Future lies with Commonwealth and not the EU
THERE are delicate meetings, and then there is this… According to reliable reports, a “high-level” group of Commonwealth leaders are about to meet to discuss an issue that none of them want to deal with but which all of them recognise they must.
That issue is what happens to the Commonwealth when the Queen dies. Leadership of the Commonwealth is not a hereditary position. There is, in fact, no agreed plan for a successor to Her Majesty when one is needed.
It’s more than likely that they will opt to make Prince Charles their leader, when he becomes King. But quite rightly, the Commonwealth wants to settle the issue in advance rather than be reduced to unseemly rows at a sensitive time.
Quirky as this story might seem, it serves as a reminder that the Commonwealth is anything but an organisation from our past. Post-Brexit, the Commonwealth will be more relevant and modern than ever.
When we joined the Common Market in 1973, we were in effect telling the 33 then members of the Commonwealth where they could go.
Instead of treating nations such as India, Tanzania, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia with the respect they deserved as our valued allies, we dumped them in favour of a new European club.
And as the Common Market morphed into the European Union and we operated within the customs union, we increased trade barriers against many of them. This is perhaps not the time to reflect more fully on that betrayal of nations which, in our hour of need, dropped everything to come and save Europe from the Third Reich. We repaid them by deserting them within just three decades.
FOR many years after, the Commonwealth was treated by the chattering classes as a backwardslooking irrelevance that served almost no useful purpose. Few people paid much attention to it, beyond the occasional political or financial scandal.
But let’s not spend too long on the past. Let’s enter instead into the spirit of Brexit and look to the future. Because the very last word you should use