The EU’s Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen has officially confirmed the EU is looking to grant something called 'Associate Member' status to Canada with talks beginning to discuss exactly what that means in detail. Canada will become even closer in trade and security than the present CETA agreement, on which Britain’s own trade deal is based. It seems it will embrace Erasmus, Horizon and payments into the EU budget. Trump called the idea laughable and threatened the EU with even more tariffs - underlining why Canada needed to pivot away from the US. European Parliament President Roberta Metsola later told Euronews that countries including Australia and New Zealand could follow Canada as associate EU members.
Australian trade minister Don Farrell told the Sydney Morning Herald they were watching what Canada is doing and are “on the same page.”
To understand what Canada is proposing, it’s useful to listen to the speech given by PM Mark Carney to the European Parliament. He is essentially suggesting that Canada and the EU lay the foundations for the next “just and prosperous” world order. It would involve sharing Canada's massive natural resources and energy supplies with European expertise to build 'collective' resilience, not to become self-sufficient or to dominate others, but to protect citizens against future threats.
Mark Carney’s Strasbourg speech welcoming EU "associate membership" to build collective resilience in AI, energy, and defense is historic. Watching non-European allies integrate with Brussels while Brexit Britain sits isolated on the sidelines is tragic. Why stay frozen out? 🤔 #FBPE— fife4europe #FBPE #RejoinEU (@fife4europe.bsky.social) 17 September 2026 at 16:34
It’s a profoundly moving speech. Comments on the YouTube video show that an overwhelming majority support the idea, on both sides of the Atlantic. Such is Trump's negative power.
Several leading Brexiters, particularly Daniel Hannan, were keen to create an ‘Anglosphere’ or a CANZUK involving these former British colonies following Brexit, an idea that never seriously got off the ground but, even without taking off, appears to have crashed and burned. What a disappointment, eh? Imagine the conversation in the Hannan household when the news came out.
Now listen to another speech, by Lord (Daniel) Hannan himself, last October, addressing the Mississippi Centre for Public Policy, founded by Douglas Carswell and financed by various right-wing conservative Christian organisations, mostly undisclosed, on the topic of the Anglosphere. Lord Hannan shares his vision of what he calls “the Anglosphere alternative”, an alliance of English-speaking nations led by the United States, rooted in shared values of liberty, free markets, and self-governance.
I may be wrong, but I think Hannan and Carney could, without too many changes, have written and given the other's speech, and delivered it from the heart. They both talk about many shared values, particularly in the defence of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.
Where they differ is in identifying what is threatening these fundamental things. Neither man mentions Trump directly by the way, although I think we know Carney blames the vindictive idiot US president and probably Russia for helping to dismantle the old world order. Hannan blames “woke” policies and DEI (diversity, equality and inclusion). One man thinks we face an external threat; the other thinks it’s all internal.
Both argue for a new world order; in Hannan’s case, it’s the English-speaking world or the ‘Anglosphere’ covering the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The real difference is that Carney is a realist. Firstly, he recognises that this new system cannot include the USA, even post-Trump, and must include the European nations. Hannan somehow thinks it should exclude non-English-speaking countries and that Trump’s America is still intrinsically trustworthy.
Secondly, Carney believes regulation is fundamentally necessary in a just society and that the EU, as the world’s most formidable regulator, is creating and spreading global standards. Hannan thinks it is a constraint on growth. Carney says economic growth is a means to an end - a just, sustainable and equitable society - whereas Hannan appears to believe growth for growth's sake is the main objective.
Hannan also seems to believe the English-speaking world is a recognisable international body, one that represented the winning side in both World Wars. In his fantasy world, it was the Anglosphere against the Axis powers. There is no doubt the Tory peer is a powerful orator and incredibly eloquent. The problem is that on this question (and many others), he is totally and completely wrong.
Hannan says (about 8.35 minutes in) the universal rights we all enjoy today were largely as a result of the English-speaking people. Free elections, uncensored newspapers, equality before the law, jury trials, the principle of habeas corpus were overwhelmingly developed in the English language. He talks about a civilised world in which not taking countries by force is accepted as the norm and free, fair and open trade are iron principles. There is some truth in it, but it doesn’t make the Anglosphere a political force.
And while virtually all of those rights and principles are pretty meaningless in Trump’s America right now, Hannan ignores that and reserves his ire for his own country! He blames ‘woke’ police and diversity policies for interpreting the law too strictly in the UK. Amazing. A member of the House of Lords criticising his own nation for the perceived erosion of human rights and doing it in Mississippi of all places.
The first question from the audience is from a die-hard MAGA supporter who “loves” Donald Trump, a president who is trashing everything that Hannan has just been speaking about. He likes Trump because he tells it as he sees it, and he’s “the first president to stand up to the Europeans and tell them to ‘get off’. Pay what you owe and take care of yourselves first. Stop playing games with oil and gas”
MAGA seem to be under the impression that Europe demanded the US maintain 31 permanent military bases in Europe rather than then being an asset to America when it comes to projecting force in the Middle East.
Note also Hannan says he is disappointed with the outcome of Brexit, which he now claims “was never going to add or remove a penny from our economy”, a rather different message to the one he was peddling in May 2016. The problem, as he sees it, is that we exchanged one lot of bureaucrats in Brussels for another lot in Whitehall, and we didn’t decentralise. Whitehall, he claims, didn't want Brexit, can't imagine a world where we diverge from the EU and is “drenched in woke and DEI.”
Well, it looks like three members of the Anglosphere disagree with him.
The question is: will Canada be prepared to offer concessions that Britain has so far been unable to contemplate? I suspect it will, particularly around freedom of movement. It seems we are meeting the Anglosphere going the other way.
I’ve long argued that the UN is a busted flush and we need an organisation that might be called the United Democratic Nations. The EU was a good start. Perhaps Carney has provided the impetus to spread it globally.
Reform and GB News
Alan Rusbridger, the former editor of The Guardian, has a piece in Prospect magazine that essentially makes the same point I made on this blog last week: the huge donations from Delo and Harborne are just the tip of the iceberg. They omit the £130 million losses posted by GB News - AKA Reform TV - since it's inception four years ago.
This is a massive amount of permanent, constant, free publicity for Farage and his party of right-wing nut jobs. In total, Rusbridger says Reform are receiving well over £200 million from just four men. These are Ben Delo, Christopher Harborne and Paul Marshall and Christopher Chandler (of Legatum) who subsidise GB News.
The channel was started by Andrew Neil but in Neil’s own words, the investors turned out to be “above all rabid Brexiteers…. They worshipped the ground that Nigel Farage walked on. Just as Fox basically became the channel of Donald Trump, it’s clear they have turned GB News into the Reform channel… I think they see themselves as in the vanguard of the Reform movement.”
Reform is apparently planning to spend part of its £72m windfall on launching something called Reform TV officially. Not content with having one broadcaster pumping out pro-Reform messaging night and day, they want another one.
If it goes ahead as planned, broadcast over YouTube, it will compete with GB News Online, that other Reform TV Channel, which boasts 2.18m subscribers, all three pouring out anti-immigrant propaganda all day long. This is in aid of what was until relatively recently a small, fringe right-wing party of "fruitcakes, loons and closet racists."
These are dangerous times. Reform is as far from a party of and for working people as you can get.
Ben Delo
In case anyone thinks Reform's benefactor to the tune of £36 million was wrongly convicted in the US for financial wrongdoing, I suggest they read the statement from the District Attorneys office for the Southern District of New York dated February 2022 about the crypto billionaire Ben Delo. It includes this about his BitMEX company:
"From at least September 2015, and continuing at least through the time of the Indictment in September 2020, HAYES and DELO willfully caused BitMEX to fail to establish and maintain an AML program, including a program for verifying the identity of BitMEX’s customers (or a “know your customer” or “KYC” program). As a result of its willful failure to implement AML [Anti-Money Laundering] and KYC programs, BitMEX was in effect a money laundering platform.
"For example, in May 2018, HAYES was notified of allegations that BitMEX was being used to launder the proceeds of a cryptocurrency hack. Neither HAYES, DELO, nor their company filed a suspicious activity report thereafter (indeed, BitMEX filed no suspicious activity reports at all between 2014 and September 2020), nor did they implement an AML or KYC program in response. Unsurprisingly, BitMEX was also a vehicle for sanctions violations: HAYES and DELO both communicated directly with BitMEX customers who self-identified as being based in Iran, an OFAC-sanctioned jurisdiction, but did nothing to implement an AML or KYC program after doing so."
Delo pleaded guilty, was fined $10 million but was pardoned by Trump in March last year. The White House have not provided a formal or detailed public explanation for doing so but one wonders, in light of recent events, if Farage had anything to do with it?
Why would Trump pardon an obscure British crypto billionaire?
