Can the King of the North Restore the UK’s Soft Power Crown Jewels?

Two years ago, as Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party was taking up the reigns of government, Sanctuary was commissioned by a Labour-aligned think tank to produce Charm Offensive, a report that set out to answer two important questions for British foreign policy at the outset of the first Labour Government in 14 years. The first question was: what is the state of British soft power after a rather tumultuous period in British politics and the UK’s rupture with Europe? The second question was: how should a new Labour Government reset the UK’s approach to soft power? Well, two years later and here we are again. So as Andy Burnham begins his premiership with, one assumes, three years of runway until the next general election, how should he and his Downing Street team be thinking about the immediate future of British soft power?

To answer this, let’s start with the state of play and – for the sake of clarity – a quick definition of the concept. As set out by the late Harvard professor and American diplomat, Joseph Nye, soft power describes the ability of a country to achieve foreign policy objectives through attraction and persuasion, rather than coercion. With that in mind, the aforementioned report, Charm Offensive, used primary data drawn from a series of 25 interviews with former and current senior diplomats, officials, ministers, MPs, and foreign policy experts. Interviewees were drawn from the UK and abroad, providing domestic and international views. These semi-structured interviews gave us a clear sense of the where the UK sits (as of Summer 2024) in the global league table for soft power, how that has changed over the previous ten years, and the prospects for Britain’s global influence going forward.

The consensus view emerging from these interviews was that, while the UK remained broadly in the top 10 countries for soft power, it has been on a decade-long slide. That said, the vast majority agreed that this drop was not irrevocable. So where does this leave the new Burnham Government in terms of British soft power and what is to be done?

At the risk of oversimplification, there are three guiding soft power principles that would serve the new Burnham Government – and by extension the UK – well. First, recognise that soft power itself has changed. In many ways the 21st Century began in earnest as we emerged from the COVID19 pandemic. Heightened geopolitical competition, the race for AI supremacy and tech sovereignty, fracturing global trade, and the fraying of the rule-based-order have all changed the operating context for policy makers, diplomats, and global businesses. As prior Sanctuary research, carried out in 2021 with the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy, has shown, the very nature of soft power has changed. Today it is the ‘harder’ elements of soft power – scientific research, R&D spending, capacity for innovation, technological prowess, and national capability – that now carry more weight. In soft power terms, the UK has traditionally over-indexed on culture, heritage, and the consumer-facing elements of soft power.

The new Burnham Government needs to recognise this shift in the nature of soft power and adapt accordingly. Worryingly, it has been reported Burnham’s small team of transition advisers lacks a major science voice or tech champion. This is a major policy gap and needs to be addressed immediately. Moreover, in practical terms the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology now need a seat at the foreign policy table and a larger role in the development and projection of British soft power.

Second, the new Burnham Government need to live by the mantra ‘control what you can control’. Much of a nation’s soft power assets sit beyond the control of HM Government. Think Premier League, Wimbledon, DeepMind, the global charitable foundation Wellcome, or Ed Sheeran. But where the Government can have an impact, it needs to act and swiftly. Among the most urgently needed steps to take will be to back – financially and politically – the BBC World Service, British Council, and the UK’s universities (international students are one of the most potent long-term investments in future global influence). These three pillars of British soft power have been left in a worrying state of under-investment and policy uncertainty.  In particular, the BBC World Service and British Council are two crown jewels in Britain’s soft power treasury. Competing states have spent years investing billions attempting to replicate the same levels of audience reach, engagement and trust. Thus far, those efforts have failed to match these institutions, but we neglect them at our peril.

Finally – and with all due respect to the outgoing Sir Keir Starmer – the new Prime Minister is a much more natural and compelling communicator than his immediate predecessor. The delta between Burnham and Starmer in this respect represents a major soft power opportunity. Having devised and run an annual soft power index that incorporated international polling data for the better part of a decade, I have seen the impact – for better and for worse – that a new leader can have on a given country’s global reputation. Whether we like it or not, charisma is a tremendous asset in a political leader – hard as it may be to measure. A leader’s charisma can not only swing domestic elections, but can also entice international audiences and partners to revisit their views of that leader’s country.

Starmer was often criticised for lacking a grand national vision. This was certainly true in an international context. If Burnham can leverage his charm and communications advantage to articulate a compelling vision of what the UK has to offer, what it is for, and where it is going then he might achieve the soft power reset that Starmer’s Government never quite managed. Sticking to the above three principles would serve him well in that pursuit.