The appointment of Tony Abbott as a UK trade advisor is one of the clearest signs that Britain's government sees CANZUK as a primary plank of its Brexit trade strategy.
Brexit has been an ideological project from its birth, with the Libertarian wing of the Conservative Party and like-minded supporters. Their vision was of Britain not as a part of the EU, who it sees in ideological opposition to their agenda, but seeing Britain instead as a "thalassocratic" power, a power of the seas as the British Empire had been.
This is not to equate Libertarians as the same as old-fashioned imperialists; the rationale is different, even if the effect is not that far different in reality. However, Libertarians in Britain see their agenda in the same fantastical light, almost entirely separated from rational and coherent thought. More on that in a moment.
The purpose of having someone like Tony Abbott as a trade advisor is transparently-clear - to facilitate the closer ties that Britain's government would want with Australia. Other ideological allies in Canada and New Zealand have also expressed a like-minded desire to have closer bonds with Britain.
"Rule, Britannia!"
The thinking behind CANZUK from Britain's point of view is equally transparent.
The fact that, within CANZUK, Britain would be the largest power, in terms of financial clout and population, can hardly be a coincidence. It's easy to see its British advocates as seeing Britain within CANZUK as the power with the financial might to support the resource-rich economies of Australia and Canada, for example. In this sense, Britain within CANZUK would see itself as the primary power within a trade association, and (presumably) able to dictate much of the agenda of the group. Russia within the EEU (an economic grouping of former Soviet states that Russia dominates) performs the same function, and the similarities cannot be mere coincidence.
In this sense, CANZUK would be to the UK what the EEU is to Russia: a tool of vainglorious power projection, and a kind of "legacy empire", in recreating something of its former imperial reach.
It would only be a matter of time before the UK is bossing about its more junior "partners" in the trading bloc. No wonder that some in Australia are already calling Tony Abbott a "foreign agent" for working with Britain. At the same time time, Britain's role within CANZUK would only further encourage British arrogance on the global stage. While the Royal Navy is only a shadow of its imperial former self, the two enormous aircraft carriers built to roam the seas are further vainglorious symbols of Britain's power projection. It's not hard to imagine Britain encouraging other compliant states to join its "trade bloc" (Singapore has already been mentioned), and the more far-flung its reach, the more Britain's imperial vanity as a global power is stroked.
While the CANZUK group are all multicultural democracies, it is also a grouping of the former "White Dominions"; the same former colonies that had been the initial target of Britain's postwar labour outreach when Britain was in a manpower shortage. The fact that it was the Caribbean and South Asian parts of the empire that answered the call was not what the British government had actually intended. The "Windrush generation" wasn't actually part of the plan - the UK was really hoping for Aussies, Canadians and Kiwis instead. In a subconscious way then, isn't CANZUK also a way to turn back the clock? While CANZUK these days is a Libertarian project, it still has great emotional appeal to old-fashioned sentiments and nostalgia, with many of the older generation having memories of relatives moving "Down Under", for example. The feeling in Britain that "they" are "like us" is a strongly emotional one, with historical memory playing a far greater role than rational or practical thought. The feeling that Europeans are someone not "like us" is part of the emotional justification for CANZUK. It is an idea based on emotional pull; a dangerous game to play when all rational sense says it's an idea that makes no economic sense.
Empire of irrationality
CANZUK has little economic or logistical reasoning behind the concept. The actual benefits to the nations, in terms of freedom of movement for trade and labour, are questionable as relatively little trade is done between them to begin with, at least compared to each country's close neighbours and larger trading partners. In Britain and Canada's case, especially so. Then there is the question of logistics and how to think that trading with countries thousands of miles away will make more sense than Britain trading mainly with countries just across the channel. CANZUK is an idea that appeals mainly to Anglophone romantics like Daniel Hannan (who by no small coincidence is, like Tony Abbott, also a British trade advisor).
If the idea from Britain's point of view is that CANZUK is meant to be a replacement for EU trade, then only the merest glance at the comparison will make the idea seem not only absurd but idiotic. The population of the EU is nearly 300 million, while the population of Canada, Australia and New Zealand combined is barely equal to the UK's. How do CANZUK's proponent's in Britain expect to get enough trade from such a smaller trading bloc? But again, fantastical ideas overrule any kind of rational thought when it comes to most things on Brexit.
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