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DANIEL HANNAN: The Internet is dragging Britain away from Europe and towards the Anglosphere. Th?

By Glenn Reynolds

DANIEL HANNAN: The Internet is dragging Britain away from Europe and towards the Anglosphere.

The EU is being made redundant by technological change. In the 1950s, a regional trade association arguably made sense. But in a world where capital surges around the globe at the touch of a button, physical proximity becomes irrelevant. When deciding whether to invest in a country, corporations will consider many factors ? tax rates, regulation, language, corruptibility of public officials ? before they worry about geography.

The Internet makes it as easy for my constituents to do business with a company in New Zealand as with a company in Belgium. Easier, indeed, because the Kiwi company shares our common law, accountancy practices, commercial traditions and language. . . . The Internet, as Douglas Carswell argues, is ironing out a kink in our cultural and political alignment, whereby a small elite artificially reoriented our foreign policy, our trade and even our news cycle away from our old alliances and towards Europe. That?s the great thing about the web (or, from a Europhile perspective, the disagreeable thing): it democratises.

Shockingly, The Guardian contains expressions of unhappiness about this trend. But Jim Bennett, who popularized the term “Anglosphere,” emails: “Faster!”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on August 22, 2010 (boomark / email).