Andrew Yong is a public lawyer who writes on citizenship points and is the director of World Britons, a campaigning physique for the rights of residual British nationals.
Final week Liz Truss, the International Secretary, reportedly mentioned that the UK should commerce extra with Commonwealth nations with a view to counter China’s “grave menace to our values and lifestyle”.
This comes on the again of profitable free commerce agreements signed with Australia and New Zealand in December and February, which expanded each financial and people-to-people ties with these two nations, growing mobility for younger folks and professionals wishing to stay and work abroad.
The Commonwealth has featured extra extremely within the nation’s consciousness this yr than it does in strange occasions, with Commonwealth flags being paraded in the course of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and the Prince of Wales opening each the Commonwealth Heads of Authorities Assembly in Rwanda and the present Commonwealth Video games in Birmingham.
But in all these public invocations of “the Commonwealth”, there lies a failure to differentiate between the formal affiliation, with its more and more eclectic and numerous mixture of members – a few of which, like latest admittees Gabon and Togo, haven’t any historic ties in any respect to the UK – and the smaller subset of nations, the Commonwealth Realms resembling Canada, Australia and New Zealand, who preserve shut constitutional hyperlinks by way of a shared monarchy.
The hazard of the latest expansions of Commonwealth membership to nations with no historical past of British administration is that membership turns into more and more meaningless and devoid of content material.
The Commonwealth at its inception was an affiliation of nations “united by a standard allegiance to the Crown”. However from the Nineteen Fifties, republics and indigenous monarchies have been permitted to turn out to be or stay as members. The Queen, whereas recognised because the Head of the Commonwealth, is now solely the pinnacle of state in 15 member states: the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, plus quite a few nations within the Caribbean and Pacific.
In November final yr, Barbados turned the newest Commonwealth realm to turn out to be a republic. Different Caribbean nations resembling Jamaica, the Bahamas, Belize and St Vincent and the Grenadines are reportedly taking a look at following go well with.
Whereas it could be debatable whether or not any these strikes could be attributed to Chinese language efforts to undermine Britain’s historic standing as a key accomplice of those Caribbean nations (as Tom Tugendhat, the chairman of the international affairs choose committee, has reportedly claimed), there could be little question that the UK has didn’t make full use of the coverage instruments which might be at its disposal to keep up and strengthen the financial and people-to-people ties that bind the Queen’s realms, whose continued existence contributes to the status of the British Crown.
Being a member of the Commonwealth has a number of advantages, resembling entry to the political, financial and technical help of Commonwealth conferences and establishments.
Commonwealth residents additionally get pleasure from specific benefits within the UK, resembling the suitable to vote and the power to serve within the Armed Forces. For the reason that 1960, nevertheless, many key advantages of membership resembling free motion and visa-free journey have fallen away, as is inevitable given the loosening of political and financial relations throughout the Commonwealth.
Nonetheless, the adjustments which have occurred over the many years have typically been utilized with none distinction between these nations which have and those who haven’t maintained constitutional ties to the British Crown. The abolition of Commonwealth free motion to the UK in 1962, for example, utilized as a lot to the inhabitants of realms resembling Australia and New Zealand as to these of republics resembling India and Pakistan.
At current, the UK fails utterly to supply any particular benefit or choice to these Commonwealth nations which have maintained hyperlinks to the British monarchy, apart from entry to the British honours system (ten Commonwealth nations nonetheless award the Order of the British Empire) and the occasional invitation to a royal marriage ceremony or funeral.
There’s little surprise that Britain’s fellow Commonwealth realms proceed to float away when there are not any advantages to membership.
One good thing about wider Commonwealth membership that was not too long ago withdrawn by the UK Authorities is the Commonwealth Working Holidaymakers’ scheme.
The scheme, which allowed younger Commonwealth residents between the ages of 17 and 30 to spend a two-year working vacation within the UK, was closed in 2008 and reopened as a collection of bilateral Youth Mobility preparations with a restricted variety of nations (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Monaco, San Marino, Iceland, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan).
Bilateral preparations could also be acceptable the place it’s essential to encourage reciprocity and to facilitate the motion of individuals with nations with an identical stage of financial improvement to the UK. One instance of that is the opening of digital passport gates to nationals of an identical group of developed nations in addition to the EEA. One other is the CANZUK proposal, which envisages the UK concluding reciprocal bilateral freedom of motion offers with Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
However the Authorities also needs to search for appropriate methods through which all of the nationals of the Queen’s realms (together with residual British nationals resembling British Nationals (Abroad) and British Abroad Residents) could be given preferential therapy over those that don’t share this distinctive constitutional relationship with the British Crown.
One such “good thing about membership” could possibly be a brand new Queen’s Scholarship (much like the one established within the colonial Far East in honour of Queen Victoria) which might be awarded to probably the most excellent of the Queen’s topics wishing to go to school within the UK. One other must be a brand new Platinum Jubilee Youth Mobility Scheme open to the younger folks of the entire Queen’s realms, alongside the traces of the defunct Commonwealth Working Holidaymakers’ scheme.
The UK has for too lengthy sought to seem detached to the destiny of the monarchy in different Commonwealth nations. This complacency ought to finish: we should now recognise that World Britain is enhanced and elevated by our shared world monarchy, and put within the acceptable sources to help it.
