Lord Bates is a Conservative party Life Peer in the House of Lords. He is a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office. He has written a blog about soft power, making some good points that I’d like to share with you. First, he sets the scene by saying the UK ranks 9th in the world by military power and 5th in terms of GDP. The latter statistic should encourage those who think the UK could prosper outside the EU. (I am undecided.) He then defines soft power as being derived from six sources: government, culture, education, global engagement, enterprise and digital. If you’d like to read more about this, click here.
The UK comes out as top dog in the soft power league. In second place is Germany, then the US, France, Canada, Australia, Switzerland and Japan. Ireland is 19th, not bad I think, and China comes last in 30th place. Russia doesn’t make the cut. Here is his explanation for brand UK doing so well.
This hugely impressive performance does not come as a surprise to those who have the privilege to travel around the world. The English language, our world-class universities, our historic buildings, institutions and ideas such as parliament, the monarchy, and Magna Carta, our legal system, the BBC, films such as the latest Star Wars movie and James Bond, television series such as Downton Abbey and Dr Who, music from the Beatles to Adele, literature from Shakespeare to Harry Potter and sport from the Premier League to our pioneering paralympians are all established sources of Britain’s ‘soft’ capital.
Now I’m going to add some points that he makes and some of my own: the 0.7% of GDP that the UK spends on overseas aid; the range of scholarships offered to undergraduate and post-graduate students from overseas; the links the UK forges with the military in allied nations; the UK’s preeminence in financial services and jurisprudence; the work done by the British Council in more than a hundred countries; a good transport hub and a relatively benign tax regime. His reference to film and TV can be more succinctly summed up by the world class training in the performing arts on offer in the UK and the creative talent bank that exists to exploit this.
There is something to ponder here for readers outside the UK. There is also something to think about if you are Scottish and contemplating devolution. If you are British there is, for a change, something to make you proud.
Thanks for cheering me up
I too picked up on Lord Bates’ thoughtful comments on soft power and Britain’s leading role in this area. As Director of Goodenough College, which accommodates international postgraduates studying at London’s universities, I welcome the greater emphasis on Britain’s Global Engagement. The recent increase in funding for Commonwealth and Chevening Scholarships has been underscored by an explicit reference to these schemes and others in the 2015 National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence & Security Review which states ‘We will maximise the benefits of this investment over the coming years, building a strong international network of individuals who support the UK and our values’ (paragraph 5.5).
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals also include a commitment to ‘substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries by 2020′.
A pity then that the Government continues to make it difficult for international students to study in the UK through its immigration policy.
As a former Commandant of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst I have also witnessed the beneficial effects of soft power through the training of international officers, many of whom go on to positions of national importance in their own countries. The influence of Sandhurst and the values it promotes on future global leaders should not be under-estimated.
Andrew Ritchie
http://www.goodenough.ac.uk/
Thank you for expanding so cogently on the plans to maintain and extend the UK’s soft power base. I note your criticism of the Government’s immigration policy towards overseas students. It is a hot potato.
Christopher