‘Burnham must treat soft power as part of Britain’s defence’

Andy Burnham entered No 10 this week having inherited a generational rearmament plan and, according to reports, is intending to chart a route back to spending 0.7% of national income on aid. The new Foreign and Defence Secretaries will decide how the two fit together. But the new aid commitment is only part of a larger calculation, namely what place soft power holds in Britain’s defence and what place Britain intends to hold in the world.

The first week offers a clue. A cap on bus fares was among the earliest commitments. This is the right call and the right priority, with the cost of living the defining issue in British politics. However, it will be funded largely by converting international climate finance into repayable loans and is a reminder of how readily development spending becomes the first place ministers look when savings are needed.

Aid has been one of the softest targets for spending cuts over the last decade, and this did not happen in isolation. Alongside Brexit and shrinking budgets for the bodies that carry British influence abroad, it marks a wider retreat from the machinery of international engagement. This is all while defence spending has risen towards its highest sustained levels since the Cold War.

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The pressures behind that retreat are understandable. The cost of living is the defining domestic issue of our time, and a more aggressive world makes the case for hard deterrence. Spending on aid and wider influence abroad seems the easiest to cut.

But by investing in development, health, and economic infrastructure, Britain can, alongside supporting the world’s most vulnerable, help prevent conflicts, stabilise at-risk regions and build resilient global alliances. That standing is a British asset. Military capability does not, on its own, build the coalitions needed to use, sustain or legitimise us in the eyes of the world. No British objectives, be it enforcing sanctions, isolating aggressors or securing shipping lanes, can be delivered alone. These rely on British influence, and it is this influence that aid cuts have been spending down.

Take Ukraine. British humanitarian support, weapons and training have been crucial to staving off Russian aggression. However, it was British soft power that kept Europe aligned, sustained a sanctions coalition and countered Kremlin disinformation. When Moscow sealed its information space, the BBC’s Russian-language site drew 10.7 million readers, more than triple its usual audience. When Russia attacked television towers in Ukraine, the BBC World Service revived shortwave radio, once used against the Axis during the Second World War. A fully rearmed Britain would still have reached for these levers.

Where Britain abandons these levers, others step in to fill the gap. Russia and China now spend an estimated £6-£8 billion a year on international state media. Accordingly, across much of Africa, Asia and Latin America, Russian narratives on Western sanctions impacting global food prices found open ground. China, meanwhile, does not need to replace every withdrawn aid grant to benefit from the UK’s retreat. By continuing to offer development finance while Western donors cut programmes and leave, Beijing need only appear the more consistent partner.

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And yet, the British Council has warned it is selling assets to survive and is expected to close operations in nine countries. The BBC World Service budget has fallen in real terms. Even British diplomats reportedly face staff cuts of between 15% and 25%.

What makes this hard to justify is the low costs and high yields of these institutions. The World Service reaches more than 300 million people weekly for around £137 million of Government funding a year. The British Council received £163m in public funding in 2024-25 and generated about £1 billion for the economy. The costs barely register against the Defence Investment Plan, but trust in institutions needs to accumulate over decades. It cannot be procured with speed and cannot be procured at all once the institutions that carry it out are gone. Aid is the largest of those instruments.

The restoration of the international aid target would therefore be welcome but insufficient without a wider strategy on Britain’s global presence. Although the Soft Power Council was set up to promote British interests overseas in January 2025, the draft strategic framework discussed is yet to be seen 18 months on. For a middle power that pursues international objectives through alliances, a strong and far-reaching soft power strategy is a matter of national security.

Burnham has an opportunity to redefine British security for a more complex and interconnected world. Security in the twenty-first century is measured by more than military strength, and Britain cannot deter every threat through force alone. Building partnerships, shaping international debate and commanding trust are strategic assets – a government serious about British security should fund it that way.

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