THE COMMONWEALTH A GLOBAL UNIFICATION BODY IN THE POST-BREXIT ERA

With Brexit now done in terms of initial paperwork, the details and machinery about what a post-Brexit Britain looks like are yet to be discerned. The picture remains unclear on how the United Kingdom will find its feet, notably in terms of trade. Leaving the most expansive and rich trading bloc on earth will come with its consequences. Options to limit such vulnerability have been suggested. There is, of course, the United States, ever the special partner. Then Commonwealth looms large, a body of states with ties to Britain rooted in colonisation and mixed post-colonial relations.

- DR. BINOY KAMPMARK

In a sense, both the United States and the Commonwealth have served as vehicles of nostalgia for British power. Great Britain lost the American colonies in the eighteenth century through revolution. “Oh God, it’s all over,” a pessimistic Prime Minister Lord North remarked in his diary at the time. But a second empire drawn from the countries that make the current Commonwealth would follow.

The Commonwealth as a form of economic opportunity, even salvation, has been revived, an idea wedged between the Second World War and Britain’s application to join the European Economic Community. In the immediate aftermath of the war, Britain’s Labour government was optimistic that the Commonwealth would have some role to play in keeping the country great. But policies diverged. South Africa’s apartheid policies rankled with Pakistan, India and various African states.