For decades, Whitehall has pondered how to make use of the Commonwealth, without tangible results. There was an expectation in some quarters that Brexit would increase its significance to the UK. But it was never clear why this would, in itself, suddenly transform an under-resourced and notoriously unfocused organisation into an effective vehicle for British interests.
Indeed, with the publication in March 2021 of its integrated review of defence and foreign policy, which barely even name-checked the Commonwealth, the British government finally seemed to have given up trying to solve that perennial riddle. And the UK is not alone in wondering whether there shouldn’t be a clearer instruction manual for this enigmatic survival from the imperial past.
How and why, then, does the Commonwealth survive? Perhaps the best answer is that the benefits of belonging to the organisation are now about identity rather than utility. Since the 1990s, it has attempted to reinvent itself as a body united by shared values rather than a shared history. These are values like respect for democracy, human rights and the rule of law enshrined in the 2013 Commonwealth Charter. So being a member is a sort of Kitemark of international respectability.
