If this were the most perverse consequence of having the global lingua franca, we might still think it was well worth it. But there is another. I wonder how much of Britain’s economic sloth, its resistance to reform, comes from being able to coast on the pre-eminence of English. Countries that seem stuck often have a cushion that explains their inertia. For France and Italy, it is tourism. If an appreciable chunk of national output comes from visitors, that can cover a lot of sins. Natural resources are another example of an illusory advantage, as Nigerians and Venezuelans have found over the decades. Even the dollar, that “exorbitant privilege”, backfires on the US to the extent that it allows the country to avoid hard budgeting questions. Hence the debt problem.
If Britain has a cushion, it is language. (As well as perhaps geographic location.) It guarantees not just a minimum of outside interest in a fading power, from rightwingers or otherwise, but hard income. As the main anglophone economy outside America — an obvious place for Emea corporate headquarters, a natural destination for bright graduates — we can get away with an awful lot. But that means we try to.