Will Not Support Sri Lanka Boycott
Prime Minister David Cameron will be going to the Commonwealth summit in Sri Lanka to back a Windsor family lobbying effort despite calls for him to join a boycott of the summit host country.
The summit will be the first attended by Charles Windsor in place of his mother Elizabeth who is head of the Commonwealth. The Windsors are lobbying for Charles to take over as head when his mother dies. According to press reports they are keen for Cameron to hold his hand and bolster the Windsor wish for an effectively hereditary Commonwealth head.
Several countries, including India and Canada, will not be sending their heads of government to the summit in protest against alleged human rights violations by the government of Sri Lanka.
Richard Ottaway, who chairs the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told the Financial Times that it was important for Cameron to attend to advise Windsor on Commonwealth matters. According to that newspaper Cameron is juggling “concerns over human rights with sensitive negotiations over Prince Charles’ role as the head of the Commonwealth”. He was, it said, “trying to balance several other competing concerns, not least of which is the importance Clarence House (i.e. the Windsor clan) is placing on the meeting”.
So in Britain’s version of democracy the interests of a family and of feudal privilege are given as much weight as issues of human rights and the country’s good name.
The head of the Commonwealth is chosen by the 53 leaders of Commonwealth member states. The majority of those states are republics. But they are to be asked to shame their countries and the notion of a commonwealth by accepting hereditary right. The first English Commonwealth was a republic established following the abolition of the country’s monarchy in the seventeenth century.