Brand Britain should sell goods and services, not dead parrots

The plain fact is that the UK is the second-largest exporter of services in the world, after the US, whereas it is only the ninth-largest exporter of goods. Culture attaches itself better to services than it does to goods

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What are we in Britain really known for in the rest of the world? Truly wise politicians don’t just promise to better the lot of their core voters, or even try to spread their message beyond that core (though, to get elected, this they have to do). They make people feel better about being part of a wider, successful society – and for us in the UK, let’s call that “Brand Britain”.

Two stories about this from the past week. One was that the Beckham family is now apparently worth £500m. According to the London School of Marketing, the different chunks of Brand Beckham – David’s football-linked income, the family’s wider endorsements and Victoria’s fashion business – produce an income of £30m to £40m a year. The remarkable thing about this brand is that it can add global reach to just about anything, from a Range Rover Evoque special edition to a Haig grain whisky, where the bottle is rather more notable than the stuff inside it.

The other story comes from Sarasota in Florida, where last week John Cleese and Eric Idle launched their tour of the States, reminiscing about the days of Monty Python and the dead parrot, doing a couple of sketches and leading the audience into some signature songs. I happened to be at the opening night, and the remarkable thing about that was not so much that the gig had proved so popular that they had to put on an extra show to meet demand, rather it was the audience. Americans of a certain age seemed to know much more about the Python years than we Brits. Put it this way: they got all the jokes, especially enjoying the one about Cleese having to go on working to pay off his alimony; and gave them a standing ovation at the end.

For the Beckhams, and for Cleese and Idle, being British is a huge part of their sales proposition, representing as they do two very different eras of Britishness and appealing to two very different age groups. But, of course, it is also a huge part of our sales proposition as a country, particularly as our outstanding success as an exporter is in selling services to the rest of the world as well as goods. That is not to downplay the importance of physical exports, which are still larger than those of service exports. This is not an either/or; it is a both/and.

Nothing should take away from the much-needed efforts to try to rebalance the economy towards the North and to encourage manufacturers to make things here rather than importing them from China. But the plain fact is that the UK is the second-largest exporter of services in the world, after the US, whereas it is only the ninth-largest exporter of goods. Culture attaches itself better to services than it does to goods, despite the Beckhams’ efforts with Range Rovers and Haig.

If you were to do a tally of British exceptionalism you would certainly include aero-engine manufacture, pharmaceuticals, and some other areas of high-technology output, but there are many other areas where we have to import the skills. We cannot build a nuclear power station ourselves: we have to go to the French and the Chinese. On the other hand, we have two or three, depending on the list you take, of the top ten universities in the world.

We don’t always feel comfortable with our excellence. The Times Higher Education global university ranking now places Oxford at number two, behind the California Institute of Technology and ahead of Harvard. You would not gather that from the sneering attitude of some politicians – and, I am afraid, some newspapers – towards Oxford. The antics of the Bullingdon Club of 25 years ago get a lot more attention than the success of the institution today.

This is a matter that politicians should surely reflect upon. There are some things that only governments are big enough to do or, by their nature, have to do. The most interesting bit of news from the past few days is the attempt by the Government to take big decisions on national infrastructure out of the political arena by appointing a former Labour minister, Lord Adonis, to head a body to advise on this. The idea for such an institution was, incidentally, an initiative of the last Labour government. It was heralded as a coup for George Osborne, when he was, in fact, putting into practice a sensible Labour policy.

But there are also many areas where governments can unwittingly do damage to the economy, and university policy is one. As we reported last week, the new vice-chancellor of Oxford, Professor Louise Richardson, believes that the UK should not be raising barriers by making it difficult to obtain student visas. “Rather than insisting that foreigners educated here leave on graduation,” she said. “We should be providing incentives for them to stay and to commit their education and energy to the British economy.”

Brand Britain need not be an inward-looking cultural museum piece, but rather an outward-looking global force that attracts foreigners to “commit their education and energy to the British economy”.

That surely is the contrast between the Cleese/Idle version of Brand Britain and the Beckhams’. Without wanting to carp at a couple of septuagenarians stomping their way round the US – they absolutely deserved their ovation – there can be no argument that one is essentially backward-looking while the other is totally about what the next generation might achieve. In this case, it is already achieving: Romeo Beckham, who led out the England team last month, has given a boost to Burberry trench coats by appearing in one in adverts last year.

Surely it is that vision of the future, one that is optimistic and open-minded, that politicians should seek to project. They cannot take credit for it, and they would be unwise to try, but they can promote and support it. Above all, they should remember the shorthand version of the Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm”.