Our future is with the Commonwealth

The British government may have virtually ignored Commonwealth Day on Monday but UKIP didn't, nor did the rest of the Commonwealth.

UKIP's vision of the post-EU future includes a Commonwealth Free Trade Area which would give us access to lucrative markets in the Caribbean, the Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Africa and the world's second largest economy, India.  The LibLabCon vision of the future includes isolating ourselves from the rest of the world and staking our economic future on a group of failing economies.

UKIP even has a Commonwealth spokesman, Winston McKenzie, who wrote a Commonwealth Day piece for the UKIP website on why the Commonwealth still matters.  I first heard Winston talk about the Commonwealth at the leadership hustings last year and he passionately believes our future is in it.  Despite the LibLabCon's efforts over the years, we still do more trade with the Commonwealth than we do with their beloved EU (the official figures are deliberately falsified by the British government by counting exports sent to Rotterdam for onforwarding as exports to the EU).  Our future is with our friends in the Commonwealth who share our language, our values, our common history and legal system and above all, loyal friends who have stuck with us despite being marginalised and neglected in our name by our glorious leaders.

I would like to see UKIP put some meat on the bones of this Commonwealth Free Trade Agreement idea now. It's all well and good saying that it's worth billions but how many billions?  What sort of formal agreement do we need with the other Commonwealth nations to facilitate a Commonwealth Free Trade Agreement?  We don't want to free ourselves from the EU only to find ourselves in another increasingly political union.

Interestingly, I see that the subject of Ireland joining the Commonwealth has surfaced again.  Makes sense.