Rishi Sunak faces a tough challenge as Prime Minister (Stefan Rousseau/PA)
(Picture: PA Wire)It is hard to understand how far Britain’s reputation has fallen if you live in England. The six years and four different leaders the country has cycled through since it voted to leave the European Union have not just damaged the UK’s reputation with our nearest neighbours. They have soured Britain’s reputation in the US: the butt of constant jokes on American Twitter for its weak pound and prime ministers. Downing Street has made itself synonymous with incompetence worldwide.
But this is not the only thing sapping soft power. Britain’s past is also catching up with it. Internationally, from American universities to Caribbean newspapers and Indian television, there is a growing reckoning with slavery and imperialism. The explosion of criticism both online and in the op-ed pages of the New York Times around the Queen’s funeral is just one concentrated outburst of something much bigger. Power is shifting in the US out of the hands of a purely white elite — and internationally towards Asia. The British establishment’s heirs of empire may have forgotten it. The victims’ children, rising internationally, certainly haven’t.
