Only Brexit could inspire this cynical, lost empire vision of Commonwealth

Surveying the paucity of mentions of the Commonwealth in British political party manifestos in 2015, Philip Murphy, the professor of British and Commonwealth history at the School of Advanced Study, identified two trends to explain what he believed was its looming irrelevance.

“All in all,” he mused in an essay for the Conversation, “it is difficult to think of a single major achievement of the Commonwealth since 2010.

“But it’s also striking,” Murphy continued, “how a nostalgic conception of the ‘old’ Commonwealth still has a hold on the British imagination, and the right wing of politics in particular.”

As the biennial junket of the Commonwealth heads of government meeting takes place this week in London, Murphy’s comments – uttered before the reality of Brexit darkened the door of UK diplomacy – only serve to underline that never has there seemed an international body more in need of a purpose.

Its serial and increasingly lukewarm reinventions since the twilight of the British empire – from “British Commonwealth”, to Commonwealth, to its last repurposing in 2012 with the adoption of its first-ever charter – mirror that lack of a compelling raison d’être.

When it is talked up – for instance by the BBC ahead of the meeting – it is in terms of a cheap tailor inviting us to “never mind the quality – feel the width”.

The Commonwealth is “rather big”, we are reminded, home to a third of the world’s population with its constituent members living in countries that comprise a quarter of the world’s landmass.

The odds are, however, that you could not name its secretary general (Lady Patricia Scotland) or say what the Commonwealth is actually for.

Brutally, Boris Johnson, before becoming foreign secretary, suggested that the Commonwealth’s most useful function was to supply a backdrop of “cheering crowds” of Africans (he used racist and demeaning language) and as a feelgood fillip for the increasingly controversial then-prime minister Tony Blair.

While Johnson may have moderated his troubling language somewhat in the intervening years, it appears that his view of the institution has not much improved, recently appearing to suggest to the cross-party foreign affairs committee that it was not much of a priority.

And Johnson’s flip intimation that a key role of the Commonwealth is supplying a kind of existential meaning to the hollowed crown of Windsor (and troubled prime ministers) will not have been dispelled by the suggestion of new roles for Prince Charles (as its possible titular head) and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as joint youth ambassadors.

The problems with the Commonwealth are well-rehearsed. There was the accusation by Gambia on its withdrawal from the organisation that it was a “neo-colonial institution” and persistent charges of lack of imagination in its sometimes opaque bureaucracy.

Then there has been concern about its vulnerability to exploitation for political gain by states stained with human rights abuse allegations – most notably Sri Lanka.

But despite the periodic controversies, the real problem is how forgettable the Commonwealth has become, more associated with the quadrennial games in the public’s mind than with much else.

In terms of global development – and at the centre of its renewed focus – ostensibly, its aims are admirable, not least the charter’s 16 values of democracy, gender equality, sustainable development and international peace and security.

On climate change too, in particular ahead of the Paris agreement, the Commonwealth acted as a conduit for the views of smaller countries from the global south.

In practical terms, much of what it does, not least in terms of the delivery of sustainable development goals, is open to the criticism that it only duplicates UK commitments whose main effort goes on in other forums like the UN.

Perhaps most serious of all is the way in which – as Murphy intuited – the Commonwealth has become a vessel to be filled by the Conservative politics of Brexit, rolling a rose-tinted view of lost empire into the exigencies of finding new markets, gilded with a glib free market view of trade as the answer to poverty.

What that means, as development secretary Penny Mordaunt and Liam Fox made clear in a joint article for the Telegraph this week, is what they described as “the beginning of a new approach to inclusive trade, development and prosperity”. In short that means increasing trade for the Commonwealth’s biggest economy – the UK post-Brexit – and pretending that is aid.

It is the cynical papier-mache vision of not-quite-empire and of not-quite-development for a not-quite-important institution that only the dull fever dream of Brexit could inspire.