A remarkable amount has been said and written ? perhaps too much ? in the days since Ronald Reagan?s death.

And at first, it may seem presumptuous or unnecessary for Bermuda to add to that flow of verbiage.

But Ronald Reagan did touch Bermuda in several ways, both though his ideas and in more practical ways, and it would be wrong to ignore his passing.

Perhaps the most important and long-lasting event to happen to Bermuda during the Reagan years was the passage of the US-Bermuda Tax Convention, which laid the groundwork for the explosion of international business in the last 15 years.

The agreement put Bermuda back on an even footing with Barbados ? a decision which led directly to XL Capital moving its headquarters from Bridgetown to Hamilton ? after that country had signed a tax treaty.

It also restored income tax benefits for Americans coming to Bermuda for conventions, a vital support for the tourism industry and set up exchange of information agreements with the US that have since saved the Island from being formally designated as a tax haven by the OECD.

Although the convention was finally ratified when President George H.W. Bush was in office, most of the negotiations were done during the Reagan Administration with the support of Reagan-era officials and the Reagan White House.

There are a lot of countries that would like to have Bermuda?s problems with ?over-development?. Without Reagan, Bermuda could be looking at a very different and much more complex set of challenges.

One of the major reasons for the passage of the tax convention was the importance that the US placed on the US bases in Bermuda. Reagan built up the US military in an arms race which eventually forced the Soviet Union to throw in the towel. Bermuda played a role in that and when the Berlin Wall came down, Bermuda?s peace dividend was the Baselands, a vast windfall which has yet to be fully exploited.

Nonetheless, the expansion of Bermuda?s landmass by ten percent will have ramifications for generations to come.

The other event of some significance for Bermuda was the invasion of Grenada following the murder of Maurice Bishop. While this was a fairly controversial act at the time, few today ? not least most Grenadians ? would disagree with the validity of US invasion.

For small island nations and their friends abroad, there was some comfort to be had in the knowledge that the US would act when democracy was threatened.

Finally, Reagan, along with Margaret Thatcher, changed the conventional wisdom of politics in ways which are still felt today. The Associated Press said in an analysis this week: ?Ronald Reagan told Americans that government was the problem. They haven?t been quite the same since.?

It?s not just Americans. Reagan demolished the Western consensus that had led to the creation of the welfare state and swung the ideological pendulum back towards empowering the individual to succeed based on his or her merits.

Today, the world has generally accepted much of what was considered to be radical when Reagan took office. Big government and high taxes are mostly a thing of the past. There is general support for free markets and free enterprise. Trade unions that could once dictate to governments have seen their power reduced.

Certainly there is an acceptance that the pendulum can swing too far to the right, as the corporate scandals of recent years have shown. And too many people fell into homelessness and poverty as Reagan slashed welfare programmes.

But Reagan?s influence on parties of the left has been as profound as it was on the right. Just as the Democrats in the US and the Labour Party in the UK were forced to come to the centre to have any hope of regaining power, so the Progressive Labour Party in Bermuda had to come to the middle to win victory in 1998.

Former Premier Sir John Swan had much to do with that ? but the influence of Reagan and the changing political ground around the world contributed to change in Bermuda too.