and numerous foreign visits helped serve as a sort of giant “buy British” campaign. It’s one of the reasons that American tourists flock to London hotels, that international plutocrats covet English country estates, and that Chinese parents send their children to British schools. In this sense, the queen, who was also head of state of 15 other nations including Australia and Canada, was the ultimate brand ambassador.
that the monarchy generated an annual “gross uplift” to the UK economy of 1.8 billion pounds, far in excess of its annual running costs of 300 million pounds, while accumulating tangible and intangible assets worth 67 billion pounds. Unsurprisingly, the queen featured prominently in studies measuring Britain’s “soft power”.
Yet the country cannot take this stable global image for granted. During the last decade of Elizabeth’s reign, Scotland narrowly voted not to secede from her kingdom. Two years later Britain chose to leave the European Union, creating new tensions in Northern Ireland. Prime Minister Boris Johnson suspended parliament in an attempt to ram through the Brexit deal, and then signed an international treaty with the European Union, which he subsequently threatened to break.