By James Robbins
In July 2025, there was a change of government in Britain, from Conservative to Labour. The Labour party’s landslide victory ended 14 years in the wilderness of opposition. But has the change made much difference to British foreign policy, particularly to other Commonwealth countries and their peoples?
As far as the Commonwealth is concerned, I suggest the answer is ‘No, not much’, and it was probably never going to do so. It is worth remembering that Britain is only one of 56 member nations, even if it is relatively both very powerful (as a nuclear weapons state with one of only five permanent ‘veto’ seats on the UN Security Council), very rich (still the sixth largest economy in the world due to Britain’s vast financial services sector, although the UK economy is slipping behind India), and a leading financial supporter of the Commonwealth Secretariat.
More than that, the Commonwealth does not get picked up as an issue on Britain’s political radar screens. There was only one mention of the Commonwealth in Labour’s election manifesto – the end of a laundry list of Britain’s memberships of international groupings, buried in a long chapter on foreign affairs. However, once in power, Labour has found the Commonwealth as an association occupying significant amounts of time and effort, not least, of course, because the Samoa heads of government meeting came less than four months after the election.
The fact that prime minister Sir Keir Starmer’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, appears to be a committed Commonwealth fan may also explain a substantially greater emphasis on the organisation than the previous Conservative government of Rishi Sunak, and a qualitatively different public approach (at least at the outset) to its Conservative (and coalition) predecessors since 2010.
So, in no particular order, there are some reasons to be cheerful:
First, here are extracts from David Lammy’s speech in September 2024 celebrating the 75th birthday of the modern Commonwealth:
A network which connects people around the world – athletes, artists, activists, authors. An organisation which I believe is vital to tackling the challenges before us today. And a family which I am very, very proud to call my own. This is personally a very, very special moment for me as foreign secretary. As many of you will know, my parents came to Britain from Guyana, as part of the Windrush generation.
But I share with them a keen awareness of my Commonwealth roots, a sense of belonging and solidarity with all members of the Commonwealth diaspora and the powerful optimism for what a multicultural society can be. And this spirit drives me as foreign secretary, as I seek to reconnect Britain with the world. A task in which I believe a revived, reinvigorated Commonwealth has a significant role to play. This belief reflects the fact that the world has changed radically in 75 years since the Commonwealth was born.
There is a far greater sense of personal commitment in this text than from any British foreign secretary I dealt with as a journalist – stretching back to the mid-1980s and Sir Geoffrey Howe (who was hobbled, of course, by Margaret Thatcher’s absolute hostility to Commonwealth sanctions against apartheid South Africa). So, an ambitious goal right there – reviving and reinvigorating the Commonwealth – and not necessarily an ambition the rest of the Commonwealth truly shares. But the Foreign Secretary radiated optimism. (This is one part of his job description, it is true.)
He went on: You could argue there have been three phases to our organisation’s history: an imperial phase under His Majesty George VI; a post-colonial phase under Her Majesty Elizabeth II and now, under His Majesty Charles III, we have entered a new multipolar phase.
I, for one, would question the apparent assertion there that the post-colonial phase is over, replaced by Lammy’s new ‘multi-polar phase’. This government’s effort to edge closer to decolonisation involved letting go of, finally, most of the Chagos Islands. The draft agreement with Mauritius, announced last October, would, if it is eventually ratified as a Treaty, be a small corrective to a very substantial wrong originally done to the Indian Ocean islanders by an earlier Labour government when they were evicted by force in the 1960s.
Britain insists the proposed deal actually strengthens the status of the vast Indian Ocean air base on Diego Garcia (nominally British, in practice American) which is vital to the ability of the United States to project power across a huge area and to counter, in particular, Chinese competition for regional dominance. The new Trump Presidency openly rejects this. Righting a wrong within the Commonwealth has proved very hard indeed.
At least, Labour must have been thankful to have announced something which then looked like a resolution just three weeks before Starmer and Lammy went to the Samoa CHOGM in October, where they met many fellow Commonwealth leaders for the first time.
A month earlier, Lammy had made clear the UK’s priorities for the Samoa meeting: these were boosting investment and economic growth, tackling climate change and increasing educational opportunities. He had also stressed, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Britain’s determination to resurrect a multi-lateral system substantially based on a ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ dialogue – so Britain was about as committed as it has ever been to one very obvious forum which personifies that potential dialogue – a Commonwealth heads of government meeting.
Labour can hardly be blamed for the absence of the heads from India and South Africa, which did at least serve to give Britain’s new prime minister, armed with a landslide election mandate, even greater prominence in Apia. At the Samoa summit, there were initiatives agreed in all three areas highlighted by Britain as its priorities.
This is not the place to assess the enduring qualities and likely results of the Commonwealth’s collective commitments in Samoa – not least the Ocean Charter and the increased focus on education, investment and intra-Commonwealth trade.
Samoa 2024 proves CHOGM’s continuing relevance
How fares the Commonwealth? Reflections in the light of the 2024 Samoa CHOGM
British diplomats are prone to draw comfort from modest achievements by talking of ‘movement in the right direction’. The UK’s Labour government certainly helped deliver that, alongside a very welcome and unusually wide-ranging commitment by British ministers, including by Lord Collins (the FCDO minister with a specific Commonwealth brief), to the wide range of civil society meetings which are arguably a far better advertisement for the soft power achievements of the Commonwealth than the inter-governmental sessions.
But there was one issue at Samoa which was always going to be very unwelcome to Britain: the call for reparations to be paid by the continuing beneficiaries of the Transatlantic slave trade to the descendants of the victims. That issue of historic wrongdoing remains a very long way from resolution. Ahead of Samoa, the official British line from Downing Street and the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, was that the UK would not pay reparations for slavery.
It’s more than awkward that when Britain outlawed slavery in 1833 compensation was paid by the government at Westminster – not to slaves, but to slave owners. Britain’s present-day stance seemed to provoke anger among other governments, particularly in the Caribbean but also more widely. In Apia the issue was discussed and at some length, with an agreement that ‘the time had come for dialogue’.
But the Labour government remains desperate to steer the conversation away from any question of financial restitution. Britain’s Treasury does not have enough money to rebuild broken public services at home without substantial tax increases, so even the slightest hint of possible extra money to be found in the future for the descendants of slaves or for countries deliberately kept poor by imperial Britain will be fiercely resisted. After all, once the discussion turns to money, the only question becomes: ‘How much?’ And ‘How much?’ would certainly end up being a lot.
James Robbins is the chair of the Round Table editorial board.
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