Sir Keir Starmer has been urged to snub the US and formally launch a new alliance with Canada, Australia and New Zealand.In a landmark pitch to Britain, Canadian Tory leader Pierre Poilievre is set to make the case for “Canzuk” in London tomorrow. “The time has come for a new partnership among Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand – a modern Canzuk,” Mr Poilievre will say.He will describe the alliance as “a pact to open our economies further, remove barriers, recognize credentials, expand skilled labour mobility, and deepen capital markets”.
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He is also set to call for all four countries to recognise qualifications for doctors, engineers and nurses so that their credentials in one country would be accepted in any other.”If someone can perform heart surgery in Sydney, Australia, they should be able to do so in Sydney, Nova Scotia,” Mr Poilievre is set to say.In a similar vein, the Tory chief will call for the “regulatory presumption of equivalence” – if a product is approved as safe and reliable in one country, it should be approved in all four.”If a drug or auto part is safe in London, England, it should be safe in London, Ontario,” he will say.His address has already been hailed as a victory for Canzuk campaigners – who have long called for the UK to join a bloc with its three closest allies.It “validates years of grassroots and lobbying efforts, and positions the initiative firmly in the mainstream,” one group, Canzuk International, said.It is also set to coincide with Canadian PM’s Mark Carney arrival in Australia on Tuesday.Mr Carney, who defeated Mr Poilievre at the country’s General Election last year, has pledged to bolster relations between the two countries amid what he has called a “rupture” in the world order.He will address Australia’s Parliament and meet PM Anthony Albanese, who described Canada last week as one of Australia’s “closest friends, built on generations of trust”.Last year, during Donald Trump’s first tariff rollout of his second term in office, Mr Carney said the UK, Australia and New Zealand “will be essential” in countering the US.And last month, he called for “middle powers” to work more closely together at a Davos speech amid a diplomatic crisis over Mr Trump’s threats towards Greenland.”Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” he said.On Monday, it emerged that Mr Trump had been left “disappointed” with Sir Keir Starmer over his refusal to let US planes take off from RAF bases to strike Iran.”That’s probably never happened between our countries before,” the President said. “It sounds like he was worried about the legality.”He should have fought it out and owned it or make him take it, if you want to know the truth,” he told The Telegraph. “But no, we were very disappointed in Keir.”That, according to ex-White House official Ezra Cohen, had left the so-called special relationship “heavily damaged”.Tory peer Lord Hannan, writing in The Telegraph last year, urged Labour to pursue Canzuk because its members are more reliable to Britain than the US.”For a decade, Canzuk was treated by politicians as a worthy idea, but not an urgent one,” he wrote.”Then came the second Trump term, the tariff wars and the upending of US foreign policy.”The leaders of the other Anglosphere democracies have been left stranded, like governors of outlying Roman provinces when the Eternal City was sacked.””It’s by far the most popular policy that governments could feasibly implement – but haven’t.”
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