Canada's Chance To Lead The World

With Bush going, this is the chance to kick out his satrap, Stephen Harper. Blair, Aznar and Howard are gone. Let Harper be next, taking with him Sarkozy, Merkel, Berlusconi, Saakasvili and all the rest of them.

Canada, this your chance to lead the world.

I once read that Bill Bryson's publishers had told him that "even Canadians do not want to read a book about Canada!" That is most unfortunate, because Canada is a hugely important country, where the Crown and the Keynes-Beveridge settlement that so depends on it (as against the wholly false "classlessness" or "meritocracy" of, in particular, the United States) survive and thrive upon the very North American continent, securing everything that true conservatives exist in order to conserve. There is no other purpose either to the Crown or to the Keynes-Beveridge Settlement, nor am I aware that the latter exists anywhere part from the former.

It is striking that a large anti-monarchist movement arose in Australia precisely during the long Premiership of John Howard. New Labour is frankly "republican" to every extent short of actually saying the word, and that position is in turn the inexorable logic of Thatcherism.

In Canada as anywhere else, this all needs to be explained. But the land of the Red Tories is of course hallowed in this regard.

Indeed, Britain's real special relationship across the North Atlantic is with Canada. The descendants of the United Empire Loyalists are to the Commonwealth as the Palestinians are to the Arabs. Like the Palestinians, they even keep the keys and the title deeds to their ancestors' confiscated properties. Huge numbers of Canadians are of Scottish descent. So are huge numbers of Americans, but all the fuss there is made of a ridiculous pseudo-Irishness.

Although Canada was undoubtedly an independent country, she fought in both World Wars from the start. As one of the 16 Commonwealth Realms, including Britain, independent Canada retains the monarchy. Any of them can abolish it (as many others have done), or change her own Law of Succession. Canada freely chooses not to, just as Britain does. She cherishes her ties to us and to our other 14 sisters. Likewise, we cherish our ties to her and to our other 14 sisters. Or, at least, we should.

Canada's was a social democracy constructed in order to defend the best conservative values against capitalism, just like ours. Most of her people still want this, just like ours. Yet she currently has a neoconservative government, just like ours. And it engages in scaremongering in order to curtail liberty, just like ours. Away with it. And away with ours.

Canada's vast resources of fuel, fresh water and other key commodities make her a coming superpower of the twenty-first century. By contrast, her southern neighbour is already in decline. I do not mean this in any anti-American way; it is just a fact.

Yet neoconservatism is riddled with self-hating Canadians: David "Axis of Evil" Frum, Conrad Black, Barbara Amiel, Fr Richard John Neuhaus (alas, and he looks to be shifting), and many more besides. Canada is a fully North American country with close ties to Britain, including both the monarchy and the Keynes-Beveridge model of social democracy. Canada is a fully North American country where a lot of people speak French (but have a monarchist rather than a republican French flag, and are devoutly Catholic accordingly). Canada is, well, a fully North American country which is not the United States. Indeed, Canada is the only such country.

The link with Britain is what neocons really hate above all, not least because it is the way into the Welfare State and so forth. Neocons hate a lot of people and a lot of places. But their most poisonous venom of all is reserved for Britain. They believe in a standard Irish-American saloon-bar rant about a global upper-class Anglophile network, and they particularly see that network as including their own traditional "Country Club" rivals for control of the Republican Party.

Yet there are the Canadians, complete with the Queen, complete with a few retained British variations on the English language, and complete with a British-style social democracy, yet sharing with the United States a continent and the longest land frontier between any two countries on earth. I mean, how dare they! Who do they think they are?

They should indicate exactly who and what they are by withdrawing from Afghanistan. We should be right behind them. They should indicate exactly who and what they are by kicking out their neocon government. And we should be right behind them.