What is the Commonwealth if not the British Empire 2.0?

Afua Hirsch
Tues 17 April 2018

Congratulations must go this week to Prince Charles, who has overcome some really tough
competition to win Britain’s backing as the best candidate for the role of new head of the
Commonwealth. It’s a surprising outcome for such a wide-open recruitment process. I hope other
applicants feel assured that this was purely on merit.

In all seriousness, who else other than the heir to the British throne, after all, could be better
qualified to lead the contemporary manifestation of the British empire? It would just be so much
easier if all concerned simply admitted this reality: the Commonwealth is a vessel of former
colonies with the former imperial master at its helm. Or, as I like to call it, Empire 2.0.

This is not a question of conjecture, but of fact. Take Britain’s relationship with the African
continent, for example. At present, British companies control more than $1 trillion worth of Africa’s
key resources: gold, diamonds, gas and oil, and an area of land roughly to four times the size of the
UK.
All countries use diplomacy to lobby in their own interests – there is nothing wrong with that. In
Britain’s case, the Commonwealth has served very nicely to advocate its particular shopping list:
liberalised, extractor-friendly regimes, low corporate tax rates, and a creative system of tax havens
predominantly located in – you guessed it – other Commonwealth countries. As a result, Africa
loses £30bn more each year than it receives in aid, loans and remittances.

[...]

Which is why not just I, but others ranging across the political spectrum have found [the
Commonwealth's] existence hard to explain. Philip Murphy, director of the Institute for
Commonwealth Studies at the University of London, has called it “an irrelevant institution
wallowing in imperial amnesia”. The members like it, some will say, and can vote with their feet.
The Commonwealth is ultimately a voluntary organisation – unlike, obviously, the empire – and its
members choose to stay. At the end of the empire, only Burma, Aden and the Republic of Ireland
did not. Has it been a meaningful choice? For the majority of members, the 32 countries whose
population is less than 1.5 million, that’s questionable. Having been brought into the globalised
economy through the empire, under circumstances advantageous to Britain and not to them, and
now grappling with rising sea levels, drug trafficking, high rates of crime, and brain drains that
characterise so many small islands, can they really go it alone?

Only by understanding these little-said truths about the Commonwealth can we understand the
present. It may be one in which the members find their ongoing union, one they believe will truly
advance their interests in a genuine relationship of equals. But while the Commonwealth ignores
and perpetuates its imperial foundations, I find that unlikely.

www.theguardian.co.uk