The sun is setting — literally, this time — on the British Empire. That’s the upshot of Prime Minister Starmer’s handover of the Chagos Islands to Britain’s former Indian Ocean colony, Mauritius. While the apogee of the globe-spanning empire passed decades ago, this is, the Financial Times reports, “the first time in more than three centuries” that night will fall on British territory. There’s now a gap between the Pitcairn Islands and military bases on Cyprus. 

“Men are we,” Wordsworth wrote when Venice finally fell, “and must grieve when even the Shade / Of that which once was great is passed away.” That’s not to say the loss of a few tropical islands is much cause for lamentation, even if it is a reminder of Britain’s eclipse as a world power. It is, rather, an occasion to mark anew the opportunity Brexit has presented an independent Britain, free from the fetters of the continental superstate, to forge a new global role.