A report out from University College London by a trio of former diplomats has ruffled the sensitivities of the traditionalists.
“International bright young thing
Now you know for sure that you make the world swing
International bright young thing
Make it swing”
…was what Jesus Jones sang in 1990/1991
I played it lots during the 2000s whenever I was going abroad to Continental Europe. A very different time when the prospect of the UK leaving the EU was unimaginable to mainstream politics. The political catastrophe that has happened since – and some of the conclusions from the UCL paper remind me of Professor Elemental’s satirical take down.
Above – “I’m British” by Professor Elemental
“What did the report recommend?”
You can read the summary brief here, and access the link to the full report too. The thrust of the report is that the UK needs to accept it isn’t the Great Power of 120 years ago, and can only make an impact if it works better with other countries and global institutions, and also practices what it preaches.
The headline-grabber is the proposed abolition of the Foreign Office name, going for International Affairs.
And as Helene von Bismarck writes, that’s all that too many people have cottoned on to.
“Influence abroad depends on political and socio-economic success at home. The UK will need to engage with a clearer sense of purpose, history, interests and assets as an offshore mid-sized power.”
Malik, M (2024) The World in 2040: Renewing the UK’s Approach to International Affairs, UCL, p5
The above quotation is the most important part for me – because there is inevitably a class gap between those who get into the well-connected jobs in international diplomacy and those that do not. Historically, the appalling quality of UK language teaching in schools despite the best efforts of many teachers past and present, reflects that. The problem I’m talking about here is not about individuals, but rather about curriculum design and when is the best time to introduce which subjects to children as they grow up. Ultimately that is a Political question where people of different values will take differing views. It comes back to the problem of how to meet the unlimited wants of a society that has limited resources. Hence when one group has far more resources than another in education (something being explored by the Private Education Policy Forum) it becomes a Political issue.
One of the reasons I still feel fairly strongly about this was because my generation did not start learning foreign languages until secondary school, and it was only in our mid-teens that many of us were taught the basic structures of grammar – past, present, and future tenses. And that wasn’t in English – that was our French teacher at the time ripping up his annual scheme of work having figured this out early in the GCSE course, and doing verb drills relentlessly.
But it could never be at the level that our continental counterparts were learning at – or that was the impression we got from school language exchanges. The Germans were far better in English than we were in German.
Education is one of the big battle grounds for the success or failure of delivering the recommendations – if they are adopted
Recall the outcry at Michael Gove’s reforms to the curriculum. One of the things that the Government has rightly (in my opinion) been criticised for is de-prioritising citizenship education – for which they were called out in the Lords in September 2023. This comes back to the recommendation that the UK practices what it preaches. No point waxing lyrical about how the UK has ‘The Mother of All Parliaments’ or is a defender of democracy and the rule of law when it doesn’t educate its children properly on either – nor does it have a comprehensive system of lifelong learning in place to enable those that would like to learn more about it the means to do so. (See Shah (2020) UCL here)
The authors also mention an historical reckoning – one that is inevitably used by opponents in today’s culture wars against ‘Le Woque’
“Former colonies are making increasingly vocal demands around the need for reparations from colonialism and compensation for the loss and damage arising from historical industrial emissions.”
Malik (2024) UCL p9
The problem comes back to education and popular culture where the oligopoly in major publishing along with the oligopoly in the book industry means that nonsense pieces of work easily myth-busted like Rees-Mogg’s one are all-too-easily given a much higher profile than more accurate and possibly better-written and more enlightening books of similar eras.
On the point of ‘re-writing history’, that’s what historians do. Our histories adapt to the evidence that researchers discover – something that new technologies are enabling us to do on a scale previous generations could only have dreamt of. We saw an example of this recently in Cambridge about when the Industrial Revolution started. (You can see the project details here – including the data mapping techniques they used).
To their credit, some institutions are commissioning research on their own colonial pasts.
“The University of Cambridge is advertising for a PhD to investigate the imperial legacy of the Museum of Zoology’s plant and animal collection.
“It notes that work could focus on “violent colonial activity” and “resource exploitation,” forming part of Cambridge’s ongoing effort to confront its “legacies of enslavement and empire.””
Varsity Cambridge 08 Apr 2024
In the meantime, the University’s Art History Dept is going through its own reassessment from its own students.
The real challenge in achieving the changes that the authors are calling for is ***trying to achieve the aims without being in control of the means***
For example an incoming government of whichever party might have a very progressive-minded Foreign Secretary facing a very traditionalist Education Secretary. Yet given the timescales involved, it’ll be like turning round an oil tanker – and will take even longer too. Furthermore, the Westminster political culture of ministerial churn means that trying to achieve any long-term change is…exactly.
“High ministerial turnover can make getting things done in government more difficult, as ministers have to get up to speed with a new brief and build new relationships.”
Institute for Government
I cannot see that changing without a separation of executive from legislature because as I’ve said repeatedly, the function of an MP is more than a full-time occupation (if you are do to it well), and the same goes for a minister of the Crown. Yet we expect our senior politicians to do both just like in the mid-1800s as if nothing has changed. Ironically, for all the criticism that David Cameron is getting as Foreign Secretary in the Lords, he has been able to focus on the job in hand without having to get involved in the day-to-day bun-fights in the Commons, or having to be in Parliament for every division bell. He also has the added advantage of knowing personally a critical mass of the people he needs to work with opposite him – although his reputation will forever be associated with the catastrophic decision to call for a referendum on the EU as a means to shut down UKIP in 2014.
Perhaps the most important point for the current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is that he’s been able to appoint the former Prime Minister to the Foreign Office and let him get on with it. Useful given all of the plotting that seems to be happening within his party!
Maybe the freedoms that come with having a senior ministerial post without the demands of a constituency to be responsible for is something that won’t be lost in the long-overdue reforms of the UK’s political systems. Strengthen the systems of accountability – in particular direct questioning from all MPs, and even Parliamentary confirmation hearings for nominated ministers from the Prime Minister that wins the general election.
What all of this shows to me is that trying to get the cultural changes and reputational improvements that the report recommends will require far more than a name change.
Food for thought?
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