Transcript Does Sport Matter to Diplomacy?

Jeremy Browne MP Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Simon Anholt Independent Policy Advisor

John Steele Chief Executive Officer, Youth Sport Trust

Chair: Mihir Bose Writer and Broadcaster

30 May 2012

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Transcript: Does Sport Matter to Diplomacy?

Mihir Bose: I have with me a very distinguished panel to talk about sport and diplomacy. As you're aware, in two months’ time the Olympic Games are coming to this country. What you probably don't know is that what we are welcoming is a friendly invasion of a foreign power. It has no army. It has no state, but it has specified all sorts of rules which will apply through to the height of the Olympic village, and who the sponsors can advertise in during the Games. No sponsor hostile to the Olympic movement; they’d all signed up by the previous government, may I say and quite rightly so in some ways.

And the Olympic movement of course thinks of itself like the Vatican of sport. Stalin may have said of the Pope, ‘how many divisions does the Pope have?‘ The Olympics says, ‘how many sponsors do you have?’ Which is probably a more important question these days.

But the question is, how does sport fit in with diplomacy? Can it actually help diplomacy? It's very interesting, in recent years we've seen politicians play an active role in getting international events. Tony Blair played a huge role in Singapore. Vladimir Putin got Socci which used to be the summer camp for a certain Josef Stalin and had only one ski lift, the Winter Olympics. And the World Cup of 2018 despite the fact that Prince William went to plead for England and even I'm told promised somebody some wedding day tickets but FIFA didn't vote for him.

Anyway. Enough of me talking about this. I would like to introduce the panel to you. Our first speaker will be Jeremy Browne who is Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He was the Liberal Democratic Shadow Spokesman on Foreign Affairs. And his responsibilities, I'm told, extend from South East Asia, the far East, Caribbean, Central America, human rights, consulate policy, migration... no wonder William Hague can swan round the world, because this poor chap is doing all the work.

Next speaker will be John Steele, who used to be a Chartered Surveyor but then went into the oval ballgame, played rugby with great distinction, and also managed rugby, managed Twickenham in a very controversial, high profile part of his career, and is now of course running the Youth Sport Trust which will have a big role to play in how legacy works after the Olympic Games.

And our final speaker of the panel is Simon Anholt, who is an independent policy advisor on national, regional, advising national, regional, city governments. He's created three major international surveys in 2005, the Anholt Nation Brand Index. But I was talking to him just before and he regrets using the word ‘brand’. He wished he had copyrighted it, because it's used so www.chathamhouse.org 2 Transcript: Does Sport Matter to Diplomacy? often these days. And he has launched and now edits the quarterly journal, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy.

So without further ado, could I ask Jeremy to address us, please.

Jeremy Browne: Mihir, I thank you. It's a great privilege to be introduced by a distinguished sports writer, particularly one who knows a lot about cricket. And it's good for me to be here today. What I thought I would do is inevitably when the media ask questions – and you may choose to take the same approach yourself – talking about sport and diplomacy they talk about the vexatious issues, the difficult issues that government faces, particularly on who we grant visas to to attend the Olympic Games. And there's been a lot of attention, quite understandably and rightly in recent days as well about the conditions that English football supporters will face when they go to for 2012 European Championships.

So what I thought I'd do, you may or may not choose to touch upon those issues, but what I thought I'd do is try and spend my five or six minutes primarily looking at the upsides, the benefits – in diplomatic terms – of hosting an event as prestigious and widely understood as the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games which of course are now less than two months away. And maybe I'll divide it for ease of reference into: before the Games; during the Games; and after the Games.

So before the Games, I think it's almost impossible to explain fully quite how powerful the Olympic brand is around the world. Almost every single event that we do, if we call it an Olympics event, three times more people attend than if it were a normal event and more prestigious and distinguished people also attend the event.

And it's a huge opportunity for us. We have the Jubilee celebrations this weekend. We had the Royal Wedding, that was just mentioned, last year. But there are not that many opportunities that a country gets where literally billions of people turn on their TVs to look at that country. And in the case of the Olympics, for a sustained period of time. And we have had many, many events right around the world to count down to 100 days to go or a year to go.

And they've been a real opportunity for us. I suppose if I give you a case study – Prince Harry in Rio. You might remember him playing beach volleyball, part of our wider sort of great campaign. Rio of course, the next hosts of the summer Olympics after us. Those are pictures that are www.chathamhouse.org 3 Transcript: Does Sport Matter to Diplomacy? communicated around the world and they convey a powerful message about Britain.

But we even have in sort of a lower key style a lot of the Olympic teams that are going to be based in different parts of Britain. The Japanese team is at Loughborough University, I think, for example. The Malaysians are at Bath University. So as I say, in a more low key way, we're already forging links in the first case between Japan and the East Midlands in terms of economic opportunities, the West Country and Malaysia in the wider South East Asian economy.

And I think the Paralympic Games will be a huge opportunity for us as well. I think the Paralympics naturally lend themselves to being hosted in a country with enlightened social attitudes where a sort of message about the value of each individual and how people can overcome adversity to realise their full potential, I think that rings true within, as I say, a more liberal society like our own. And I think the Paralympics will be hugely successful, too.

During the Olympics, it's important for us, you know, if you were to say to somebody, anyone in the world, name five global cities. Name your top five. And I think people would say New York, and maybe they would start now to look further east than they would have done a decade or two ago. But I think most people would have London in their top five. And it is important for us that our capital city is regarded, internationally, as a global hub. And for the duration of the Olympic Games will become, if you like, the world's capital city and that we can showcase what London has to offer.

So for example, we are working on the assumption that we will have as many as 120 heads of state or heads of government here for the Olympics, most of whom would be for the opening ceremony, but some may come for other parts of the Games. I'd be surprised if the new Jamaican Prime Minister didn't want to come for the men's 100 metres final, but you can never take anything completely for granted in sport. Or in politics, for that matter. So we will see what happens.

But think of a sort of G20 summit, the sheer size, but the opportunities that that presents. Well, this is six times more heads of government than a G20 summit. And they will have opportunities not just to go to the Games, or to go to formal receptions at Buckingham Palace, prestigious though those both are, but also wider commercial opportunities, get them into other parts of the country, meetings in practical terms with British government ministers and others.

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So that's a good opportunity. It's a great commercial opportunity. Of course there will be a lot of people coming to Britain, in some cases who had never been here before, seeing what we have to offer. But we're also holding formal events. So in Lancaster House just across the way we have a day themed just on Brazilian business opportunities and a day themed just on Chinese business opportunities as the previous hosts and the next hosts of the summer Olympics. But we'll be holding many other events along those lines.

And great cultural opportunities. I will say to people even if you don't like sport you'll like the Olympic Games because it will be like a festival and people will look at London as the city in the world that has the most top ten museums [sic], that has outdoor music concerts with globally famous musicians playing, art exhibitions. And right around the country. Mexico, for example, who are just about to hold the G20 summit which David Cameron will attend, they're playing their football games in Newcastle, Coventry and Cardiff so there are opportunities for three cities to further their commercial and cultural links with a major country like Mexico.

And then after the Olympic Games, what are the opportunities? Well, we just talked, actually the next Winter Olympics is in Russia and then they hold the 2018 Football World Cup. So the Olympics and the World Cup being the two absolutely sort of top, top ranking global sporting events. The next summer Olympics are in and they hold the 2014 football World Cup.

So the opportunities for us to transfer for commercial as well as diplomatic gain are expertise that we have acquired during the process of the last seven years of organising and then hosting the Olympic Games are huge. And we have had large numbers of people from the Brazilian foreign ministry and others working with us, embedded, if you like, in our organisation.

That's a great opportunity for us to develop friendly relations, but it's a great opportunity for companies involved in design or marketing or other aspects of the Games to sell their wares. We're developing those lasting political and cultural relations as well.

And let me finish with a final sort of reflection. What is it that Britain offers? If you were trying to sort of market Britain internationally, what do we want to stand out as being? I think we offer two things, which on the face of it look slightly in conflict with each other.

The first thing I think we generally offer – this is how I perceive other people to perceive us, really, but I think the first thing we offer is a sort of sense of reliability and competence. It's a slightly dated, slightly staid attribute but it's

www.chathamhouse.org 5 Transcript: Does Sport Matter to Diplomacy? the sense that an Englishman's word is his bond and that if you let the British do something they do it properly. That's attribute one.

Attribute one is that we are sort of creative, slightly zany. We're the country that gave you Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McClaren and more recently any other number of fashion or musical, cultural figures. And people like that. They respond to that. I remember being in India and seeing Adele had won huge numbers of Grammys in the award ceremony in Los Angeles. The British government is not claiming credit for Adele's musical success – not yet, It hasn't got to that stage. But huge cultural resonance, that it's a young British woman from south east England who is recognised internationally for her creativity and people respond to her music.

So can we combine those two attributes? I think the Olympic Games does that extremely powerfully. I mean, here is a very big, expensive project, designed on time, ready to roll. I think it will be extremely well organised and people will respond positively to that.

But also at the same time, I think it will be held with a lightness of touch, with a creativity. You can even see that in the architecture. You have buildings which are both functional and imaginative at the same time. And my hope is that, when we finish, when we put away the bunting after the end of the Paralympic Games, people will look at London and look at Britain from right around the world and feel that we reinforce in an extremely positive way the attributes that I believe we have.

Simon Anholt: I think I feel a slogan coming on. 'The UK – Dependably Bonkers'. I wanted to talk about why these things matter very briefly and also why they may occasionally backfire, equally briefly.

Why do they matter? Well, we live in an age, I think, in which there's really only one remaining superpower and that's international public opinion. In one way or another, all of us, whether we're corporates or governments, we are doing diplomacy with that superpower of international public opinion in its various forms – as the market, as tourists, as investors, as buyers, as choosers.

The fate of nations lies in the hands of international public opinion. And that's where these things matter. Anything like a major sporting event which gives us access to large chunks of international public opinion is going to matter. And that's why governments these days are obsessed with their images. www.chathamhouse.org 6 Transcript: Does Sport Matter to Diplomacy?

Mihir, I didn't invent the word ‘brand’. The term that I'm sometimes accused of having invented is 'nation brand' and I do regret it. All I meant was that countries have got their reputations in the modern age and those reputations are incredibly important to them because we're all connected in one way or another.

Unfortunately, the term has become distorted over the years into nation branding which is a completely false idea; the idea that if a country doesn't happen to like its image it can fix it or enhance it or manipulate it using the techniques of commercial marketing communications. It can't. There is no evidence to show that people are very interested in what countries say about themselves.

What does, if anything, change the image of a country worldwide? What does, if anything, make people admire one country more than another? Well, I've been researching these things for 10 or 15 years now. And as Mihir mentioned, I run a very large survey called the Nation Brands Index.

It's my birthday today. I'm 51. I don't know why I'm working. But I think this entitles me to promote. I don't normally, but somebody did tell me the other day that the Nation Brands Index is one of the largest social surveys ever conducted. It's 134 billion data points so far, talking to us about how people see other countries and why. And why people change their minds about countries, and if they do.

And the simple answer I've discovered, after 134 billion answers to questions, is they don't. People simply never do change their minds about other countries. Even sometimes when they're almost completely obliged to. Why don't they change their minds about other countries? Because they don't think about other countries very much.

Like many of you, if you're here at Chatham House almost by definition, I am something of a cosmopolitan. I grew up thinking that foreigners were more interesting than English people and that other countries were more interesting than my own. Over the last 51 years, I've discovered slowly and painfully that this is not the case. The vast majority of people are not cosmopolitan. The vast majority of people are racial psychopaths. They don't think that foreigners are very interesting or important at all. They think that other countries are inferior to their own and they think the inhabitants of those countries are inferior to themselves.

And that's why they don't change their minds about other countries because they almost never think about them. So when I get a call from a third rate country that I've never heard of before saying, ‘We want to make ourselves www.chathamhouse.org 7 Transcript: Does Sport Matter to Diplomacy? more famous,’ I sometimes say, ‘Well, who are you kidding?’ I mean, most people only ever think about three countries, the research suggests. They think about their own country a little bit, not very much. They think about the of America because it's kind of there. And they think about a third country which varies according to who you're asking. It may be where their daughter is studying or where they want to go on holiday or what have you.

Now that's what it all matters. The question is can a major event like an Olympics really make a difference? Well, the answer is yes and no. It rather depends on where you stand in the first place. And it can be a double edged sword. The talk about the [2012] South African World Cup provides a very interesting example of how it can be a double edged sword.

The conventional wisdom about the World Cup is that it cost them, in fact wasted them, an enormous amount of money. But at least it improved 's image. I don't know where people got that idea from. According to my research, it did exactly the opposite. In about 15 out of the 23 countries where I surveyed perceptions of countries, the image of South Africa declined quite steeply after the World Cup.

Why is this? Because the conventional wisdom is that if the thing is a success, if it runs off without a hitch, if you don't have – God forbid – a terrorist attack and nothing goes wrong, it will brand your nation. The reality is that people don't notice whether it's well or badly organised. Or rather, they only notice if it's very badly organised. If it's catastrophic, they'll notice it. If it's well organised, they won't. They won't say, ‘Oh, well done, South Africa for organising this sporting event. Oh, well done Britain.’ It's what they expect.

What will happen, however, is that billions of people who don't visit the country in person will see hours and hours and hours of video footage of what's going on in the country in between the matches or the sporting fixtures, because those TV crews have got to send something out and they can't just send back wall to wall football or athletics.

And so the simple question is, if you are sending back hours and hours and hours of free uncensored documentaries about the reality of your country, is that going to make people think better of you or worse? South Africa, since the end of had been selling a vision of itself which was calculated to make the rest of the world believe that South Africa was now part of Western Europe. And with their investment promotion and their tourist promotion they sent out, as these bodies will do, a highly idealised version of the country.

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Then the football came along and people saw slums and they saw poverty and they saw great areas which were rather short on development and equality. And they said to themselves, ‘Oh my God, South Africa is in Africa.’ And this set back the image of South Africa by about two years. In many, many countries the image of South Africa was actually worse in 2010 than it had been in 2008. Exactly the same thing that I predict is going to happen in Brazil with the World Cup and the Olympic Games, because I personally have seen worse slums in Brazil than I've ever seen anywhere in Africa. And I think that that's the danger.

The UK? We have nothing to worry about. We're already one of the most admired countries on Earth. God knows we do little to deserve it these days, but these things do hang around. It makes me wonder why the Government feels it needs to send out these vain and paranoid messages around the world saying, ‘We're great.’ People already think we are. And if you send out messages reminding them, it's just going to piss them off, frankly.

Is this Olympics going to damage our reputation? No, of course not, because we've got nothing very much to be ashamed of here. In comparison with the rest of the world, everything that people can see here during the Olympics, barring, God forbid, something awful, is going to impress them.

Do we need to do it if we've got such a good image? Yes, of course we do, because you never own a good reputation, you only rent it and you need to keep paying that rent. So long live the Olympics.

John Steele: As a quick aside, I was on the Tube [London Underground] coming here as many of you may have done also, very hot and very stuffy. And I was reading a certain paper, and there was a survey, some of you may have seen it, about what we're most scared of. And guess what the top of that list was? Public speaking. Number one. Public speaking is what we're most scared of, and I looked down, number two is death. So anyway. I've got to say, why am I here?

There were a couple of specific questions that we were asked to comment on and I'd like to sort of stick to those. The first was, can hosting the Olympics help the host engage new and emerging powers? And quite simply, for me the answer is yes, it can. The greatest show on Earth, and it really is the greatest show on Earth, provides an opportunity to engage with emerging nations more than any other event. Which of these are emerging powers is really

www.chathamhouse.org 9 Transcript: Does Sport Matter to Diplomacy? down to political and diplomatic judgement, and I'm neither a politician nor, I've been told many times, a diplomat.

But I do believe the Olympic Games provides a very, very unique opportunity to engage with a large number of nations, much more than some of the other big events like the FIFA World Cup.

And it's not just about… it will happen, therefore our brand improves and the legacy will sort of evolve. You have to work something like the Olympics. It's not just enough to be holding it, you have to think about what you want from it and use it as a vehicle. It doesn't just happen.

And there are initiatives in place such as the International Inspiration development programme which have enhanced the UK's reputation with developing nations. And it has been part of a wider government policy to build ties with emerging countries.

UK Sport... Mihir didn't mention, I was Chief Executive of UK Sport for a number of years and I see Ben Calverly is here. He headed up the team which was about international influence through sport. So how do we influence the sporting environment but also turn that on its head? How do we influence internationally, using sport as a vehicle?

And there's a quote from the website there. ‘The International Inspiration work has contributed through public diplomacy towards an increase in the UK's ability to influence, together with a great deal of international goodwill towards the UK.’ And International Inspiration uses the power of sport, high quality physical education and play to transform the lives of people around the world, especially young people. It aimed to reach 20 countries and 12 million young people from when the bid was won to the staging of the Games, and that has happened.

I bet a lot of people here are going, ‘I hadn't heard about that.’ You hear a lot of doom stories about legacy. This is a huge legacy sitting as a result of London. Partners produced this legacy. It has happened and a real sustainable impact to young people around the world, which the bid was won in Singapore to bring the Games to London. So it's real and it exists.

A key aspect of it has been allowing young people to share their experiences of sport with their peers around the world. This isn't drop some kit off, play a bit of sport, you go back in a few years and the netball ring is turned into a chicken coop or something. This is sustainable behaviours, understanding why sport can make a difference in people's lives, especially young people's lives. And I have witnessed it first hand. I've seen it in a number of countries www.chathamhouse.org 10 Transcript: Does Sport Matter to Diplomacy? including Brazil, where in some incredibly difficult, poverty-stricken areas, sport has been this light, this catalyst for change that can give hope.

So it not only can be done, it has been done by the hosting of 2012 Games. And no other global event engages at all levels quite like the Olympics. I've been fortunate to be involved with the summer [Olympics], the Winter [Olympics] and the Paralympics and I remember the first time I went into an athlete village which is where all the athletes from around the world live during the Games. And in there you have a dining hall. And I can only describe it as an aircraft hangar. I mean, it is enormous. And you've got athletes from all over the world eating under one roof. And you have at the same table, athletes from different nations whose countries could be at war. You just look at it and you say, ‘How does this happen?’

And forgive me Jeremy, but where politicians have failed to unite people or get round the table and discuss issues, sport has succeeded. Quite phenomenal how that can happen. It's not about what's happening on the pitch, or the track or the pool, it's about this common language of sport and this unifying power of sport.

The second area is about a country's image and brand, how is it affected by international sporting events? Well, I agree with a lot of what Simon said, but I would suggest that a country's image, it's not affected necessarily by the success or failure of its sporting teams, but actually, by the hosting of its events. And the UK's reputation has been lifted by successful events such as Euro '96. That was fantastic, in terms of, everyone was talking about hooliganism, would it work? And it did.

But in the same way, the Picketts Lock stadium challenges in 2001 certainly damaged the UK brand and presented a significant challenge when bidding for London 2012. I think within our borders, national sporting success can play a large part of the feel-good factor and morale, but I would suggest that our ability to be a good host to other nations is more important than our own sporting success on the international stage.

At Youth Sport Trust, where my current role is, I mean we'd argue that maintaining that brand, if you like, if there's been a surge of goodwill or brand enhancement, is about the effective legacy. Creating that from the high profile events. And we hear a lot of about unmaintained or unused facilities in places like Athens after the Greek Olympics.

More importantly, I think, it's clear that many past Olympics have also failed to deliver a sustainable sporting success. Actually how has the sporting system

www.chathamhouse.org 11 Transcript: Does Sport Matter to Diplomacy? changed to engage the whole nation? And I think London is in a really good place in terms of delivering that.

Lastly then, can or should international sport be used to support political change? Boycotting sporting events, we've seen it. It's hit our headlines over the years. Making political statements through sport is not always the most successful or effective way of presenting or promoting a cause. And that's why a lot of international federations will have strict rules on political involvement in national governing bodies.

The danger of using international sport I think is often the characters become the focus, the athlete, the player, rather than the cause. And I've always felt very uncomfortable when sport is used as a political tool. I sort of feel that it should be left to exist away from some of the cruel realities of politics.

But there are plenty of examples of the power of sport being cynically used for political gain from the tragedies of Munich, right back into the Berlin Olympics. Jesse Owens, and Adolf Hitler's aspirations for the promotion of the Aryan race being shattered by Jesse Owens' success.

So it is almost inextricably linked with life and politics. And I think to somehow feel it can be set aside is like saying, ‘Well, religion is not part of our make- up.’ It is fundamentally huge in our lives and it's there, it exists. And I think not to utilise the power of sport for good is to miss an opportunity.

Perhaps I can leave you with some compelling words from the great man himself... Simon was talking about the soccer World Cup in South Africa. But the flip side to that of course was earlier in '95, the rugby World Cup in South Africa, where – who I've never met, I know Mihir, you have you lucky chap – but the great man used sport not cynically but used it as a way of galvanising and bringing together a nation.

And his words always resonated with me. ‘Sport has the power to change the world. The power to inspire. The power to unite people in a way that little else can. It speaks to people in a language they understand. Sport can create hope where once there was only despair.’ Thank you.

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