Monolingual Britain is ill-equipped to understand the modern world

In 2002, Labour took one of the worst decisions of its 13 year long government. The Education Secretary, Estelle Morris, said it would no longer be compulsory for a foreign language to be taught in secondary schools.

It was an extraordinary decision by a government whose prime minister, Tony Blair, proclaimed he wanted Britain to be closer to Europe.

Labour’s contempt for foreign language teaching has resulted in the deep monolingual philistinism endemic in the higher reaches of the UK establishment. Very few ministers, senior civil servants, business executives or editors can turn a page of Le Monde or Die Welt and understand a word.

When Theresa May held her 2017 Lancaster House press conference to announce the first stage of her failed Brexit policy, she invited question from the journalists. After taking some from Westminster reporters she generously said correspondents from European papers should be allowed a question.

Anyone from Elle Pace she asked? The poor man from El Pais  looked askance at the inability of the British prime minister to pronounce the name of his paper.

At the time Ms, now Baroness, Morris axed foreign language teaching, I protested as Europe Minister – arguing that a “monolingual Britain will not survive in a globalised economy.”

I got a cross letter in response.

Labour, like the Conservatives, had bought into the oft-repeated cliché that since English is the lingua franca of global business, no-one needs to learn to speak another language.

A decade after Estelle Morris’s decision, the number of pupils studying French had  halved. This summer just 2,864 students in England took German A level. In Wales, that dropped to just 77.

Spanish has now overtaken French, but between them, both languages have fewer than 8,000 students – out of the 737,000 students who sat A levels this year.

The CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce wring their hands, but put no pressure on politicians. Papers publish pompous editorials lamenting the loss of interest in European language, and then revert to trashing Europe as a millstone around England’s neck.

In 2012, Michael Gove and Liz Truss, the then Education Secretary and his junior education minister, grandly announced they would reinstate compulsory language teaching, and even extend it to primary schools.

It won Gove and Ms Truss headlines, but nothing happened, each year fewer and fewer pupils have taken foreign language exams. Every other education system in successful, world competitive economies in Europe insists on foreign language teaching, as any conversation with a business executive, minister or senior civil servant anywhere in Europe can confirm.

The Modern Languages Association says in the three year period between 2013-2016 universities and colleges shut down 651 departments teaching foreign languages. With fewer and fewer students at school studying foreign language,  it is hard for universities to keep open fully-staffed departments.

 It would be wrong to blame Brexit, as Estelle Morris’s decision was taken when leaving the EU was just a call from the Bill Cash or Dennis Skinner margins of politics. But the thousands upon thousands of articles pouring scorn on Europe and claiming that English was all one needs to prosper in the world have contributed to the mono-lingualisation of Britain.

We have a prime minister who speaks French and a leader of the opposition who speaks Spanish. Boris Johnson can catch up on what Marine le Pen says and Jeremy Corbyn on what Nicolas Maduro thinks.

But they are part of a political class that is denying Britain the tools to understand the modern world.