The fading Commonwealth dream in post-Brexit Britain

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The fading Commonwealth dream in post-Brexit Britain

In-Photo: Indian performers attend London's New Year's Day Parade on Jan. 1. In modern Britain, the most visible Commonwealth contributions come from communities of South Asian, Caribbean and African descent. © Reuters

Originally published in Nikkei Asia

Five years on from Britain's formal exit from the European Union, the promises of Brexit feel more spectral than real. Touted as a way to "take back control" and rediscover Britain's place in the world, Brexit came wrapped in imperial memory -- invoking the Commonwealth as a cultural homecoming. Yet today, with net migration at historic highs, the Rwanda deportation policy renamed, and the return of Nigel Farage to frontline politics, the illusion of Commonwealth reconnection has collapsed. What remains is a troubling legacy, one where race, memory and misinformation were used to sell a vision of Britain that never truly existed.

In the 2016 referendum campaign, the "Leave" bloc painted a seductive picture: a Britain unshackled from Europe and realigned with its "true friends" -- Australia, New Zealand, Canada. Politicians and pundits dubbed it the "Old Commonwealth," casting these nations as culturally compatible, white-majority partners that shared British values. It was a narrative that filtered the Commonwealth through a colonial lens, selectively amplifying its whiteness while sidelining its diasporic realities.

The irony was hard to miss. In modern Britain, the most visible Commonwealth contributions come from communities of South Asian, Caribbean and African descent. According to the 2021 Census, 18.3% of the population in England and Wales identified as non-white -- up from 14% in 2011. Among them, over 5.5 million people identified with South Asian heritage, the vast majority tracing roots to former British colonies such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. These communities form the real Commonwealth presence in Britain -- multilingual, postcolonial and deeply woven into its urban fabric. But this reality was almost entirely erased from the campaign's storytelling.

One of the most symbolic attempts to appeal to non-white voters came through Priti Patel, then a rising figure in the Conservative Party. Patel launched the "Save the British Curry" campaign -- claiming that Brexit would ease restrictions on skilled chefs from South Asia and revive a struggling restaurant industry. "By voting to leave the EU," she argued in May 2016, "we can take back control of our immigration policies, save our curry houses and join the rest of the world."

It was, in hindsight, a masterclass in narrative misdirection. The story sounded inclusive, but the policy outcomes told another tale. Post-Brexit immigration reforms favored high-income applicants, tech workers and arrivals from white-majority countries. Commonwealth chefs and small business workers -- those supposedly championed by Patel -- continued to face prohibitive visa rules. In 2024, tightened family visa restrictions and rising visa costs disproportionately affected South Asian migrants, undermining the very communities once courted by the Leave campaign.

That dissonance -- between promise and policy, visibility and exclusion -- exposed a deeper truth.

The Commonwealth was never just a geopolitical entity in the campaign. It was a mythological device. It stood in for a version of Britain that felt powerful and pure, evoking empire without its consequences. By treating it as a symbol of global friendship, politicians obscured the structural inequalities that continue to shape migration and belonging in post-Brexit Britain.

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In-Photo: Priti Patel speaks at the U.K.'s Conservative Party's annual conference in Manchester on Oct. 2, 2023. © Reuters

Farage, the face of the campaign's populist edge, repeatedly claimed that Britain had more in common with "English-speaking India and Australia" than with European neighbors. Yet even this framing reduced India to a linguistic cousin, stripping it of its political complexity, diasporic struggles and colonial entanglements. Farage's vision has since traveled across borders -- echoed at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the United States, and inspiring right-wing movements elsewhere that use heritage and culture to mask anti-migrant sentiment.

The 2024 general election offered a brief reckoning. With the Conservative Party suffering major losses and Labour forming a new government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, questions of migration, identity and imperial nostalgia returned to the spotlight. Yet even under new leadership, structural reforms remain slow. The government's controversial Rwanda deportation scheme was scrapped, and a new Border Security Command was announced in its place. Meanwhile, Farage's reemergence with Reform UK and his inflammatory rhetoric continue to shape public discourse -- fueled by the very myths Brexit normalized.

According to the latest Migration Observatory report (2024), net migration to the U.K. hit a historic peak in 2023. This stands in sharp contrast to the Brexit-era vision of "controlled borders" and a Commonwealth-based migration system. Trade deals with countries like India have been announced with fanfare, but immigration pathways remain narrow and bureaucratic. The supposed reconnection with the Commonwealth has been, at best, symbolic. At worst, it has been a political smokescreen.

In this light, the Commonwealth was not merely referenced -- it was weaponized. It served as a narrative tool to reframe British identity along imperial lines, to signal inclusion while enacting exclusion. This is what soft misinformation looks like: not outright lies, but curated half-truths that manipulate public memory and distort reality.

If Brexit proved anything, it is that the most powerful tool in politics is not policy -- it is narrative. And the most dangerous narratives are those dressed in belonging. Today, five years on, Britain faces a reckoning: not just with its borders, but with the stories it still tells about who belongs within them.

This piece has been adapted from our immersive essay, part of Mudland Democracy Lab’s misinformation series: The Commonwealth Mirage: Race, Memory and Misinformation in the Brexit Campaign.

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