Britain’s Crippling Addiction to ‘Soft Power’
As someone who could be described as a “journalist,” I spend a significant chunk of my day doom-scrolling through X (The Everything App). This morning, one of what was formerly known as a tweet came across my timeline that at first I thought was a parody from one of my mutuals. Alas not.
Sky’s Mark Kleinman revealed to the world that a number of important people, who I frankly had never heard of, were set to join the government’s new “Soft Power Council,” to be chaired by Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy. You couldn’t make it up.
Apparently, the council’s launch is concurrent with a new “soft power inquiry” from the Foreign Affairs Committee, currently headed by the former Shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry.
“The UK is a world leader when it comes to soft power, punching well above our weight,” Thornberry said in a statement published earlier this month. “The UK is largely seen as a force for good, and a fair and balanced voice on the world stage. Many of our artistic and cultural institutions are well-loved and widely recognised. The British values of liberalism, tolerance and respect for the rule of law are emulated across the world,” Thornberry added, claiming that the UK was a “soft power superpower.”
Frankly, I’ve never seen a greater instance of serious cope on the planet. A “soft power superpower”? What on Earth does that mean! That so much of the world speaks English? That a lot of people watch Downton Abbey? It’s nonsense.
And it’s not just Labour. Successive past governments of both colours have decided that “soft power” is the way to go. On the front of it at least. Because soft power, in the way that the UK governments have meant for practically my entire life, is so nebulous, so intangible, so hard to pin down, that it can be used as an excuse to claim that we’re still one of the most important countries on the planet. A “superpower” with a dwindling armed forces, terrible trade deals, rising crime and crippling mass migration, with seemingly no vitalistic force on the sideline ready to come in and solve the problems, and restore it to greatness.
I don’t think those in the heart of Westminster ever really got over the decline of the 20th Century and the loss of the Empire, and the serious hard power that came with it. The soft power that really exists, especially the spread of our language, is merely a consequence of our fading imperial hangover.
Now, all of this isn’t to say that we couldn’t move on and create something new. A revitalised Britain, one that is not going around conquering the world, but that creates great art, new technology, and has a strong economy and foreign policy that people respect; a country that is listened to on the world stage and whose existence actually has a serious tangible impact, now that’s actual “soft power.” Imagine if TikTok was British, for example. But all of that, as you could guess, doesn’t come from simply promoting old episodes of Top Gear and a Robbie Williams biopic, or telling the world that you should allow LGBT rights because of democracy and classical liberalism or whatever nonsense screed the civil service came up with this week.
Unfortunately, merely a few hours after the announcement of the council, the consequences of focusing on so-called soft power reared its head. “Mauritius government has set a special cabinet meeting for 1030am Port Louis tomorrow (15th) which would be 0630 UK time - to sign off Chagos deal,” wrote Baron Kempsell. “Sources around negotiations telling me that Mauritius asked for a 50 year lease only on Diego Garcia, not 99 and UK may have caved.”
This is what soft power means. It’s the ability to bend over backwards and degrade ourselves on the world stage so that somehow, people will like us and we’ll be respected big boys again. As noted by David Snoxell in evidence to the subcommittee on the subject, “what changed official attitudes and broke the logjam were international judgments [was]... UK isolation in the UN brought on by the UK’s perceived diminishing reputation for upholding international law and the UK stand on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine which exposed HMG to charges of hypocrisy.”
That’s right. If we didn’t give up islands which are rightfully ours, and holds an important military base for the US, then people would think we were being hypocrites. Oh no! Please not that! We might get occasional rude remarks from some random diplomat from goodness knows where at a cocktail reception in New York! Who cares if their country still has a slavery and femicide issue, we couldn’t stand up and wag our fingers at Putin properly!
The entire rest of the world are hypocrites in some shape or form. Instead of brushing off that charge, what we look like to them right now is weak. Christian Calgie of the Daily Express summed it up perfectly when he said that this amounts to “geopolitical cuckoldry.”
To add insult to injury, it’s driven a wedge between us and the incoming administration of our supposed closest and greatest ally. Republican Senator John Kennedy scathingly lambasted the “left-wingers” in the British government for “rushing to give away a strategic military base” before the deal could be prevented.
I suppose, however, it does leave the door open for the funniest outcome possible. While the British government continues to talk up the importance of soft power after literally paying to have valuable territory taken from them, the Trump administration could show them what hard power looks like. What could anybody do if the new President not only rejected the deal come his inauguration, but decided that actually, the base was permanently theirs now? The United States has the battleships, not Mauritius. I mean, the Argentinians almost got away with it with the Falklands in 1982, and the rest of the world was poised to accept the blatant theft of some insignificant islands in the middle of the ocean!
We’d better get ready for the American Indian Ocean Territory, incorporated into the Trump Empire on January 21st, 2025…
(EDIT: Just before I published this, the FT broke that Britain is now likely to wait for Trump’s blessing. I’d hazard a guess that Starmer got the call from Mar-a-Lago. Now that IS real power!)