The British Council, along with the BBC World Service, is the leading advocate of the UK’s soft power. And, like the Council, the World Service faces straitened financial times as a result of the last government’s decisions (on January 29, the World Service announced it would cut 130 jobs in a bid to save £6million). In the BBC’s case, Conservative ministers insisted that the World Service be funded by licence fee payers, rather than the Foreign Office.
With cash across the whole Corporation squeezed, director-general Tim Davie prioritised funding services for licence fee payers rather than those overseas who do not pay into the BBC. Whittingdale tells me he has “some sympathy” with that argument, and that we ought to fund both organisations properly “if we are serious about strengthening our influence, particularly in emerging democracies and countries where there is a competition for influence going on with China, Russia and the West”.
Where British soft power is in abeyance, the UK’s geopolitical rivals have no qualms about muscling in. When the World Service ended its Arabic, Persian and Hindi radio services in 2023, Russian-backed media started broadcasting on its airwaves in Lebanon. Meanwhile, McDonald told MPs that China probably puts about £10 billion into its own soft power initiatives, such as the Confucius Institutes that help combine language teaching and culture with loans and trade promises.
“We’ve rested on our laurels for a long time,” says Monica Harding, a Liberal Democrat who defeated Raab at last summer’s election and previously worked for the Council. “We’ve had the English language as a major export, we’ve had the BBC and we haven’t properly valued those things. China and Russia, who are trying to extend their influence in the world, are starting to massively fund [their equivalent of] these things because of the importance of soft power… We’ve always had it because of our language, our culture and our past, but therefore don’t value it as much. We will regret it when it’s gone, and that loss of power is very, very difficult to get back.”
Though we in the UK do not know much about the British Council, the consensus is that it plays a crucial role in fostering cultural relations and asserting our values overseas. It is seen as important by the rest of the world – friend and foe alike. Its finances have been precarious for decades (The Spectator complained about it as long ago as 1951), yet it has always survived. But the current crisis is the worst in its history, and McDonald warns it could “disappear” within a decade. Those who cherish the value of Britain’s soft power in a volatile world will have to do everything to save it from its present predicament.
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