King Charles III is welcomed in Samoa.
Photo: Getty Images
This week King Charles III will preside over a summit of 55 nations associated with the fraying ends of the British empire. Hosted by Samoa, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), a biennial gathering of state leaders, will also be attended by his Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
But a glance at this year’s guest list highlights how the British monarch’s convening power is not what it was. As a symbol of the decline of British power, it could hardly be more stark, notes POLITICO.
Indian PM Narendra Modi and South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, two of the most powerful Commonwealth heads of government who would normally be in attendance, both plan to skip this year’s summit in favor of BRICS — a separate gathering of major developing nations hosted by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in Kazan, where Chinese President Xi Jinping is also in attendance.
Sri Lanka, which is applying to join BRICS this week, is sending neither its prime minister nor foreign minister to Samoa, an official at the High Commission in London said.
Not even Canada, a close ally of the U.K. and fellow member of the powerful “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing network, will send its prime minister or foreign minister to CHOGM. The head of its delegation will be Ottawa’s high commissioner to the U.K, a Canadian official confirmed.
Even Starmer’s own trip — his first to Britain’s former colonies in the southern hemisphere — has been cut short. A U.K. government official confirmed the PM had scrapped plans to add in a stop in Australia, as aides feared it would keep him abroad for too long ahead of a pivotal government spending package being unveiled in London next week.
75-year-old King Charles, who — while still recovering from cancer — did at least make it to Australia ahead of this week’s summit.
Charles, officially the head of the Commonwealth, remains the king of 14 nations aside from the U.K.
But here too the direction of travel appears less than promising for Britain’s soft power. Barbados became a republic in 2021; Jamaica plans to follow suit next year.
The debate erupted again Monday when an indigenous senator heckled Charles in Australia, repeatedly shouting “not my king” and demanding: “Give us what you stole from us — our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people.”
For now, most realms’ ambitions to become a republic are “often discussed but seldom actioned,” said Harshan Kumarasingham, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.
Australia shelved a vote earlier this year, despite much chatter during the king’s visit and republicans selling merchandise branding the trip Charles’s “farewell tour.” A recent NewsCorp poll found only 33 percent of Australians wanted to live in a republic.
The Commonwealth itself, formed 75 years ago, remains, in theory, a supreme networking club for small states to meet regularly with Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India.
And this year the Commonwealth’s smaller members are demanding more than just goodwill from their hosts.
Multiple Caribbean nations have used the run-up to the summit to call for reparations from Britain for the legacy of slavery, with Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis calling CHOGM the ideal forum to “make progress.” Nations have been in talks about whether to reflect reparative justice in their communique, to be finalized by leaders Saturday.
No one really believes the U.K. will hand over reparations worth alternatively £200 billion (according to one leading academic) or £18 trillion (per a United Nations judge). In truth the conversation is moving away from calls for “pure” reparations and toward help combating wider issues like climate change, which hits developing, small and island states hardest. The issue is firmly on the agenda at CHOGM, alongside a declaration for a “sustainable and resilient ocean.”
One of the three candidates for secretary-general, Ghana’s Foreign Minister Shirley Botchwey, said last month: “We’ve all moved from financial reparations… to what we can get out of in terms of our development, in terms of our resilience building.”
The rows over reparations at least give the Commonwealth some sort of relevance in the modern age.
Outcomes from these grand gatherings are otherwise notoriously hard to pin down.
But it’s hard to avoid a sense of the sun setting on the remains of the British empire.
Earlier this month the U.K. announced a deal to return sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, an Indian Ocean archipelago with a U.K. and U.S. military base, to Commonwealth member Mauritius. While the Diego Garcia base will remain under U.S./U.K. jurisdiction for at least 99 years, the decision prompted Tory fury over China’s trade ties with Mauritius and military muscle.
It’s not just Mauritius. Last year the Solomon Islands, another Commonwealth member, signed a police cooperation deal with China.
U.K. officials are aware of the need to keep smaller states, many in Africa, from being too reliant on China.
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