Kiwi and Pom cousins ‘will be essential’ in deterring tariff threats
REUTERS
More broadly, the idea has consistently polled at around two-thirds support in the four would-be constituent countries.
Canadian premier Mark Carney has said his country’s Aussie, Kiwi and Pom cousins “will be essential” in deterring tariff threats from his southern border.
And it is a similar story in the Antipodes – and though Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, currently facing down a federal election, has not campaigned on Canzuk, his predecessor-twice-removed Abbott vowed that together, the four countries “can change the world for the better”.
Meanwhile, New Zealander Minister David Seymour has said the “timing is perfect” for Canzuk – and his Cabinet colleague Judith Collins has backed the Westminster system as a “key tie which binds us”.
Lord Hannan, writing in The Telegraph last month, said: “For a decade, Canzuk was treated by politicians as a worthy idea, but not an urgent one.
Tony Abbott has vowed that together, the four countries ‘can change the world for the better’
REUTERS
“Then came the second Trump term, the tariff wars and the upending of US foreign policy… The leaders of the other Anglosphere democracies have been left stranded, like governors of outlying Roman provinces when the Eternal City was sacked.”
“It’s by far the most popular policy that governments could feasibly implement – but haven’t.”
In his column, he harked back to the words of New Zealand’s Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage following Britain’s declaration of war on Nazi Germany.
And it is those words which, if Canzuk campaigners are right, could shed light on the UK’s true friends in its time of need.
“Both with gratitude for the past and confidence in the future, we range ourselves without fear beside Britain,” Savage had vowed on the eve of war. “Where she goes, we go. Where she stands, we stand.”
GB News has approached No10 for comment.