Brexit campaign relies on nostalgia for an Empire long dead.

But links to old dominions like Canada are gone

Britain’s former foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, once famously declared that “Britain punched above its weight in the world.”

True or not, the United Kingdom gets f ar more media attention any other western country of its size and economic standing. Part of this can be explained by the long reach and influence of the BBC. There are also vestigial tentacles of British imperialism and the outsized role that Britain has played in two world wars. Yet another explanation is that many people outside Britain are anglophiles.

The world always gets an earful about almost everything that happens with the Royal Family. The same thing happened with the Scottish referendum, with all kinds of dire talk about Britain’s future that turned out to be nothing.

So it is again with the vote Thursday on Britain’s potential exit — Brexit — from the European Union. If the polls are to be believed — and they have often been wrong in Britain — support for remaining in the EU has recovered a bit in the past few days and may now be a fraction ahead of support for Brexit. But the race remains a toss-up.

Heavy questions have been asked about immigration and the economic, social, cultural and security consequences for Britain and the EU if the U. K. splits. There has also been lots of speculation about the rights of millions of Europeans who live and work in Britain and the millions of Britons on the continent, about Britain’s future relations with Europe and the rest of the world.

Leaving aside t he big economic questions, which bankers and businessmen have talking about mostly in apocalyptic terms, a victory for Brexit could have some modest but potentially mildly positive consequences for Canadians. Although Canada is a modest player in British trade and daily life, it has come up several times during the campaign.

If Britain votes to quit the EU, it has been suggested that citizens from countries such as Canada who fought alongside the Brits in two world wars could regain the preferential access to the United Kingdom that they enjoyed before countries that were the enemy pushed Canadians to the back of the queue.

The current wait at immigration for Canadians entering Britain through Heathrow Airport could be cut from several hours at peak times to a few seconds, as it is for citizens of the 28 EU countries, because they would only have to show their documents and not be subjected to additional scrutiny alongside people from the Third World.

London’s garrulous former mayor Boris Johnson, one of the leaders of the Brexit campaign, has suggested Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders could join a reciprocal open-borders regime similar to the one Europeans currently enjoy, but would likely lose if Brexit passes.

That is, citizens of the United Kingdom and the three old dominions could freely work in each other’s countries while Europeans would lose the right to do so.

This possibility of a free l abour e xchange f ound strong support in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, according to a survey done this spring by the Royal Commonwealth Society. Whether the Canadian government would welcome millions of British workers to Canada without any checks is another matter.

What Johnson and other proponents of Brexit really seek from the EU is a common market minus political union. They have seized upon the tentative trade deal that the Harper government struck with the EU ( CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) as a template for future trade re- lations between Britain and the EU, ignoring the fact that CETA took years to negotiate and has still not been ratified nearly two years after it was signed.

If Britain is unshackled from the EU, with its petty rules about packaging, light bulbs and how to produce cheese, some dreamers in the Brexit camp hope the country could reinvigorate its traditional ties with the Old Commonwealth. This hankering for an era that ended 60 or 70 years ago is out of touch with current realities.

Canadian businesses are all strong opponents of Brexit. They are highly unlikely to shift their trade focus back to Britain when they do nearly 20 times as much trade with the U. S. and when future trade growth is obviously going to come mostly from Asia.

The small advantages that Canadians might gain from Brexit are among many smaller uncertainties about what will happen if those whose wish to leave the EU win. The larger uncertainties, which truly matter, could fill an encyclopedia.

Reveries about resurrecting old ties to the dominions, with the British bulldog once again on top, allows nostalgic Britons frustrated with playing second fiddle to the Germans and sometimes the French, and having little say in who crosses their borders, to briefly imagine their country is more important than it is and that it still punches above its weight.

FRUSTRATED WITH PLAYING SECOND FIDDLE TO THE GERMANS.