Ouagadougou, folks. The place that sounds like a cocktail you'd order after your third divorce. And it's made a decision. A big one. It has severed diplomatic relations with France. Yes, *la République* has been told to pack its berets and piss off. And according to the breathless headline I'm supposed to be reporting, this is a 'victory for UK soft power influence.' Soft power? The UK? The same soft power that gave us Brexit, Truss's lettuce, and a national dish that's basically battered fish? Pull the other one, it's got a union jack on it.
Let us parse this glorious absurdity. Burkina Faso, a landlocked lump of Sahalian dust that's currently being run by a junta of blokes who look like they've just wandered off a Nollywood set, has decided that French influence is so last century. They've ejected the ambassador, told the cultural institutes to do one, and probably cancelled their subscriptions to *Le Monde*. And somewhere in Whitehall, a mandarin is spluttering into his lapsang souchong: 'Good show! This is clearly our doing!'
How, pray, did UK soft power achieve this? Did we deploy the BBC World Service to whisper sweet nothings about the benefits of British imperialism? Did we send in a troupe of Royal Shakespeare Company actors to perform 'Macbeth' in Mossi? Or did we just quietly point out that France's post-colonial legacy is a bit naff and that maybe they'd prefer a system where the prime minister has to resign every five minutes for a laugh? The logic is as flimsy as a tenner in a hurricane.
Look, I've been to Ouagadougou. The airport gin is passable, but the real story is that every geopolitical move in Francophone Africa is a game of chess played by drunken toddlers. France has been losing pieces for years. Mali, Niger, now Burkina. It's not because some British diplomat winked at a defence minister. It's because the French military interventions have all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop and the same success rate. The locals are fed up. They want to try something else. Anything else. Even if that something else is a Wagner Group-backed strongman who thinks democracy is a type of cheese.
And the UK's role? We're the bloke at the bar who shouts 'You tell 'em, mate!' before passing out. Our soft power is a myth, a self-congratulatory narrative we tell ourselves to feel better about the fact we can't afford a hard power. We have an aircraft carrier that leaks, a prime minister who talks to plants, and a foreign policy that alternates between 'strong and stable' and 'oh god, what now?'
So here's the real takeaway: Burkina Faso has told France to sling its hook. Good for them. But to frame this as a UK triumph is like claiming credit for a bus crash because you once gave the driver a dirty look. It's a desperate, tin-eared attempt to pretend that we matter. We don't. Not really. We're a soggy island full of angry people who can't decide whether to have tea or storm the bastille.
But don't worry, the Foreign Office will issue a statement. It will use words like 'commitment', 'partnership', and 'shared values'. It will be utterly meaningless. And somewhere in Ouagadougou, a bloke will sell me a warm beer and say, 'Welcome to Burkina Faso. The French have gone. Now we just need to fix the road.' And I'll drink to that.
Because at the end of the day, the only soft power that matters is a cold gin and tonic. Preferably without a sodding olive.
