One of the most bizarre arguments made by the people who support Britain's exit from the European Union is the notion that a self-exiled United Kingdom will find a new global relevance, and indeed leadership role, as the center of the "Anglosphere."
The idea is that there are a group of countries — with the "Five Eyes" intelligence-sharing community of the United States, U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand at its core — which share so much of a common heritage in language, history, law, democratic institutions and human-rights-respecting values, that they can be a new, united force for global peace and prosperity.
Britain's capacity to energize and become the heart of this group will, it is said, more than make up for its exclusion from the sclerotic, culturally and linguistically divided, and increasingly marginalized EU.