For the next few months, with the exception of the Brexit negotiations, Britain will be engaging in an act of introspection unprecedented in most of our lifetimes. The world will have to wait.
For years in Britain the idea of the Commonwealth looked marginal at best, eccentric at worst. It was some sort of national consolation prize for having lost the British Empire; it gave the Queen something to do; it reminded us Brits that we were an old country with, to put it mildly, an interesting past.
To those of us who have followed David Cameron’s political career since it was in the womb, his sudden decision last week to leave politics altogether (he resigned as an MP, having said after resigning as prime minister that he would stay on the backbenches for the indefinite future) came as no surprise.
I first encountered Mr Cameron a quarter of a century ago, when he was special adviser to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont, during Britain’s ill-fated membership of the exchan
In 1966, Britain's Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, appointed George Brown as foreign secretary. Brown was a problem for Wilson; he was a senior figure in the party and popular with its rank and file, but he was also inept as a minister – he was sent to the Foreign Office to stop him damaging the economy as secretary of state for economic affairs.