Britain is no longer a superpower and must deal with superpowers, as must all second-division states. But in one respect it is unique. Its soft power is probably equal to none, notably its cultural and teaching assets. It has educated more world leaders – apparently 50 – and takes in more Chinese students than any other country including the US. It also welcomes half a million Chinese tourists a year, many drawn by aspects of British popular culture. We do not measure soft power, but its influence cannot be negligible – and is certainly profitable.
It is therefore absurd that the British government is planning to splurge billions more on defending Britain from a purely notional third world war. At the same time it is slashing the budget of its overseas cultural institution, the British Council. The council is being forced to withdraw from 60 countries and sell its entire property portfolio.
As an artsy type Sir Simon doesn’t grasp that the arts don’t in fact matter. Not in hte sense he’s talking about here that is.
Sure, sure, Shakes and Milty and all are enriching for the soul. But they don’t stop J Foreigner stealin’ our stuff. Squaddies do do that stopping. So, the arts don’t matter in the sense of stopping J Foreigner etc.
But that’s the claim Sir S does try to make. Forget having even a regiment of foot left and send rainbow doldo butt monkey off to entertain instead.
Umm, No.
The argument is of course that the British Council will so entrance foreign types that they will be less likely to declare war, so we can save a few quid on tanks. I think this is fair enough, or would be if the British Council was promoting the likes of Shakespeare and Milton and British cultural exceptionalism.
Let’s see…. the British Council in Hong Kong seems to focus on teaching English and events like the following: Panel Discussion on Sustainability in the Arts, Five Films For Freedom, an online celebration of global LGBTQIA+ and a report on ‘Hong Kong’s receptiveness to the arts as an agent for well-being’. There’s a thing about Henry Moore too, but mostly it’s the same old worthless shit. And teaching the world’s most widely-spoken language.
Yeah gods, the place has changed since I left – and not just China taking over.
To demonstrate our ‘soft power’, I suggest a tour of modern British cultural icons around China. Let’s send Stormzy, Bob Vylan, Alan Carr, Nish Kumar and Fatiha El-Ghorri (look her up) under the supervision of Sir Lenny Henry to show them what the best of British really means.
I actually think most defence spending is a waste, that cui bono of someone going to war with us. But I’ll err on the side of caution.
This is what really pisses me off though: “It’s ridiculous for the government to splurge on defence while it slashes spending on its most valuable asset: culture”
Go to the uktravel reddit and you can see what foreigners come here for. It’s Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Bath, Oxford, Cambridge, York, The British Museum, Stonehenge, Harry Potter World, Stratford-Upon-Avon. They want to go to the crossing at Abbey Road. People like either our old stuff or they like the stuff the private sector makes. Lacock and Bath had their visitors boosted with Harry Potter and Bridgerton.
Sir Simon’s thing is spending money on his favourite things, probably orchestras and old churches, but you can’t create that. We’ve been trying it since WW2 with the Arts Council and it’s a failure. Culture is organic, about people. Make more movies and music and some of it sticks. Cutting tax cuts on movies means people come and make them here and maybe they need an interesting place for a scene and now, people want to come here for it.
Maybe, but to the author popular culture is the wrong kind of culture. It’s not Culture.
… and Bicester Shopping Village.
“Go to the uktravel reddit and you can see what foreigners come here for.”
I had a visitor from Japan staying over the summer. What did she want to see? The beauty of the moors, the history of James Cook’s childhood homes? No, Harry Potter Railway Station! A weekend in Liverpool for the Beatles Experience and bus tour!
British Council probably funds the same crap that USAid did.
Nothing of value will be lost when both are gone.
As for where to send rainbow doldo butt monkey…
It is therefore absurd that the British government is planning to splurge billions more on defending Britain from a purely notional third world war. At the same time it is slashing the budget of its overseas cultural institution, the British Council. The council is being forced to withdraw from 60 countries and sell its entire property portfolio.
We can’t afford either, but BAE will be pleased at the government spunking billions more on a tiny number of bespoke high end weapons systems that will run out of ammo and be forced to surrender within a couple of weeks of high intensity warfare.
If they were serious about defence (lol, I know) the focus would be on mass. War is a wholesale business, not a cottage industry. War doesn’t care about you “punching above your weight” when the other guy is bigger and able to land enough punches to stove your head in.
So, start by abolishing the RAF. The RAF was a mistake that has been allowed to continue for over a century despite its malign influence in degrading our much more important naval aviation. Air power should be an integral part of the army and navy, not an independent force. Abolish the RAF and reinvest the savings in things we do need: more men, more munitions, and more aircraft. In that order.
The RAF has been allowed to get away with it because of the legend of the Battle of Britain. But it’s not the 40’s anymore, and we can’t defend ourselves with sentiment. The current RAF is more famous for discrimination against white men than winning wars. Abolish them.
The current RAF is more famous for discrimination against white men than winning wars.
And not only the RAF…
I think we could well re-examine what advantage we get from ‘educating foreign leaders’. They do not go home with nostalgic lovey-dovey feelings about being abused in public schools or dreaming spires. They go home never having seen real Britain and they hate what they DID see. We gain no advantage from it.
And..soft power. How does it rank against hard? Speak softly but don’t carry a stick in case it gives a bad impression?
We could re-examine the benefit we get from training Chinese engineers, too.
I think they probably had a nice time, but it doesn’t mean much. Bin Laden spent some time in Oxford and was an Arsenal fan.
The thing with “soft power” is that the impact is very marginal. Like Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War who didn’t want Osaka bombed because he and his wife and honeymooned there. But it didn’t stop him bombing Japan and Hiroshima was about as good.
Taki claimed Bin Laden was also a member of White’s. Short of getting invited to Balmoral for the weekend, you don’t get much more embedded in British Establishment soft power than that. As you say, didn’t do us any good.
“Soft power” is as much use in a war as a soft dick is in a Brazzers video..
The government, with general support, disarmed your citizenry. The masses can no longer assist.
Same in Australia, though probably less support. Australia has a token military, unarmed citizens, and two billion-man countries eyeballing their available land.
In USA, the citizens have over 300,000,000 guns.
“There will be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”
Shame your 300,000,000 guns couldn’t stop your country being overrun by more than 50,000,000 foreigners who now vote in their own ethnic looting gangs in NYC, MN, etc… almost as if the NRA tough guy cope is… blowhard bullshit from boomers who aren’t gonna bite, just bark?
From a 4GW perspective (the war we’re currently fighting), it’s almost irrelevant how many privately owned firearms there are, because as has been established – you weren’t gonna use them. Joe Biden was safe openly mocking the right wing American delusion that their AR15’s were going to resist the government – nobody shot at him. Where does defence start, then? It starts in the hearts of your people:
From the British pov, “mass” just means more men. Not a citizen’s militia or anything like that. More regulars. The British Army has (WW1 and 2 aside) never been big, but since 1991 they’ve pared it down to a parade force. The bones have been shaved down to the point where they would snap if we took any serious amount of casualties, and casualties are inevitable in war. The US Marine Corps is bigger than the whole of the British Army.
So we need more men, and they need equipment. An army that probably couldn’t field 100 working tanks isn’t really an army in a functional sense. The state of British artillery is pathetic. And the worst part is – these aren’t even very expensive things. The government has cannibalised the Tesco Basics of warfare – men, tanks, tubes – to fund the ££££££ super expensive high end luxury items, such as the worst version of the F-35 (purchased because we were too cheap to put catapults on our carriers). And ridiculous spaff projects like the Ajax abortion, which needlessly gold plated and made worse (!) a perfectly functional off the shelf vehicle.
We can and should get more bang for our bucks.
But all of this is useless if we can’t exert control over our own government, and therefore our own borders. “Defence” is not something that floats independently of the nation – “defence” cannot be stronger than the national community that’s trying to defend itself. Strength lies in commitment, morale and willpower, without those things all the guns and lads in the world won’t win. The British Army needs to be able to plausibly appeal to the patriotism and masculinity of young British men. The “woke” stuff is complete cancer and a morale killer. Do you feel me bro? We don’t need pussies or snowflakes or girls in the army, we need men who aren’t afraid of wading into a fight and spilling blood.
Fine. Keep your citizenry disarmed.
Well that’s pretty dumb, then. The Zulus had 4000 men against our 140 ish (plus odds and sods) at Rorke’s Drift. We had other advantages which you might summarise as “effective mass”. It doesn’t matter how many men and how much materiel the enemy has if you have the capacity to destroy them faster than the enemy can apply them.
Are we naggers? Are we in Inglewood?
No, we’re talking about how to win white people wars against enemies who aren’t spear-toting 40-IQ Ewoks who talk in clicks and grunts. The British Army is no longer big enough to fill out Wembley. That’s too small to fight the kind of wars we’re promised.
You literally said, which I literally quoted, that “mass” just means more men. It seems you actually meant something else. So let’s talk about that.
“The government has cannibalised the Tesco Basics of warfare – men, tanks, tubes – to fund the ££££££ super expensive high end luxury items, such as the worst version of the F-35 (purchased because we were too cheap to put catapults on our carriers). And ridiculous spaff projects like the Ajax abortion, which needlessly gold plated and made worse (!) a perfectly functional off the shelf vehicle.”
People in government have no sense of planning beyond the next few months because no-one cares.
Is our media full of stuff about absurd spending, terrible defence planning or that Prince Andrew is kicked out of the monarchy? A minor player, in an already irrelevant cosplay who may or may not have had sex with someone who would be legal in the UK.
The government in 1990s banned US-based active military from being armed on base, except during organized activities. So those AFBs with a thousand men . . . just have unarmed men. Except maybe a half dozen sky cops on duty, half of them in the open at the main gate.
You can’t hold land with an F-16; you can with an AR-15. Biden’s ignorance shows through. But a militia wouldn’t need to. A 50-man militia could overrun any airbase in America. Infiltration would enable them to sabotage F-16s on the ground. Then they just leave – no need to wait around for the cavalry to arrive. Leaving the US with no available fighters in US.
You can’t hold land with an F-16
AMEN. “Air policing”, as the British government used to call it, is the special needs div kid class of warfare. Completely ineffective* at achieving a strategic result unless it’s part of a combined attack with ground forces, even if fast jets are kewl. Abolish the RAF.
*Unless you’re the French and simply nuke them from your Rafale, whilst haw-haw-hawing, drinking wine, and somehow cheating on your wife at 40,000 ft
“If they bring a knife, we’ll bring a gun.” — B. Hussein O’Bama
“If they bring a gun, we’ll bring an F-16.” — Joe Biden
Wait . . . Wut?
Several hundred thousand people with guns are on the process of removing these people as we write.
“America is at that awkward stage it’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.” — Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do Before the Revolution
Guns are bad, Mkay.
We have many, many people in the UK with the brains of squirrels – they believe what politicians and the media tell them.
Look at the grassing to Plod if neighbours slightly transgressed the onerous Covid-19 restrictions.
Gamecock, unfortunately you’re spot on there. Australia’s role in any southern hemisphere war is as a fixed, reasonably politically stable, aircraft carrier. Basically basing rights is all we have to offer. Military capacity – don’t make me laugh.
Does he think it is still 1825?
You’re talking about a prime example of Academia….
The one thing those people cannot do is actualy think.
The few who try get the habit beaten out of them at Uni. Or are failed, so they never get the Credentials.
It is precisely equal to none. I don’t think he thought about that phrasing.
“Britain is no longer a superpower”
How perceptive. It ceased being a “superpower” because of the First German War. So that’s more than a century, eh? How long does it take Guardian readers to grasp a fact?
“Its soft power is probably equal to none”
I’m sure the Ptolomies thought that as well.