Jack Anderton, a 23 year-old, one-time adviser to Reform UK and Nigel Farage, is reported as writing in a post on his personal blog that “in a future world of ‘meritocracy’, the UK could ‘regain’ colonies such as Australia, Canada and South Africa”. He posits that if Britain had not fought in both World Wars thus becoming economically dependent on the US, it could have developed India, Cyprus, Fiji, Malta, Saint Lucia, Seychelles, the Bahamas, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Ireland and New Zealand”! Is this reverse colonisation? How outraged are the citizens of 21st century former colonies now independent countries, some cutting ties with the Commonwealth altogether, by a statement like this although WfaAR is pleased to inform him that the horse has long bolted. However, opinions such as these are a sort of litmus test for the strength of feeling about Australia’s ties to Britain as its King is our Head of State by virtue of colonisation in the 18th and 19th centuries. These are the sorts of opinions that populist right-wing parties like Reform UK and One Nation in Australia spruke and voters are increasingly swayed by. Was it a prelude to a future plan in government to reclaim or agree to riches foregone through reparations, tariffs and the like? What sounds whacky today can be become policy tomorrow. [“Farage Adviser said UK would be better off if it had not fought in WW2” by Peter Walker, The Guardian online, 17 August 2025]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jack Anderton, a 23 year-old, one-time adviser to Reform UK and Nigel Farage, is reported as writing in a post on his personal blog that “in a future world of ‘meritocracy’, the UK could ‘regain’ colonies such as Australia, Canada…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-8","wpcat-8-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2976"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3029,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2976\/revisions\/3029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womenrep.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}