What Britain is throwing away

For years afterwards, they also failed to get just why their western neighbours had decided to lose their minds. European newspapers spent a long time trying to understand the madness of the House of Commons, the grotesque antics of Boris Johnson, and whatever was going on with Liz Truss.

I, like several immigrants to the UK I know, would go home and do my best to explain the political situation. It was often tough, as I didn’t really get it either. “Yes, they’ve basically just gone insane for no obvious reason, no, you’re not missing anything,” was what I would resort to saying.

It left my relatives sad and confused: how the mighty Brits had fallen! Once they’d been the coolest Europeans, with the best music and culture and oh, all that London had to offer, and their food wasn’t always the best but so much of what they had was the envy of the world! What was going on?

Last year, as the election loomed, they became cautiously optimistic. Was it really true, I would be asked down the phone, that the UK was about to vote for a reasonable, sensible government? Were the years of pointless self-harm coming to an end? I told them to keep their fingers crossed, as we were all hoping for it to be the case.

It’s now been nearly a year, and I’m just not sure what to tell them when they bring up the topic. Of course, things are better now than they were under the knackered, warring Tories. How much better though? Eh. Some areas have seen improvement; others remain a disappointment.

Take the news, published in the Guardian last week, that the British Council may have to shut down in up to 60 countries soon, as a result of cuts coming in the Spending Review. These would be in addition to the 20 countries it announced it would be leaving back in 2021, as it was told to reduce its budget by £185m. 

Equally as dismaying was last month’s revelation that the BBC’s World Service would have to cut its budget by tens of millions of pounds, following the slashing of the government’s aid budget. Taken together, they paint a picture of a country happily choosing to throw its potential for soft power into the bonfire. Again: what a waste!

The obvious point to make here is that those choices couldn’t have come at a worst time. Both the United States and Russia are, in their own ways, flooding the world with disinformation. Repressive regimes like India and China are also in the ascendant, and will endlessly benefit from a west in retreat.

On a more human level, however, lies a truth that is perhaps less important, but more poignant. Both British people and their government don’t seem to have ever reckoned with the fact that, for a long time, they punched above their weight. The empire may be long gone, and the economy may have been sluggish for some time, but other things matter too.

Cool Britannia lasted abroad for longer than it did in the UK itself, and the British were seen as eccentric and a bit foolish, but they were beloved by many parts of Europe and the world. What will happen when new generations come into this world where Britain just can’t be bothered making itself known on the global stage anymore?

Maybe that’s the greatest irony of them all. Wrongly convinced that there’s little point in entering a popularity contest which it has no chance of winning, the UK will find itself genuinely becoming irrelevant, because it didn’t realise it had something worth preserving in the first place.