Today Is Commonwealth Day!

Today, March 13th, marks Commonwealth Day. When I was at primary school in the 1960s this was a great event - we would write letters in advance of the day to schools in Australia, NZ, Rhodesia, Canada, India, etc,etc,etc.... and we would receive their news by post as well.

Then we sold the Commonwealth out big time by joining what was then the Common Market, abandoning our traditional partners, causing economic problems for them, and leaving them to find their own way out of the mess. NZ in particular, with its vital sheep farming sector, lost its biggest market almost overnight, despite promises to the contrary.


I had always assumed that there would be no way back from that betrayal. I was wrong.

The British Commonwealth survived by re-inventing itself as the Commonwealth of Nations, always receiving the greatest attention from Queen Elizabeth II, whose enthusiasm for the Commonwealth has never diminished in the slightest.

Following the Brexit vote, the first countries to come knocking on the door of 10 Downing Street (figuratively, and in at least one case, literally) were the Commonwealth nations - the big ones!

52 countries, 2.2 billion people, almost all of them young and rapidly developing economies.

And as was once said of the British Empire - The Sun never sets on the Commonwealth!