Bermuda has spent the past few months debating full membership of the Caribbean Community. It’s been a generally unsatisfactory debate, in large part because the terms have been vague and at cross-purposes. For a large proportion of the population, the debate has been a binary one: should Bermuda become a full member or not?

For the Government, that decision has already been made, although it has no electoral mandate for it. But the purpose of the Green Paper was purportedly to discuss what form of full membership Bermuda should take, not the decision itself.

This has caused confusion and has muddied the debate, which may, consciously or not, have been the Government’s intent all along. Indeed, the public meetings spearheaded by Alexa Lightbourne, the home affairs minister, have failed to persuade, largely because they have been so one-sided.

Despite that, a debate of sorts has been had, and it is worth attempting to see what it has achieved and whether, in fact, Bermuda should become a full member or not. There is a second issue of what mechanism should be used to make that decision.

It’s fair to say that many people will have an instinctive position on the issue. It is also fair to say that almost everyone, at some level, has an instinctive desire to belong to a larger community. What and who those communities are is driven by a complex mix of upbringing, political viewpoints, ancestry, cultural biases, economic self-interest and more.

Because race is a subtext for most things in Bermuda, it is also obvious that people of African descent are more likely to feel a sense of kinship with the Afro-Caribbean while people of European descent are less likely. This does not mean there aren’t Black Bermudians who have no interest in joining Caricom and vice versa, but as a rule of thumb it is important to acknowledge it, and to acknowledge that these feelings are not necessarily based on facts, but more on “vibes”.

These feelings should not be discounted. They are real and genuine, and have a place in the discussion. But they are not the only factor. In the end, the Government and the population need to make a decision based on what is in the island’s national interest, and this should supersede other feelings without discounting them.

What needs to be decided is whether full membership confers advantages for Bermuda that it does not have already as an associate member. There’s a secondary question of whether such advantages are worth the Government spending more than $2 million a year for the privilege.

Reasons for joining Caricom can broadly be divided into three areas — freedom of trade, freedom of movement and labour, and the advantages of being part of a larger political bloc.

Freedom of trade is often the basis for economic growth. Customs unions eliminate tariffs between different countries to enable frictionless trade, lower prices and, theoretically, help them to concentrate on their strengths. For example, Germany has been one of the world’s leading carmakers while Italy is superb at making luxury goods. Under this scenario, each country can focus on what it is good at and sell them to each other.

For Bermuda and Caricom, there are several problems with this. One is that Bermuda depends heavily on customs duties for public income. While the corporate income tax might eliminate the need for tariffs, this is unlikely in the short and medium term. Thus Bermuda is not well placed to be part of a customs union.

The second is the question of what Bermuda would trade. Bermuda makes almost nothing and its economy runs on services, none of which fall easily into a customs union. It is true that some Bermuda companies — including Butterfield Bank which just announced it will dramatically expand its Caribbean footprint — have business operations in the region, but membership of Caricom seems to make no difference to whether Bermuda service businesses can extend their reach.

For the most part, Caricom countries are not manufacturing hubs, meaning most of the goods Bermuda needs to import do not come from the region. Some members are agricultural producers, but there are no clearly defined trading routes to bring food to Bermuda, and there are questions of whether Caricom members could compete with powerful North American agribusinesses.

On freedom of movement, it’s been argued that Caricom nationals working in areas where Bermuda has employee shortages could fill the gap. But the Government had made clear it has no plans to adjust the existing work=permit policy and it must be assumed that the same rules — that qualified Bermudians must have the right to apply for jobs first — would still stand. Thus there seems to be no benefit or change available here.

The third area — the benefit that Bermuda might derive from being part of a regional bloc — seems to have more weight. It has been argued that Caricom’s lobbying over fees that were going to be charged on Chinese-built ships helped to change the policy for small islands such as Bermuda. That may be so, and it is impossible to know if things would have been different without Caricom.

However, on a wider sphere, it is difficult to say whether Caricom has much of a voice in world affairs, or that it can speak with one voice, as the recent attack on Venezuela showed. Further, as long as Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory, the UK has maintained the right to determine Bermuda’s foreign policy and to prevent Bermuda from joining foreign affairs initiatives which do not align with Britain’s.

Regardless of the merits of full membership of Caricom, the reality is that the Progressive Labour Party does not have a mandate to take this step because it was not included in its last election platform. Thus it should not pursue a significant constitutional step without either going back to the polls or allowing a referendum to take place on this issue.

This newspaper has reservations about the widespread use of referendums because it believes in the importance of representative government. Nonetheless, those who support a referendum have a valid point in this instance where the Government has no mandate.

While the Government can argue that Caricom membership would strengthen cultural ties with the region, it has also been shown that this can be done now, without full membership.

In all, the Government has failed to show how full membership of Caricom would improve Bermudians’ lives. If it truly believes Bermuda should attain full membership, it should go to the people, by way of the polls, and test the argument in the crucible of a general election campaign.