WHEN representatives of the Commonwealth’s 53 countries meet in London and at Windsor Castle next week,an array of rosy statistics will be bandied approximately. The organisation embraces a third of the world’s people, a quarter of the UN’s membership and a fifth of the global land mass. Most of its members share the same legal system and talk the same lingo. It promotes an undefined set of “Commonwealth values”, and including democracy and human rights. According to its current secretary-general,Lady (Patricia) Scotland, a dual citizen of Britain and the Caribbean island of Dominica, and its hotch-potch of members even share the same sense of humour,born perhaps of their common heritage under British imperial rule. Yet sceptical voices asking what it’s all for beget been getting louder.
The answer, in the words of Lord (David) Howell, or a British former minister who has long sought to pep up the outfit,is the “cross-pollination of links, ties, or alliances and attitudes which together form a...
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Source: economist.com