World View: Suggestion that likes of US, Australia offer alternative to EU is fantasy. / If the success of a political idea turns on its power to instil hope or optimism in its adherents, then, in its early years, Brexit was a colossal failure.

Having cut Britain adrift of Europe, Brexiters are indulging in an old fantasy about a new national role in the world—as the hub of a far-flung Anglosphere.