Harry and Meghan are right about the Commonwealth – it symbolises Britain’s preoccupation with Empire

The Commonwealth seems like an organisation expertly designed to produce inertia, and yet it could be leading the debate about how the history of imperialism continues to shape international and domestic affairs

As a general rule of thumb, developments in the Commonwealth are only judged newsworthy if they have a royal angle. When, therefore, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle suggested last week that the organisation could usefully do some soul-searching about its own imperial origins, they were hardly the first people to have formulated that thought. Yet their remarks hit the front pages of a number of papers, and were met, predictably enough, by real or confected howls of outrage.

Speaking to an online forum of the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust (QCT), of which Harry and Meghan are respectively president and vice-president, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had gently roused the Commonwealth’s resident "elephant in the room" from its slumber. According to Harry, “When you look across the Commonwealth, there is no way that we can move forward unless we acknowledge the past… and guess what, everybody benefits.” Meghan added, “We’re going to have to be a little uncomfortable right now, because it’s only in pushing through that discomfort that we get to the other side of this and find the place where a high tide raises all ships.” The touchy-feely language only exacerbated the fury of those culture warriors who delight in identifying examples of "political correctness gone mad".

The central, and rather patronising criticism that has been levelled at Harry and Meghan is that they have simply mistaken the Commonwealth for the British Empire. The former is an entirely voluntary association of 54 member states including two (Mozambique and Rwanda) with no historical link to the UK. The Commonwealth likes to date its origin to 1949 when India was allowed to remain a member as a republic.

From the 1960s, its agenda was led by the interests of dozens of newly independent states across the developing world, and it has an admirable record of embracing progressive causes, most notably the struggle against Apartheid. As such, the Daily Telegraph was able to come up with the headline "Commonwealth has no “dirty secrets” says Oxford professor", citing Nigel Biggar, Regius professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, and current go-to person for quotes of this kind.

But that’s hardly the whole story. For many observers, particularly those outside the UK, the Commonwealth symbolises Britain’s failure to come to terms with the loss of Empire. Undoubtedly, the idea of a seamless and painless transition from the latter to the former helped to make the waning of imperial power more palatable to some British policymakers. And the fantasies of some Brexiteers that the Commonwealth might fill the place of the EU as an alternative focus for a new "Global Britain" has provided further ammunition for those who see the organisation as a symptom of "Imperial nostalgia". It has sometimes seemed that India, the Commonwealth’s largest and most populous state, has remained a member largely to humour the UK, just as one might an elderly relative who lives entirely in a world of their memories.

Too often, the Commonwealth has seemed to be in denial about its past, preferring to see itself as an organisation united by shared values rather than by historical accident. Yet a shared history creates its own sense of mutual obligation. The fact that the Commonwealth fought to bring majority rule to South Africa even after it left the organisation in 1961 was a mark of that sense of fraternal duty to another colonised state. And for precisely the same reason, the Commonwealth needs to support those struggling for justice and democracy in Zimbabwe, despite the fact that Robert Mugabe withdrew it from the organisation in 2003.

More importantly, since South Africa achieved majority rule in 1994, the Commonwealth has searched in vain for an issue which would animate it with the same energy and passion. It seems to want to make declarations about every issue except the legacies of Empire, despite the fact that most of its chosen causes, such as the climate crisis and the pollution of the oceans, are not specific to its member states, and the Commonwealth does not provide an obvious framework for finding solutions. Yet the experience of Empire is something all member states share in one way or another. As such, the Commonwealth has an obvious comparative advantage in terms of leading a debate about how the history of imperialism continues to shape international and domestic affairs.

At the moment, the Commonwealth seems like an organisation expertly designed to produce pure inertia. It is pulled in too many different directions by the competing interests and ambitions of its member states, and, as a consequence, it goes nowhere. And precisely because it arose from the ashes of the British empire, it lacks the moral authority to condemn threats to democracy and human rights from its member states. When in 2013, Gambia’s then autocratic ruler, president Yahya Jammeh, faced criticism, he simply withdrew his country from the Commonwealth labelling it an "extension of colonialism".

Only by having an honest and open discussion about the imperial past, one in which Britain plays a full part, can the Commonwealth seek to exorcise the ghost of neo-colonialism. And only then will it genuinely be able to claim to be a values-based organisation.

In the process, it will also be able to draw on the energy of those who have been mobilised by the Black Lives Matter protests, many of them young people. It desperately needs their passion and enthusiasm.

Philip Murphy is director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies