Britain Doesn't Believe in Britain

ALSO: How many readers did Marc Maron send my way?

For podcast fans and AI sceptics, here’s the latest episode of the technology discussion podcast I host, The Ned Ludd Radio Hour, where I’m talking to Hagen Blix, the author of a new book, Why We Fear AI.

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Say what you like about Donald Trump’s America – always a dangerous way to start a newsletter – but there is a true belief in American exceptionalism. He’s wrong of course (scientists agree that “the US sucks”) but that confidence is infectious. It has governed his economic policy, his immigration policy and the businesses he ran as a private citizen. Donald Trump believes in America – believes in serving expensive hamburgers in tasteless dining rooms in phallic skyscrapers – like few others. He has become synecdoche for the nation at large: a big, bruising, inexplicably successful, undeniably charismatic, global villain. So if you believe in yourself, you believe in your country.

This week, it was announced that Denis Villeneuve – the Canadian director behind the Blade Runner sequel and two Dune movies – would take the helm of the next James Bond flick. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “This is going to be a rant about the failure of the Bond producers to come up with a British director for such a British project”. After all, the first 16 Bond films – Dr No through to License to Kill – all had British directors. Since then, a handful of foreigners have skippered Bond movies (New Zealanders Martin Campbell and Lee Tamahori, the German-Swiss Marc Foster, and the most recent director, America’s Cary Joji Fukanaga). The results have been distinctly mixed. Is it a coincidence that Bond’s Golden Age coincided with a parochial hiring policy?

Who can say? There a lot of components that go into a good Bond film. A classy Ian Fleming story to work back from. A script that is coherent yet exciting. A Bond actor who feels at the peak of his powers. Interesting villains and love interests, not to mention cars and gadgets that are appealing without being distracting. The formula is well-established, yet surprisingly hard to emulate. After Casino Royale reset proceedings in 2006, successive directors have struggled to repeat that triumph (even if you like Skyfall, you must concede that it doesn’t have quite the rewatchable lustre of classic Bond). My assumption, therefore, is that it’s quite hard to make a good Bond movie and that the most reliable needle-mover a producer can apply would be the selection of a top director. And here we arrive, finally, at my point.

Denis Villeneuve is probably the first choice director of Bond fans and producers alike. He is on a hot run of form and has experience with major budgets, complex logistical shoots, and beloved IP. He has built this resumé, too, without making a bad or schlocky movie. Arrival, his 2016 sci-fi film with Amy Adams, is a masterpiece of that genre, and both his Dune films were nominated for Best Picture. Bringing him in to direct a Bond film is a demonstration that James Bond is still a great piece of intellectual property. A franchise that everyone still wants to be a part of. In a box office environment dominated by Marvel and Star Wars and other hulking great (Trumplike) American franchises, Bond is still a player. It is a manifestation, surely, of British exceptionalism.

And yet, it’s hard to escape the feeling that Bond is slowly slipping out of our national grasp. Earlier this year, Amazon inked a $1bn deal to take creative control of the franchise. The announcement of Villeneuve as director was made by Mike Hopkins, the Head of Amazon MGM Studios, who is a Long Beach native and looks like a Romney. Is the ability to commission the hottest director in the game a function of the enduring prestige of Fleming’s super-spy, or of Mr Bezos’s blank chequebook?

Either way, it is hard to escape the feeling that there is a creeping vulnerability to Britain’s soft power position. This week the BBC launched a $49.99 per annum scheme in the US, allowing Americans to access news via the website and app, as well as streaming the BBC News channel (it does not provide access to the BBC’s wildly successful exports in comedy or drama). This is a pragmatic decision. The clue, as part as the public at home are concerned, to the BBC’s identity is in its name: the BRITISH Broadcasting Corporation. So why should Americans get free access to our high quality news output?

Well, the BBC is currently the 2nd biggest global English-language news source with 550.6M monthly visits, just behind the New York Times which has been rising, once again, thanks to its commitment to publish an article about Donald Trump every 30 minutes. The BBC performs a very important role internationally, where it is seen as one of the few new sources that is both reliable and dispassionate. It is a place for news – in its simplest sense – while comment and analysis dominate elsewhere. As exports go, trust is not a bad commodity.

The BBC’s international presence will necessarily decline as the new subscription model comes into place. Ultimately, the corporation has had to prioritise financial stability – important in its domestic political considerations – over international impact. It is an understandable decision but a shortsighted one. After all, BBC News’ presence around the world sets the tone for much of the global perception of Britain as a mature party to global proceedings (when so much of our behaviour, internationally and domestically, has contradicted that). Again and again, polling calls the British accent (whatever that is; I assume they mean RP) the most trusted, most likeable, sexiest accent in the world. This isn’t just because we export glamorous movie stars and pop singers (although that’s part of it), but because it has become the narrative voice of calm and stability. The David Attenborough effect, so to speak.

But, as regular readers of this newsletter will know, how the BBC is funded is a political hot potato here in the UK. It’s also a potato that has been fluffed and buttered by the BBC itself, which frequently ties itself in knots (curly fries) over its aspiration to impartiality. But the Beeb’s blundering neutrality is still infinitely more subtly applied than any US equivalent. In the end, though, the question revolves around the renewal of the BBC’s charter, the mechanism by which its long term financial sustainability is ensured. The next renewal will be at the end of 2027/start of 2028, meaning that we are going to see a lot of cost-cutting measures in the coming months, alongside new revenue-driving initiatives like this.

Whether it’s Bond or the BBC, it’s perfectly easy to make a case for British exceptionalism. But too often at the moment it’s requiring an exogenous force to demonstrate that. Whether that’s Amazon acquiring our national heartthrob (the man who parachuted the Queen into the London Olympics) and demonstrating that this is still the premier adult-focused franchise in entertainment, or the BBC self-immolating its international reputation as part of a near-sighted cost-saving exercise, it’s there to see. If Britain had a demagogic leader (and it’s a small mercy that we don’t), they would slap tariffs on Paddington bear and Dua Lipa and Wallace & Gromit and Adolescence and assume that the world will come to them. For entirely self-deprecating reasons, that’s effectively what has happened with the BBC News website. Let’s hope it works better than Mr Trump’s tariff programme.

Because we’ve just seen the cost of American exceptionalism. The brutish belief in selling power denies the realities of globalisation, even if American soft power muscle can maintain its hold (for now). Britain is a more delicately poised nation but even more disproportionately influential, culturally. And if you don’t give a shit about that, you don’t give a shit about Britain.

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Below the line for subscribers, something a little different. A couple of weeks ago, Marc Maron – the American comedian, actor and podcaster – posted my Substack piece on him to his Instagram account, which has 786k followers. So I thought it would be interesting to reveal what sort of traffic/subscription conversion comes as a result of that Black Swan promotion. But only for paying subscribers!