Nobody does it better? The jeopardy facing British soft power.
Over the past century, Britain’s influence across the world has become increasingly reliant on soft power. Think the BBC World Service, the globe-trotting royals, our creative industries, the British Council.
But we are in danger of throwing our trump cards away.
While others, including Korea, France, China and Russia, are investing at unprecedented levels to build their global audience, the UK has been particularly careless in how it has looked after its greatest soft power assets.
The news cycle may suggest we still live in an age of hard power. But global communication means soft power has never been more important in creating a more peaceful, tolerant and generous planet.
Dictatorships recognise what we fail to - our soft power levers are a threat to their tyranny. That is why journalism is completely or partially blocked in 70% of the world, and we are seeing increasing barriers on exported films and television shows which don’t match governments’ sentiments.
Culture is also playing its part in changing other global dynamics. For example, the conversation around climate change is being driven by culture as well as science. Consider the global impact of David Attenborough’s ‘Blue Planet’ on the discussions over water pollution.
Britain seems to have forgotten what it once knew so well: when things get tricky, press the soft power button. Previous investments have come at moments of existential threat. The first overseas office of the British Council was opened in 1938, the World Service was founded in 1932.
In the period following the Second World War, cultural outputs were used as a geopolitical tool to reach out to countries where traditional diplomacy had failed, and to make a geopolitical statement in the fight against dictatorships.
For example, the British Council’s Soviet Relations Committee increased the number of British scholars, scientists and artists who visited the U.S.S.R. and reopened links with the bloc during the Cold War, implicitly demonstrating the joy of free expression. The United Nations provided guidelines for sporting and cultural sanctions against the South African apartheid regime in 1969, allowing the world to stand up to tyranny and underline global values without the need for hard hats.
But since the fall of the Berlin wall, much of the West has considered the soft power game won - believing, perhaps, that rising global exports of Western films, music, fashion, art and music were testament to growing international support for liberal democracy.
The UK has been among the most negligent in this regard.
My report on Britain’s soft power, published with UAL a few weeks ago, demonstrates that the UK remains a global leader in every sector of the creative industries (music, film, publishing, design etc.). Each is a bastion of soft power in its own right, but that enviable position is in real jeopardy as a result of lazy policymaking.
The evidence is compelling. Exports in many creative sub-sectors are down; fewer tourists are visiting our cultural organisations; fewer young people are engaging with our cultural exports. In short, the UK’s brand is diminishing.
What makes this so frustrating is that there has been no purposeful defunding of soft power initiatives. No minister has ever said publicly that culture is unimportant to Britain’s place in the world. This is a crisis of complacency.
Action has been replaced by lip service. There have been too many soft-power own goals: the inability to reach a deal on touring artists with the EU; the halting of the Tradeshow Access Programme which gave young creative companies access to fashion shows and book fairs; the chronic underfunding of the BBC World Service and the British Council.
There is no joined up thinking in Whitehall. The teams working on soft power are disempowered and underfunded.
Where we have exited the field, others have entered. China, for one, has publicly invested heavily in cultural approaches: Chinese Government-funded Confucius Institutes (which teach Chinese language and culture lessons to more than 1.5 million onsite students worldwide) now have a wider combined attendance than the Alliance Francaise, the British Council and the Instituto Cervantes.
We may now be experiencing the geopolitical implications of our inattention. While the invasion of Ukraine demonstrated the importance of military defence, the wavering support for the West’s condemnation of the invasion by some African countries revealed a deeper set of dynamic shifts based on soft power approaches.
Fortunately, our smartest allies are also embracing a soft power approach. This can take many forms: Korean popular music (K Pop) stars have been part of delegations attending summits between North and South Korean leaders, demonstrating the power of freedom of expression to those imposing tyranny on their people; the French President Macron has used soft power as an economic vehicle, reasserting Paris’s place as the fashion centre of the world by inviting the world’s biggest influencers to a starry event at the Élysée Palace during Paris Fashion Week three times over his tenure.
It is not too late for Britain. We start from a position of strength but we must act now. Soft power is hard won and easy to lose.
That’s why I partnered with University of Arts London to write a paper and accompanying policy playbook which sets out a plan to turn things around. A bit of money is needed, but it's more about prioritisation than funding. The implications of how we proceed will have significant consequences for the UK’s place in the world.
With thanks to Edinburgh International Festival for providing the image used to promote this blog post on the main page.
Usher Hall © Mihaela Bodlovic
