In his article ‘A Royal Salute to the Commonwealth’, Peter Oborne references Lord Lothian’s pamphlet, ‘Farewell to Drift’, published in October 2010: ‘There is also no reason why the Commonwealth should continue to be based in London, home of the Commonwealth Secretariat. Last year the Marquis of Lothian, a former Conservative Party chairman and shadow foreign secretary, made a radical proposal: “Britain should accept that centring the Commonwealth in London leaves it open to accusations of carrying the shades of empire. It should be re-based in India, which itself has the potential to become a powerful inner core of a living network of relations that cross continents and have unparalleled global reach. Lord Lothian’s suggestion opens up an alternative vision of a future British foreign policy. We would no longer be tied so closely into Washington and Brussels, two connections that have served us so badly over the past two decades. We could look instead to a wider world, and indeed a Commonwealth based in democratic Delhi could prove an important counterbalance to the stealthy rise of totalitarian China, as it seeks stealthily to build its regional influence in the Far East through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.”
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