Spheres of Influence

There are 67 sovereign states and 27 non-sovereign entities of which English is a de jure official language. As with the members of the Commonwealth, not all of them were ever in the British Empire. Two of them are Caribbean parts of the Netherlands.

English is also the de facto official, and the primary, language of five sovereign states (the five that "Anglosphere" enthusiasts always have in mind, in none of which does English have de jure official language status at national level) and of four non-sovereign entities.

It is a de facto official, but not the primary, language of a further five sovereign states and two non-sovereign entities.

English has de jure official status in Scotland, Wales and numerous of the United States, but also in the Caribbean Dutch municipalities of Saba and Sint Eustatius, and in the Colombian department of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina.

English is also an official language of the EU, and, despite its having fewer native speakers in the EU than German has, English is the operating language of the EU's institutions.

That latter would not change if the United Kingdom were to leave the EU, and that lack of change would not be purely attributable to the influence of the Irish or, up to a point, the Maltese.

There ought to be a word for it all, really.

Ah, but I am missing the point, am I not? This is really about the Common Law, is that not so? Well, that rules out Scotland, Quebec and Louisiana, for a start.

But, with those caveats, the complete list of the Common Law jurisdictions is instructive: American Samoa, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Bhutan (yes, Bhutan), the British Virgin Islands, Burma, Canada, Cyprus, Dominica, England and Wales, Fiji, Gibraltar, Ghana, Grenada, Hong Kong (i.e., a part of the People's Republic of China), India, the Irish Republic, Israel (although you are legally subject to Sharia in family matters if you happen to be born into certain ethnic minorities there), Jamaica, Kiribati, Liberia, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Palau, Pakistan, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Singapore, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, and the United States.

The Common Law influence is also clear in the legal systems of Botswana, Brunei, Cameroon, The Gambia, Guernsey, Guyana, Jersey, Lesotho, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Saint Lucia, the Seychelles, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Thailand (yes, Thailand), Vanuatu and Zimbabwe. This list still looks slightly incomplete. I can think of a few others, as I expect that you can, too.

So, there are at least 106 members of anything that might meaningfully be called the Anglosphere, plus the EU at institutional level, while the Common Law world has at least 39 core and 23 more-or-less peripheral members.

Now, ask yourself this: how much news do, especially, the Murdoch media bring us from almost all of those places, with which those media's ostensible ideology would have us believe that we had such a powerful affinity? How much cultural material, from the highest to the most popular?

And where Murdoch leads, the whole British media follow.

It was not ever thus. For all the lack of technological opportunities, something so basic as a perusal of the television listings will confirm that this was a far more geopolitically sophisticated and culturally cosmopolitan country before Rupert Murdoch, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.