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Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 15 July 2025

Debate

United Kingdom: Soft Power

Contribution

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is entirely right to emphasise the importance of soft power. I just add a note of regret that Joe Nye of Harvard, who is a strong friend of this country and the inventor of much of the thinking behind the whole soft power concept, died very suddenly recently. The world needs a man like that now, and we will miss him. The Foreign Secretary deserves some credit too, because he has brought forward the Soft Power Council, to which he kindly invited me. The only snag was that when we discussed it and an emissary came to discuss it with me, they were full of new ideas but they seemed to have overlooked one vital idea: that by far the biggest soft bed and fertilising area for soft power in this world is the enormous and growing Commonwealth. There was no mention of that in the initial Soft Power Council report. I know that the Minister thinks quite differently, so could he take a message back to his office and remind them that soft power and the Commonwealth are two massive supports for the prosperity and security of this country as well?

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