What’s happened?
In the House of Commons this week, culture secretary Lisa Nandy hailed the BBC’s World Service as “a light on the hill for people in places of darkness” around the globe. It was quite the accolade for the corporation’s international arm at a time when the BBC’s news operation as a whole is under intense scrutiny and pressure. Even as the row continues over Panorama’s tendentious editing of Donald Trump’s inflammatory (but not that inflammatory) speech of 6 January 2021, there are relatively few voices that would gainsay Nandy’s view on the World Service. It was founded in 1932 as the Empire Short Wave Service to carry George V’s first Christmas message. Today, it reaches an average of 450 million people a week (via TV, radio and online channels) and broadcasts in 42 languages. For decades, along with the British Council, it has been a principal driver of Britain’s soft power.
Meaning what?
The World Service is not just a broadcaster; it plays a strategic role by projecting a British voice that helps the UK remain relevant globally. When its funding and independence are compromised, therefore, so too is the UK’s ability to influence global audiences. In a 2023 article for Foreign Affairs, Simon Potter, a history professor at Bristol University, argues that domestic politics – especially hostility to the BBC from largely right-wing politicians and media, combined with austerity and reductions in state support – have already undermined what had been a major soft-power asset. “In seeking to humble the BBC”, the corporation’s critics – in politics and outside – may yet “succeed in silencing one of the last clear expressions of British global authority”, he reckons.
So, is the BBC World Service in decline?
Yes. Since 2014, the World Service has been funded mostly directly from the television licence fee and (since 2016) also by a direct government grant. The grant now accounts for about a third of the total. In 2023-2024, the World Service’s total expenditure was £265 million, a fall of £25 million on the previous year. Earlier this year, the Foreign Office (whose own budget is being cut in real terms) told the BBC to draw up a budget roughly £70 million a year lower than bosses say it needs over the next few years, and well below inflation. According to a UCL paper by Giles Winn published earlier this year, this uncertain funding outlook, together with loss of capacity and increased competition from the likes of China and Russia, all presage “managed decline” unless addressed. Winn argues that policymakers should take the World Service’s strategic value more seriously and invest ambitiously in digital platforms as well as adapt its television strategy for international news to maintain relevance.
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What about the British Council?
It’s in even direr straits. Last month its chief executive warned that the body – which operates in 100 countries – is in “real financial peril” and “selling everything” it can to survive. The council earns about 85% of its money from teaching and cultural activities, but gets a Foreign Office grant of around £162.5 million this financial year. However, its income has slumped since the pandemic and an emergency loan of £197 million granted by the previous government to keep it going through Covid is due for repayment in September 2026 – money the organisation doesn’t have. The current government faces tough decisions about what value it places on soft power.
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What is “soft power”?
The term was coined in 1990 by Joseph Nye, a US professor of international relations and government adviser. If power is the ability to influence the behaviour of others to achieve a desired outcome, “hard power” involves doing so through coercion (including the military) or inducement. Soft power, as defined by Nye, is “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments”. It’s far cheaper than hard power and it’s about “getting others to want the outcomes that you want”. It’s not about forcing other countries to bend to your will, it’s about shaping debates, framing issues and shaping the preferences, perceptions and priorities of others – ideally before they are fully formed.
And Britain wields a lot of it?
Yes. In Nye’s conception, the three pillars of soft power are culture – both high culture and popular; political values – the collective norms, laws, rights and structures of a state; and foreign policy – the extent to which a state is seen as a force for global good or malicious self-interest. “Strong, long-established institutions and unshakeable respect for the rule of law,” for example, “has long been a source of the UK’s soft power”, says Jonathan McClory of the Labour Together think tank. His research found that the UK remains “firmly within the top-tier of soft-power countries. It holds a remarkably well-balanced set of national resources that generate attraction and positive sentiment from global audiences”. However, the UK’s soft power has declined, due to post-Brexit “political instability, and a distinct lack of an overarching national narrative”.
Can soft power be quantified?
By its nature it’s hard to measure, but that doesn’t stop people trying – there have been several attempts at creating a “soft-power index” in recent years. The UK typically ranks in the top five nations. In the Brand Finance Global Soft Power Index, for example, the UK ranked third in the 2025 list, behind the US and China. Several academic papers have found small impacts using proxies such as foreign direct investment, student flows, tourism and vote patterns in the UN General Assembly. And research by Andrew Rose of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley suggests soft power can boost exports. Hard evidence for the economic return on soft power is far from conclusive. But that doesn’t mean soft power isn’t real. The UK faces hard choices about how seriously it takes it.
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