Why won’t we talk about what the UK should be good at?

It is a sad but true fact, that, at an occasional dinner party or two, I have been known to ask the question, “So, by comparison to global standards what is Britain actually good at?” 

(Note to Readers:  I know, I know, there are quite probably more interesting topics to discuss at dinner parties than this one, but I like it, so please humour me and don’t stop inviting me to dinner parties.)

However, once the question is posed the optimists nonchalantly wade in to open the debate with a “Well of course we’re brilliant at ... (slight frown, embarrassed pause) ....er.... lots of stuff”.  “Such as?” and after much toing and froing, a list of what the UK is truly world class at slowly begins to emerge.  The list is usually made up as follows:

1.     Musicals

2.     Education (only arises at the intellectual dinner parties)

3.     Monarchy

4.     Queuing

5.     Ideation

6.     Eccentricity

7.     Exploring

8.     Add your own

Now the point of this blog is not to actually determine what we are good at, although that would be fabulous, but rather to ask the question, “Why do we never seem to have this conversation anywhere other than dinner parties?”  Surely being clear as to what we are about is a good thing?  Is it because we are actually all too afraid of the answer? 

For instance, if we think we ought to be world class at high end manufacturing we should be aligning our education system, tax system and political system to support that end.  Likewise, but substantially more controversially, if we think we want to be world class at Financial Services we should also align the systems to support that end.  Of course the implication is that by actually deciding what we should be good at we will instantly marginalise a large number of constituents whose interests are not favoured by the answer, never a popular option for any politician.

However, and here’s the rub, the longer we as a nation stick our head in the sand on this issue and fail to have the debate, the less likely we are to be able to choose our own destiny and the more likely we are to genuinely end up being no more than mediocre at anything but the list above.

Of course there are other schools of thought on the necessity of having the debate.  The “Jingoistic” school holds the view that the debate is pointless as anything produced or conceived of in the UK is de facto world class so why do we need a debate we’ll just get on with being British.  There is also the “Ex-Pat” school which holds that it’s too late to have the debate anyway as India and China are already doing everything better so why bother having the debate, let’s just move to Singapore and learn Cantonese.

Whilst these schools do have validity I can’t help feeling that in the year of the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics we really ought to be able to have the debate.

Looking forward to the opening salvos and an occassional dinner party invite