WHEN John Baird, the Canadian foreign minister, and William Hague, his British counterpart, announced in Ottawa on September 24th that they were formalising and expanding a deal to double up in some of their embassies, they presented it as a cost-cutting measure. Each of their governments is under pressure to trim spending. To share buildings and offer consular services to each other's nationals in countries where only one government has a mission is indeed a practical idea to save taxpayers" money, as Mr Hague said. Britain already offers Canada space in its embassy in Burma. Canada will return the favour in Haiti. But the deal also fits the political agenda of each government. In Canada the opposition scoffed at Mr Baird when he described it as a "small administrative agreement." It follows his decision to replace Canadian art with a large portrait of Queen Elizabeth in the foyer of his department. Stephen Harper's Conservative government has also opted to reinstate, after 44 years, the word "Royal" in the official names of the Canadian navy and air force. "Even nostalgia for the British empire has its limits," complained Thomas Mulcair, the leader of the New Democratic Party. He suggested Canada would be outsourcing its foreign policy to the former colonial power. However exaggerated, that claim may resonate with Canadians, who only gained control over their foreign relations in 1931, needed Britain's permission to change their constitution in 1982, and whose passports still bear an instruction to go to the nearest British consulate in an emergency in a country with no Canadian mission. In Britain, too, the choice of embassy-mate raised some eyebrows. After all, the country is a member (still) of the European Union, which has its own diplomatic service currently headed by a Briton. Britain already shares an embassy building with Germany in Iceland. The Canadian arrangement is a sop to Eurosceptic right-wingers in the Conservative Party, who tend to be keen on the Commonwealth, according to Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, a London think-tank. Shortly after Mr Hague was made foreign secretary in 2011, he pledged to "put the "C" back into FCO." He meant the Commonwealth. Mr Harper's government is keen on reviving the Commonwealth, too. But the difficulty for him is that many Canadians recall that before 1968, when the department changed its name, the C in what became Britain's FCO had long stood for Colonial.