The sight of Britain’s next king but one standing in a Land Rover wearing a white uniform festooned with regalia as he was driven around a parade ground was straight out of a colonial playbook.
And meeting islanders as they stood behind a barbed wire fence was hardly in tune with the spirit of equality we are told the Commonwealth now stands for. It seems that small countries that may previously have adopted a deferential approach towards their former colonial masters now want to throw off the last remaining shackles.
Jamaica wants to end the anachronistic arrangement under which the Queen has been its head of state while villagers in Belize forced the cancellation of a visit by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge following a row over indigenous rights. The Commonwealth was a strange institution from its outset.
It was based on the pretence that Britain had not been a colonial oppressor and that it was possible to make a smooth transition from the largest empire the world had ever known to a happy family of nations linked by association with a benevolent mother country that now…
