Britain Playing its Part on the World Stage

Britain Playing its Part on the World Stage

Posted as a comment to Daniel Finkelstein@s piece in The Times of 3.2.10 daniel.finkelstein@thetimes.co.uk

The news today (press and radio), mentions the review of defence spending. We hear and phrases like “Britain Playing its Part on the World Stage”, “Britain being an Important Player.” I see ten year old boys (nine, eight, year old?), myself included, strutting their stuff. “I’m the leader, ’cause I can beat you up.”

Britain and France still spend much more of their GPD on Defence than other European countries. (Did I say “Defence”? Surely “Attack” is the correct term.) This is because British and French politicians delude themselves that national greatness depends on having plenty of guns and bombs with which to beat other nations up.

I hope – I think – that by the age of fourteen or so, I no longer believed being able to beat up other boys was most important thing to achieve.

Haven’t British politicians learnt yet that Britain’s greatness has nothing to do with shooting and bombing foreigners?

What British people will be remembered by the historians? William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, Charles Darwin. Poets and scientists. Not generals and politicians.

The plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes are still being performed two and a half thousand years after their deaths. How many members of the public attending one of those performances would be able to say who Pericles was. The ‘great leader’ of Athens at her greatest did not even merit a biography for nearly five hundred years.

“Britain Playing its Part on the World Stage.” Maybe British leaders should take that phrase literally rather than metaphorically, and increase expenditure on arts and sciences, rather than on exploding bombs.