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Our future is not in the
Commonwealth
By Andrew Lilico, CapX
Some commentators like to
fantasise about the UK playing a leading role in the Commonwealth and
using it to project our power and values across the world. But there is
no basis for that. The assembly is a waste of diplomatic bandwidth. We'd
be better off focusing our attention on a different group of allies.
The Commonwealth is an
assembly of 56 countries, vastly different in wealth, values,
objectives, size and location. Most, but not all, are former members of
the British Empire, from which the Commonwealth originally formed.
According to the most recent figures available, its poorest member,
Malawi, has a GDP per capita of US$324 (vs the UK’s $52,430), and the
Commonwealth average is only $3,532. The murder rate in Jamaica, at over
53 per year per 100,000 people, is over 45 times as high as in the UK.
The most populous Commonwealth member, India, has a population over 20
times as high as the UK’s. Twenty members are monarchies, 15, including
the UK, being ruled by King Charles) and the rest are republics.
Occasionally, British commentators fantasise about the UK playing some
kind of leading role in the Commonwealth and using it to project British
power and values across the world. But there is no basis for that. Many
of the members carry post-imperial grudges against the UK. Others barely
think about us at all except as a potential source of foreign aid. A few
even harbour notions of legal injustice, with this week a number forcing
discussion of slavery reparations (on some estimates up to £18 trillion,
or about 1.5 times the entire net worth of the UK).
The Commonwealth is a waste of our time, energy and diplomatic
bandwidth. In terms of countries with whom we have historic ties, we
should focus much more narrowly – in the first instance on collaboration
amongst the CANZUK countries: Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.
Unlike the Commonwealth, the CANZUK countries are peers, with similar
GDP per capita, similar murder rates and similar liberal values and age
profiles expressed in similarly mixed demographics. We already
collaborate in a number of ways, including through trade and migration
agreements (e.g. the UK-New Zealand and UK-Australia Free Trade
Agreements), in military agreements like AUKUS, in security networks
such as the Five Eyes, in medicines regulation (where the UK, Canada and
Australia are members, along with Switzerland and Singapore, of the
Access Consortium) and in specific CANZUK collaborations (e.g. the joint
CANZUK statement on Hong Kong in 2020).
Instead of wasting our efforts seeking to appease countries that will
always hate us in the Commonwealth, we should focus on our natural
CANZUK allies. There is extensive appetite for this within all four
countries. Opinion polls show New Zealanders are the most in favour
(about 8:1), followed by Australia (7:1), Canada (5:1) and then the UK
(3:1). At the past few elections, the Canadian Conservative Party has
had an official policy of favouring a CANZUK accord on trade, migration
and defence. In New Zealand there is cross-party support, with a version
of it being policy under the Labour-NZ First Coalition government.
Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott (advisor to the UK Board of
Trade) is Senior Fellow for CANZUK at Canada’s MacDonald-Laurier
Institute.
Beyond trade, migration and security there are numerous other areas the
CANZUK countries can naturally work together, including intellectual
property agreements, environmental accords, banking regulation, takeover
codes, internet regulation, low orbital and space transport, the
commercial exploitation of space, and of course culture and the arts.
CANZUK can evolve into a deep geopolitical partnership based on natural
affinities, without the need for EU-style harmonisation. The CANZUK
countries can also caucus within broader organisations such as the CPTPP.
We don’t need (at least not initially) any kind of ‘CANZUK Treaty’ to
formalise our partnership.
However, it could be useful to give visible effect to our growing
partnership through a reasonably regular Heads of Government meeting. If
diaries are too busy, perhaps we could withdraw from the Commonwealth
Heads of Government meetings to create a time slot?
There is little to be gained for the UK in sending senior ministers
along to Commonwealth meetings so they can be insulted by countries with
grudges and so those countries can have an excuse for their latest
spurious demands for yet more money. Far better to put our time and
focus into building on the productive CANZUK links that already exist
and develop them further into the influential geopolitical partnership
the Commonwealth will never be but CANZUK is already turning into. |
