Stephen Pollard
about the Commonwealth today is irrelevant. In April, London hosts the Commonwealth Summit which will bring together the 52 heads of the body’s governments.
The member countries span Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Pacific – with a combined population of over 2.4 billion people, making up one third of the world’s population. And 60 per cent of the Commonwealth population are under 30 years old. It is an amazing, growing and evermore prosperous market.
Over the past decade – long before Brexit – our exports to Commonwealth countries have risen much faster than exports to our fellow members of the EU Single Market, which have actually fallen. We have doubled our sales to Singapore and New Zealand and increased those to Malaysia by 50 per cent. The IMF forecasts that our four current main Commonwealth markets – Canada, Australia, Singapore and India – will each grow faster than the EU, offering fantastic opportunities.
These stellar export figures are all, remember, without utilising any of the opportunities presented by Brexit. We do not have a single British-negotiated treaty with any of them, since we are only allowed to be part of EU-wide trade deals.
Had we not been in the EU for example, we would have
INDEED, there is now a dedicated Commonwealth desk at the Department of International Trade headed by Liam Fox. It has a team of civil servants working specifically on this trade. Quite rightly, last year Dr Fox remarked that Brexit provides an opportunity “to renew bonds of trade and commerce with our partners across the globe”.
Remember this key fact: 93 per cent of the world’s population are not in the EU. PostBrexit, the world is our oyster and the opportunities for us to prosper are almost limitless.
That means in areas such as South East Asia, for example, where Commonwealth members like Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore can open doors to the whole 650 million-strong region.
Our membership of the EU has meant we are far behind where we need to be in cementing trading links with these goahead areas, where the world economy of the next decades is heading. But our Commonwealth ties give us a great opportunity to overcome that.
The Commonwealth is in so many ways our natural home. To be blunt: we have little in common with our European neighbours beyond geography and the history that geography has given us.
But we share with our Commonwealth allies a mix of language, common law, parliamentary democracy and culture – not to mention the family and business links.
In so many areas the EU is backward looking and sclerotic, while the Commonwealth is the future. Thanks to Brexit we are free to take full advantage.
‘We need links with these go-ahead areas’