The change of monarch comes at an auspicious time for the Commonwealth, like a number of countries— including Jamaica and Australia—had already made moves to remove the Queen as head of state and those calls are only likely to grow now she is being succeeded by her less popular son. Barbados has already transitioned to a parliamentary republic in 2021, paving the way for other Caribbean countries to follow suit. like protests that greeted Prince William and his wife, Kate, on their tour of the region showed that republican sentiment is very much on the rise in the once-trustworthy British West Indies. Meanwhile, most of the British public have only a vague idea of what the Commonwealth actually is. In the past, polls have shown that one in five Britons could not name a single Commonwealth country when asked. Not Jamaica, not India, not Australia.
For a certain group of the British population, the loss of the Commonwealth sounds like good news. Politicians such as Enoch Powell called for Britain to sever ties with former colonies after independence and not engage with the Commonwealth system that followed. To them, the Commonwealth was a sham, a way for the colonies to continue to ride on the coattails of the motherland without due respect. This attitude, of course, overlooks the great material benefits which Britain has derived from them. In 2002, Boris Johnson wrote about Africa, arguing that “the problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are no longer in charge”. This quote came back to haunt him when he later became prime minister and sought to establish trade relations with countries in the region with which Britain had “historical links”. Johnson expressed a desire to turn the Commonwealth from a “big family of nations into a free trade area” after Brexit.
Perhaps, like the government officials who dubbed the plan for Britain’s role in the post-Brexit world “Empire 2.0”, Johnson forgot that for many Commonwealth countries the Commonwealth might not have the same romantic evocations of the nineteenth century as it did for him. . This is a lesson that may be in store for the new king too, if he expects his tenure in the Commonwealth to be as smooth as that of his predecessors.
