More special in Europe

WHEN people wheel out the old quotation by Dean Acheson to the effect that Britain had lost an empire and not yet found a role, the rest of his speech is often forgotten. Acheson, who was President Truman’s secretary of state, went on to say that Britain’s attempt to play the part of a world power aloof from Europe by leveraging its “special relationship” with America was almost “played out”. That was in 1962. More than 50 years later, those pushing for Britain to vote on June 23rd to leave the European Union are still in denial.

On April 22nd Barack Obama will be in London to tell people arguing for Brexit, as politely as he can, that they are mad, and that if Britain wants to retain much influence in the world, let alone a special relationship with America, it must stay in the EU. Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank, puts it starkly: “Britain can be a geopolitical actor within the EU or it can be a geopolitical irrelevance outside it.”