In 2009, Gordon Brown, then Prime Minister, used the United Kingdom’s (UK) chairing of the Group of 20 (G20) to contain the damage of the global financial recession. In 2027, His Majesty’s (HM) Government under Andy Burnham, Prime Minister, may need to save the G20 and the very concept of consensus-based multilateralism itself.
The challenges to the G20 and the principle of consensus-based multilateralism have increasingly come from the United States (US) under the second presidency of Donald Trump. While the second Trump administration has not abandoned multilateralism, it has expressed disdain for traditional multilateral structures like the G20, and boycotted the 2025 summit in South Africa. Even though these bodies leaned towards American preferences historically, Washington still had to build consensus to achieve its desired outcomes.
In contrast, the second Trump administration places an emphasis on deals running through Washington, resorting to coercive methods such as tariffs when its demands are rebuffed. The US’ pivot to protectionist great power politics has risked turning the G20 into more of a ‘talking shop’ of the type that Washington berates such groupings for being, putting the UK in the unenviable position of reinvigorating the group as its incoming president.
Meanwhile, the clock is already running on outlining Britain’s G20 presidency in 2027. As presidencies are shaped at least a year in advance, the Burnham administration has inherited the G20 plans laid out by its predecessor, including the hosting of the summit in Manchester. As such, HM Government should take the initiative in reshaping the UK’s G20 agenda.
The ‘C7’: Why the Commonwealth should matter to the G20
Britain’s accession to the G20 presidency while the group is at its lowest ebb also means inheriting the most room to redefine it. The Commonwealth of Nations is one of the best-placed platforms to restore the G20 to working order and build a coalition both within and outside the group.
To that end, the UK should propose a steering group of seven Commonwealth members – the ‘C7’ – comprising Britain, Australia, Canada, Ghana, India, Singapore, and South Africa, formally supported by the Commonwealth Secretariat. This group would act as a caucus that pre-negotiates common policy positions and injects them simultaneously into the G20, the Commonwealth, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the African Union (AU).
Why these seven Commonwealth countries, two of which are not even full G20 members? The composition reflects a rare alignment in 2027, as three of the world’s most important multilateral bodies will be chaired by Commonwealth members: Britain at the G20, Singapore at ASEAN, and Ghana at the AU. Singapore and Ghana will therefore attend G20 meetings alongside the five Commonwealth members already at the table. Such an alignment across the G20, ASEAN, and the AU will not reoccur for decades.
Beyond their membership credentials, some countries have experience and diplomatic weight that would benefit the group further. India and South Africa chaired the G20 in 2023 and 2025 respectively, and have recent institutional memory of running it. Australia and Canada bring the weight of advanced economies and more geographic diversity to the C7.
A provisional agenda for the C7 should be concrete and proactive, starting with topics like critical minerals and supply chain resilience, climate action, and sovereign debt. Mineral-rich members like Australia, Canada, and South Africa could help the rest of the C7 and the wider Commonwealth break the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) monopoly on the critical minerals needed for green technology. Additionally, the Commonwealth’s mix of wealthy lender nations and developing borrower nations, including small island states, could make it an even-handed referee regarding global climate funding. It could work similarly to speed up slow international debt-relief systems like the G20’s Common Framework, especially since the UK holds unique legal leverage over bonds in some African countries.
Within the C7, the Commonwealth Secretariat should function as a convenor, partly because of its oversight of the Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub (CCFAH) and its debt management programme. Furthermore, Shirley Botchwey, the Secretariat’s Secretary-General, is Ghana’s former foreign minister, which deepens the group’s link to the AU 2027 chairing.
The C7 would effectively borrow an institution with a mandate, a budget, a convening authority, and a biennial summit cycle instead of building one from scratch. Accordingly, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Antigua and Barbuda this November is where Britain could – and should – raise the prospect of forming the C7.
Objections to the C7
One expected grievance with such an idea is that the Commonwealth is a relic from the UK’s colonial past, and a minilateral like the C7 would merely be an attempt to create a ‘British Empire 2.0’. However, the C7’s centre of gravity would be closer to the so-called ‘Global South’, as four of its seven members are African or Asian, with India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) even overtaking the UK’s in 2022.
The C7 would likewise give India and South Africa a standing platform to promote developing countries’ priorities in a G20 presidency other than their own, and to link them directly to the activities of ASEAN via Singapore and the AU via Ghana. Like the Commonwealth, the C7 would be a convening of equals who share legal systems, language, and institutional habits with which to ease cooperation. The Commonwealth may be a product of the British Empire, but it has long since evolved beyond that.
The second challenge to the C7 is that minilateral groups proliferate and die, and the C7 may have an in-built expiration date given that Singapore and Ghana would lose access to the G20 in 2028. Nevertheless, compared to other minilateral groups like the Democratic 10 (D10), the C7 is anchored to both the Commonwealth Secretariat and the G20. Due to its reliance on existing machinery rather than new institutions, the C7 has a potential life beyond the UK’s G20 presidency. Moreover, its relatively small size and nature as an ad hoc policy platform means that it can trial more agile and experimental policy initiatives without the bureaucratic inertia of larger global blocs.
The third (and perhaps most reasonable) criticism is directly tied to the C7’s convening of states with wide-ranging strategic objectives. Britain, Canada, and Australia are members of overlapping US-led security structures. Meanwhile, India and South Africa are both members of the US-sceptical BRICS grouping. However, whereas India pursues a realpolitik-informed multi-alignment strategy by concurrently remaining an active member of the US-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) alongside Australia and Japan, South Africa prefers a values-based foreign policy of non-alignment.
Singapore and Ghana effectively avoid membership in strategic blocs altogether, while pursuing leadership roles in their respective regional intergovernmental groups. Singapore carefully hedges between American and Chinese interests as an active ASEAN member, while Ghana follows its own multi-alignment strategy, hinged on both security and developmental interests, primarily within AU channels.
On the surface, such a varied caucus would struggle to agree on anything, let alone act as a catalyst for policy coordination across four multilateral forums. Yet, the C7 would not be designed to function as the steering committee for a military alliance, nor be centred on any shared grand strategic vision. Its remit would be the reinvigoration of multilateralism and economic statecraft with a development dimension, which all members agree on in principle.
Where the D10 faltered not least because of the required ideological alignment of its members, the C7 asks for comparatively less, and can therefore deliver more. Indeed, the divergence is its primary strength, as it enables each of its members to strengthen their own influence with the G20, Commonwealth, ASEAN, and AU.
Conclusion
The window for action grows increasingly narrow. If HM Government does not outline a plan soon, Britain’s presidency risks defaulting to a communiqué that few will read and a family photo that nobody remembers. For the 2027 G20 summit in Manchester to avoid this fate, the UK’s G20 team should open discussions with the other prospective C7 members and the Commonwealth Secretariat at the CHOGM this November. Should this be done, the 2027 Manchester summit could join its 2009 London counterpart on the shortlist of consequential moments in the G20’s history.
Francis Shin is a joint PhD candidate in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore, specialising in geoeconomic conflict and multilateral governance.
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