Royal family the real winners as summit draws to a close

It was billed as the biggest intergovernmental summit ever held in the United Kingdom; the near week-long, 53-country Commonwealth conference whose costs are likely to amount to more than £10m and whose global influence remains limited despite the fanfare.

The long agenda of events in theory presented repeated opportunities for Theresa May to talk about issues ranging from banning plastic straws to gay rights overseas, highlighting anything other than Brexit – but in reality required a panicked response to a Windrush immigration crisis.

Its real winners though were the royal family – deploying the full trappings of the crown to ensure a success for Prince Charles as head of the organisation at what will almost certainly be the last summit attended by the Queen, at an event at which every serving member played a role.

“The Commonwealth secretariat knows that the monarchy is its life-support system and the Queen recognises the importance of its headship,” said Philip Murphy, professor of Commonwealth studies at the University of London. “They knew that the issue of succession would dominate the news and for the UK government it would look like a win for Britain.”

The engagement of the Queen was clearly also a draw. Previous Commonwealth summits in Sri Lanka and Malta only saw roughly half the heads of government turn up, but London had a very high turnout, including India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, with delegates staying en masse at the five-star InterContinental hotel in Park Lane.

Costs for the summit are being met by the UK government, though ministers will not disclose how much has been spent on policing, security and the rest of the sprawling event until some time later. But as a benchmark, the previous summit in Valletta, the capital of Malta, cost €13.5m (£11.8m), with the costs of food and other hospitality alone amounting to €4.8m.

Yet it began disastrously: with No 10 forced at Monday’s mid-morning lobby briefing to announce an emergency taskforce to deal with the problem faced by Windrush migrants in the UK, an issue that had been dragging on for five months but only became critical for the government after Caribbean countries complained they could not get the issue on the Commonwealth summit agenda.

“The problem for the Commonwealth is that it isn’t able to generate its own news story so its agenda gets dominated by external rows,” Murphy said. “The agenda amounts to a confetti of good intentions, but issues like plastic straws are a drop in the ocean compared with the time when the organisation was dominated by the struggle against apartheid.”

Some leaders took advantage to press a diplomatic case. Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, is seeking a seat on the UN security council. May met Modi to discuss trade after Brexit, and the Indian leader was also hosted by Prince Charles at the Science Museum, where a Tata-owned, zero-emissions Jaguar was displayed.

Streets in London were repeatedly closed for a string of events as motorcades ferried presidents and prime ministers past, with the first forums beginning on Tuesday with a plenary session where May spoke at a roundtable event addressed by business magnate Bill Gates. On Wednesday evening, May hosted a welcome reception and dinner at the Sky Garden atop the Walkie Talkie building in the City of London.

On Thursday, the action moved to the Buckingham Palace ballroom, where the pop singer Emeli Sandé sang the national anthem to open proceedings at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting. The Queen pleaded that it was her “sincere wish” that one day “the Prince of Wales should carry on the important work started by my father in 1949”. The opening ceremony was followed up with a three-course, black-tie banquet for 130 in thepalace’s picture gallery.

Friday, the last formal day of the summit, saw leaders and the organisation’s secretary general, Lady Scotland, take over Windsor Castle without the royal family present for a summit “retreat” in which no advisers were present. The leaders resolved that Charles would take over, although few believed the succession had ever been seriously in doubt.

Then on Saturday, as the Queen turns 92, many leaders are expected to stay on for the Queen’s birthday concert at the Royal Albert Hall, hosted by Zoe Ball and where Sir Tom Jones and Kylie Minogue have been lined up to perform at an event that will be broadcast live on BBC One. May will host her friend from Oxford University the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, at Chequers.

“The question is whether Charles’s succession will preserve the Commonwealth. It is more like embalming fluid; the organisation and its summits will certainly keep going, but will it have the urgency to reform itself and make itself relevant,” Murphy said.