Something is jarring when the foreign secretary, David Lammy, regards British soft power as so important that he establishes a Soft Power Council, and yet one of the acknowledged flagship British institutions to bolster that power – the British Council – is on the verge of a form of bankruptcy.
It is not as if ministers have not had fair warning. The financial plight of the British Council and the collapse of its English language teaching income in the pandemic has hardly been hidden from view, so much so that the council was chosen as one of the first subjects of inquiry by the new Commons foreign affairs select committee. The chief executive, Scott McDonald, told the committee the council was at risk of disappearing in two years.
It may…
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Guardian Weekly (Digital) - 1 Issue, 31 January 2025