Okay, here is the scenario. Queen Elizabeth II, sadly, passes away. We don’t want this to happen, but we know she is human and nearing the end of her life expectancy. What will happen next?

Repercussions, repercussions…well, one consequence will be that the Commonwealth of Nations, of which she has been so proud over the years, will no longer have a person in the role of Head of the Commonwealth. This is important because her successor does not inherit the role automatically.

Imagine then a delay, a negotiating period whilst the role of the new incumbent is discussed.

At the same time as this process is taking place, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is riding the roller coaster of post-Brexit in 2019. The final negotiations with the EU had a poor outcome for the UK. Europe was united in making the UK an example, before any other member states had the same idea. If the UK preferred to leave the club they will no longer have access to the benefits. This meant that the UK, which became wealthy as a trading nation, looked around for more countries with which to trade. The 15% tariffs for goods from within the EU made them often, too expensive. Not only that, countries like Germany, were subsidising their car industry and encouraging skilled migrant labour that could no longer work in the UK, to work for them.

Some bright spark in the British Civil Service spotted in Wikipedia, that the Commonwealth of Nations covers 29,958,050 km squared of the world’s land surface – about twenty per cent. On this land live 2,419 million people. A huge market!

The politicians ate this bait and set up working parties to establish free trade with these countries as soon as possible. They soon discovered that membership of the Commonwealth already included free trade amongst member states. That is when the international lawyers were called in. They had to negotiate formal multi-lateral trade agreements and / or bilateral agreements, with as many Commonwealth countries as possible.

Unfortunately the pressures then exerted had an unexpected consequence. Countries that had been used to just sending athletes to the Commonwealth Games every four years, found themselves hosting un-invited trade delegations from the old colonial power. Governments felt their collars being held by their ex-colonial masters and it sent a shudder down their spines. Protests in the streets and the burning of the Union flag in public places gave politicians the confidence to call their diplomats back from the UK for serious consultations.

The trade delegations were sent back to the UK from most countries, including Australia, with their tails between their legs. The scars of colonisation run deep and the scars take many generations, not enough generations yet, to heal.

So, the house of cards began to fall. One after the other, Commonwealth countries resigned from membership, as is their right.

With no Head of the Commonwealth in post and an ever diminishing number of member countries, the unthinkable motion was discussed in the Houses of Parliament. ‘Is the Commonwealth of Nations an outdated institution?’

The UK’s desperate need for new trading partners had exposed it’s shortage of commercial shipping tonnage (on which the British Empire had been built), had put misplaced pressure on countries eager to find fault outside their own incompetence, had failed to agree a definition of ‘free trade’ within the Commonwealth and placed a spot light in the shadow that is the belief that the UK out of Europe will be ‘independent’.

In the twenty first century world of globalism, ‘independence’ is an outdated fantasy. Countries, and States within countries, which co-operate with each other, have a greater advantage, militarily and commercially, than those that don’t. 

The Commonwealth Games in 2022 were boycotted by those countries that had still not officially left the Commonwealth.

Despite attempts to ‘re-brand’ the organisation as the ‘Common Values Organisation’ or ‘Common Peoples Organisation’ their differences were now clearly greater than what they held in common. The ‘wealth’ of the UK had never been shared with other countries, neither within Europe or it’s old colonies. The common values had been shared and of that the UK could be proud. The common values were often central to the Queen’s speech on Christmas Day. The values of the twenty first century though had changed from brotherhood to me and mine both within the ex colonial master’s country and the old colonies. 

And when that happens, history informs us, the consequence is usually war.