In respect of the notion that one never wants to let a good crisis go to waste, let us just say that the way to take advantage of the collapse now brewing across the Atlantic would be to encourage Britain to leave the European Union altogether. We were put in mind of the opportunity by the headline on the Drudge Report (which has a better sense of this story than the other Web aggregators) that said: “80% in UK Demand Vote to Quit EU . . .” It pointed to a dispatch in the Daily Express quoting a new poll that showed “more than 80% of voters are crying out for a referendum.” It is illustrated with a photo of a group of Britons waving the Union Jack while one of their number, with a large pair of shears, slices in half the flag of Europe.

No doubt this will be discounted a bit for the fact that the Express has been campaigning for years against the notion that Britain belongs in Europe, and no doubt its report is far from the last word on the subject. But wouldn’t it be nice if there were in Washington an American administration that appreciated the opportunity this crisis represents for our national interest. Yet neither President Obama nor Secretary Clinton gives the slightest inkling that they appreciate the possibilities. They seem oblivious to the point that has been made with increasing urgency by the historian Andrew Roberts, author of a history of the English-speaking peoples. He has been trying to remind that the European Union itself was conceived of as an anti-American enterprise.

The Obama administration doesn’t have to rely, though, on the Express and distinguished conservative historians. Feature today’s Financial Times, which has an Obamaist worldview and today runs out a dispatch by Philip Stephens called “A Union in Jeopardy.” It says the “wheel is turning full circle” from the days when “France and Germany set about building a united Europe from the war.” It noted that Churchill wished them well so long as the enterprise would begin at Calais. “For the first time since Edward Heath abandoned Churchillian hauteur to take Britain into Europe in 1973,” Mr. Stephens writes, “senior figures in Whitehall are contemplating the serious possibility of a permanent rupture in the relationship.”

“To say that Britain may leave the EU — or at the very least retreat to a looser arrangement with its continental partners — has moved from the realm of euro-skeptic daydreaming to that of an entirely plausible side effect of the present euro drama,” Mr. Stephens writes. He says the “clamor for a referendum is fast becoming a convenient cloak for those seeking complete withdrawal.” Mr. Stephens goes onto quote Roosevelt’s last state secretary, Edward Stettinius, as telling FDR that Britain’s problem lay in the “emotional difficulty which anyone, particularly an Englishman, has in adjusting to a secondary role after always accepting a leading role as a national right.”

All the more incentive, we say, for America to bring creative diplomacy to strengthening what used to be called the special relationship. We’re not so interested in the idea of “kindred blood” or even two countries divided by a common language so much as we are between our countries’ shared intellectual heritage in the idea of freedom and liberal principles of modest, limited government. This is what animated Prime Minister Thatcher in her famous speech at Bruges, Belgium, where she declared: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.”

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Clearly a kind of moment of truth is at hand. Our guess is that if this crisis can be turned to our advantage, the leadership will have to come from Governor Romney. He has an opportunity to put a distracted opponent, in President Obama, on the defensive by moving quickly to assert a policy aimed at bolstering the special relationship — and be creative about it. An American-British currency union? A joint campaign for liberalism — tax reduction, deregulation, sound money — against austerity? A conference on Adam Smith and John Locke? A bi-national fund? The Republicans all look to the example of Reagan. His first overseas trip was to London, where he proposed what became the National Endowment for Democracy and ignited the movement that won the Cold War. What can one expect in the current crisis from the Republican Party that wants to pick up the flag of free minds and free markets?