Such an offer would guarantee stability for any Overseas Territory, allowing them to cement their permanent status within the UK
To mark the Platinum Jubilee, a competition has been launched to find the next place to be honoured with official city status. Thirty-nine bids have been received, from as far apart as Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes and Dunfermline. But three of the contenders are from even further afield: Gibraltar, Port Stanley in the Falklands, and George Town in the Cayman Islands.
The bids are a brilliant idea because, win or lose, they will force us to think about the future of all 14 of Britain’s Overseas Territories – tiny specks of land scattered around the world’s oceans, from Bermuda to Tristan da Cunha. Are they just a faintly embarrassing piece of post-imperial afterglow, to be remembered with a twinge of guilt every time there’s a hurricane, or a diplomatic spat with a passing warship? Or are they just as much part of the UK as all the other 36 bids for city status, and a huge asset for Global Britain’s international future too?
The answer is pretty obvious. They’re part of us, and we should be looking for ways to strengthen our ties instead of weakening them. Levelling-up could and should include them, just as much as any other part of the UK outside London and the South East. We’ve always been a global nation and we shouldn’t stop now.
But why limit it to city status? Why not offer the Overseas Territories the chance to become full UK nations if they want, like Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? They would each have a devolution settlement like Wales’s St David’s Day Agreement or Scotland’s Smith Commission, with a devolved government and Westminster MPs as well. Whether they accepted the opportunity would be up to them, and some might be perfectly happy to stay as they are. But there would be a powerful, generous, open-handed and warm-hearted offer on the table for any that did.
It wouldn’t just be generous, but stable, too. Any Overseas Territories that decided to take up the offer would cement their permanent status within the UK. We’d end any nagging uncertainties over where their long-term future might lie, or what Britain’s role should be every time there’s a problem. The new status would be fairer as well. By drawing a line under the empire and turning the Overseas Territories into equal parts of the UK, we would have created a modern, post-imperial future for these often-forgotten but important parts of greater Britain.
And it would make economic sense, because the Overseas Territories would get guaranteed free-trading access to the entire UK internal market and customs union forever. They would be able to sell everything from Caribbean bananas to Tristan da Cunha lobsters to us without fuss. For years, only Gibraltar had this when we were still in the EU, so there are valuable opportunities to level-up jobs and growth in the others.
Equally importantly, the rest of the UK would benefit from the new status. Making this offer would send a powerful, instant message to the rest of the world that post-Brexit Britain is reorienting itself as an international trading nation, strengthening far-flung links and creating fully domestic trading posts close to some of our most important trade partners. So let’s not stop at city status: we can and should go much, much further than that, by fanning a post-imperial afterglow into a roaring, modern flame.