The end
of the British Empire
U.K. Prime
Minister Keir Starmer and King Charles III head to the Commonwealth summit to
talk climate change and growth. Not all their friends will be there.
King Charles
III, officially the head of the Commonwealth, remains the king of 14 nations
aside from the U.K. |
October 23, 2024 4:00 am CET
By Dan Bloom
https://www.politico.eu/article/british-empire-king-charles-keir-starmer-monarchy/
ABOARD THE PRIME MINISTER’S PLANE TO SAMOA — As a symbol of
the decline of British power, it could hardly be more stark.
This week King Charles III will preside over a summit of 55
nations associated with the fraying ends of the British empire. Hosted by
Samoa, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), a biennial
gathering of state leaders, will also be attended by his Prime Minister Keir
Starmer.
But a glance at this year’s guest list highlights how the
British monarch’s convening power is not what it was.
Indian PM Narendra Modi and South Africa’s President Cyril
Ramaphosa, two of the most powerful Commonwealth heads of government who would
normally be in attendance, both plan to skip this year’s summit in favor of
BRICS — a separate gathering of major developing nations hosted by the Russian
president, Vladimir Putin, in Kazan, where Chinese President Xi Jinping is also
in attendance.
Sri Lanka, which is applying to join BRICS this week, is
sending neither its prime minister nor foreign minister to Samoa, an official
at the High Commission in London said.
Not even Canada, a close ally of the U.K. and fellow member
of the powerful “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing network, will send its prime
minister or foreign minister to CHOGM. The head of its delegation will be
Ottawa’s high commissioner to the U.K, a Canadian official confirmed.
Even Starmer’s own trip — his first to Britain’s former
colonies in the southern hemisphere — has been cut short. A U.K. government
official confirmed the PM had scrapped plans to add in a stop in Australia, as
aides feared it would keep him abroad for too long ahead of a pivotal
government spending package being unveiled in London next week.
Speaking to journalists on board his 28-hour flight to Samoa
Tuesday evening, Starmer appeared in good spirits. But he has brought up the
summit’s grueling flight time in conversations with fellow MPs, two of them
told POLITICO. The 9,400-mile journey each way is by far his longest since
taking office in July.
‘Not my
king’
Also struggling with the epic flight time is 75-year-old
King Charles, who — while still recovering from cancer — did at least make it
to Australia ahead of this week’s summit.
But here too the direction of travel appears less than
promising for Britain’s soft power. Barbados became a republic in 2021; Jamaica
plans to follow suit next year.
The debate erupted again Monday when an indigenous senator
heckled Charles in Australia, repeatedly shouting “not my king” and demanding:
“Give us what you stole from us — our bones, our skulls, our babies, our
people.”
For now, most realms’ ambitions to become a republic are
“often discussed but seldom actioned,” said Harshan Kumarasingham, a senior
research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.
Australia shelved a vote earlier this year, despite much
chatter during the king’s visit and republicans selling merchandise branding
the trip Charles’s “farewell tour.” A recent NewsCorp poll found only 33
percent of Australians wanted to live in a republic.
Australia’s written constitution requires a double majority
at national and state level in a referendum to activate change. George Brandis,
Australia’s former high commissioner to the U.K. and a monarchist, argues the
appetite was quelled last year, when a referendum failed to change the
constitution around indigenous people’s rights despite “yes” initially having a
large lead in the polls.
“When the queen [Elizabeth II] died, I think naturally the
question was asked ‘is this now time for Australia to become a republic?’ That
discussion basically fell away within a few months,” added Brandis. “The wind
has really gone out of the sails of Australian republicanism.”
Reparations
loom over summit
The Commonwealth itself, formed 75 years ago, shows no sign
of breaking up. It remains, in theory, a supreme networking club for small
states to meet regularly with Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and
India.
Strikingly, Barbados stayed in the club in 2021 despite
ditching its monarch, and two nations which joined in 2022 — Gabon and Togo —
have no historic links to the U.K.
And this year the Commonwealth’s smaller members are
demanding more than just goodwill from their hosts.
Multiple Caribbean nations have used the run-up to the
summit to call for reparations from Britain for the legacy of slavery, with
Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis calling CHOGM the ideal forum to “make
progress.” Nations have been in talks about whether to reflect reparative
justice in their communique, to be finalized by leaders Saturday.
All three African leaders vying to be the Commonwealth’s new
secretary-general — a choice leaders will make Saturday — said last month the
issue should broadly be on the table. It is part of a “long history of using
Commonwealth summits as a forum to air broader grievances which often have
Britain involved,” said Harshan Kumarasingham.
No one really believes the U.K. will hand over reparations
worth alternatively £200 billion (according to one leading academic) or £18
trillion (per a United Nations judge). In truth the conversation is moving away
from calls for “pure” reparations and toward help combating wider issues like
climate change, which hits developing, small and island states hardest. The
issue is firmly on the agenda at CHOGM, alongside a declaration for a
“sustainable and resilient ocean.”
One of the three candidates for secretary-general, Ghana’s
Foreign Minister Shirley Botchwey, said last month: “We’ve all moved from
financial reparations … to what we can get out of in terms of our development,
in terms of our resilience building.”
U.K. Development Minister Anneliese Dodds pledged last week
to “accelerate” reform of development banks to help vulnerable states. | Leon
Neal/Getty Images
A No. 10 spokesperson insisted the U.K. does not pay
reparations and that the issue is simply “not on the agenda.” They said there
would be no apology for Britain’s role in slavery at CHOGM.
The fight
for relevance
The rows over reparations at least give the Commonwealth
some sort of relevance in the modern age.
Outcomes from these grand gatherings are otherwise
notoriously hard to pin down.
The vague-sounding theme of this year’s event, “One
Resilient Common Future: Transforming our Common Wealth,” will do little to
dissuade critics who paint CHOGM as a platitudinous talking shop of
increasingly disinterested members.
Indeed, the next iteration of the Commonwealth Games, a kind
of post-colonial Olympics, has already been dismissed as an albatross by the
Australian state of Victoria, which scrapped plans to host the sporting
championship in 2026. (Glasgow eventually picked up the baton.)
But some back in the U.K. still maintain a more positive
vision for the Commonwealth.
The grouping contains almost a third of the world’s
population, and aside from the United Nations is arguably the most diverse of
any group of states — by wealth, size, geography and religious make-up.
This diversity can help Britain “revive” ties with smaller
economies after Brexit, argued Kumarasingham. He added: “It is unquestionably a
product of empire, but at the same time, it is not another version of it.”
The Commonwealth is not a mere “talking shop,” said Samir
Puri, an associate fellow at the British foreign affairs think tank Chatham
House — but its strengths such as education programs are “niche” and “it never
fulfilled its promise of being a hard power bloc.”
The argument that the Commonwealth could become a focus for
future trade and investment once Britain left the EU was made repeatedly by
Brexiteers in 2016, and has now been adopted by the newish Labour government in
London. Starmer’s official spokesperson noted the delegations from 55 countries
represent “a combined market for British business that is worth $19.5 trillion
by 2027.”
But it’s hard to avoid a sense of the sun setting on the
remains of the British empire.
Earlier this month the U.K. announced a deal to return
sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, an Indian Ocean archipelago with a U.K. and
U.S. military base, to Commonwealth member Mauritius. While the Diego Garcia
base will remain under U.S./U.K. jurisdiction for at least 99 years, the
decision prompted Tory fury over China’s trade ties with Mauritius and military
muscle.
It’s not just Mauritius. Last year the Solomon Islands,
another Commonwealth member, signed a police cooperation deal with China. “The
Solomon Islands very obviously flipped to China and it caused massive panic for
the Australians and the Americans,” said Puri.
U.K. officials are aware of the need to keep smaller states,
many in Africa, from being too reliant on China. U.K. Development Minister
Anneliese Dodds pledged last week to “accelerate” reform of development banks
to help vulnerable states “escape the trap of unsustainable debt.” Puri added:
“That concern is really at the forefront of why the Commonwealth is a valuable
network for the U.K.”
Britain should seize the summit as a chance to shore up
relations with these nations — giving them alternatives to Chinese investment,
said former U.K. Trade Secretary Penny Mordaunt, who attended CHOGM in 2018.
She told POLITICO: “There are massive opportunities for all: for trade and
prosperity, for the climate challenges we all face, for security against and
autocratic regimes, including China. Vision and common cause is needed to
protect our collective interest over the long term.”
Yet all the candidates for secretary-general have said
firmly it is not the Commonwealth Secretariat’s job to help “contain” China.
Botchwey told a recent Chatham House debate: “It would be violating sovereignty
and poking its nose where it’s not needed.”
Starmer, arriving at this week’s Commonwealth summit with
several of his opposite numbers already lured away by Xi and Putin, will have
got the message.
Esther Webber contributed reporting.
CORRECTION: This article has been updated to clarify the
hosting arrangements of CHOGM.
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