Brexit's Doomed Alternative to the EU (Matthew Pennekamp, The National Interest)

Secretary of State Dean Acheson stirred considerable controversy when, in a speech at West Point in 1962, he admitted what everybody already knew of his nation’s wartime partner: “Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.” As one might expect, this incensed British tabloid opinion, and both Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and the leader of the Labour Party quickly denounced Acheson’s words. But what went less noticed was his next sentence, warning that said role could not be “based on being head of a ‘commonwealth’ which has no political structure, or unity, or strength.”

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/brexits-doomed-alternative-the-eu-15730