Lesley Riddoch: Short answer to a ruined reputation

Observed from the outside, British influence in the world is shrinking and radical change is necessary

'TRAVEL plans unaffected by violence in Britain" ran the headline in last week's Malta Times. Bad luck for Britain – in deepest summer no other stories could compete for the front page slot.

Actually, none of Malta's visiting citizens were caught up in the riots – though the High Commission in London closed early when rioters gathered on Piccadilly.

"Emergency phone numbers were posted on the front door before staff left and we continued to offer assistance to Maltese nationals by phone until late in the evening," an apologetic spokesman told the paper.

A Maltese tour operator said cancellation requests had been received but, "unless we are informed by the Foreign Affairs Ministry it is not safe to travel, we do not cancel tours".

Last week, in this most British of former colonies, the UK was momentarily regarded as a partial warzone.

Alex Salmond's efforts to extract Scotland from the mess may have ignited debate back home, but had no impact here. Educated Maltese people – like others across the world – use "England" and "Britain" interchangeably.

So while parts of England burned, the "foreign" press viewed Britain – all of it – as a basketcase.

That may be a harder mess to clean up than the rubble strewn streets.

Embassies closing, staff leaving for their own protection, tour operators waiting for Foreign Office guidance about safety to travel – all of this normally applies to distant, troubled destinations like tsunami-struck Japan, the tornado-blighted Gulf or the war-torn nations of the Arab Spring. With one difference – very little of the destruction there was shown the same day on international TV.

As a result, last week old Blighty got a day pass into the Club of Lost Tourist Destinations.

As sobering for Britain as the loss of AAA credit rating across the Big Pond.

Of course the tourist is a notoriously forgetful beast. Despite civil war and a fatal shark attack, Egypt is heading for a record number of tourists this year.

But in Malta the concern remains.

"What's going on in Britain?" "Will the Olympic Games be cancelled now?" "Are you worried about going home?"

All of this reflects more than just anxiety about a one-off flare-up of violence in a distant land. For the 400,000 people of this southern Mediterranean island – a British colony from 1814-1964 – social unrest in the "motherland" has a profound psychological impact.

Few places are more self-consciously British (though driving styles are unquestionably Italian).

And the catalogue of self-inflicted civic disasters troubling Britain – banking collapse, MPs' expenses, newspaper phone-hacking, fat-cat bonuses – is prompting this little nation to rethink its strategic interests.

"Is Britain part of Malta's future or past," asks Ranier Fsadni, a Times columnist who maintains that neighbouring giant Turkey has gone cool on EU membership, preferring instead to consolidate regional power and a relationship with the emerging BRIC nations.

Soon, observes Fsadni, language will reflect modern geopolitical reality. Malta will become an important part of Turkey's Middle West, not a forgotten part of Europe's Middle East.

According to the Turkish writer Kerem ktem "not the European Union nor Nato nor the US can maintain the hegemony they have enjoyed for much of the last five decades".

Turkey's embassies have expanded to ensure a global presence. Russia is Turkey's largest single trade partner and last year the visa regime was scrapped – it's already been scrapped with almost all of Turkey's eastern neighbours.

ktem concludes this is "a geography in which the European Union and the US have lost their central location".

Sobering stuff.

The faltering performance of Europe's Big Beast economies has combined with summer violence in the home of cucumber sandwiches and cricket to make the European sphere of influence look like a steadily declining one. And not just for holidays abroad.

The world is changing and key players in "old" Europe have not.

Take Britain. Tough talk and sticking plaster solutions are the characteristic British way of dealing with social problems.

When things go badly we have inquiries, throw people in jail (or not), moralise in the media, spend money funding youth clubs in the offending/affected areas (for a couple of years) and otherwise continue with business as usual.

We are not trying to get to the root of our problems nor are we prepared to make radical changes – probably why we listen so intently to advice from Broken America. Instead we chase ambulances – directing cash and attention to the location of accidents not the problems that keep producing them.

The biggest single problem with Britain is the failure to invest massively in early years care. I don't mean nurseries for four-year-olds. Or pilot projects for the most difficult families where social work has had to intervene. I mean the right to high-quality affordable kindergarten care for every child aged between 1-4 years.

North European neighbours like Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Germany have studied the economics (never mind the social justice arguments) of early intervention to ensure the state is an excellent and constant third parent. Not with hindsight, in emergencies or on occasions – but as standard.

Just as democracies don't have famines, child-centred societies don't have riots – whether they are traditional family-centred countries like Malta or modern nations with equalising, welfare provision like Norway.

Scotland and England lie between these two child-centred extremes – pretending family life can guarantee love, security, stability and, above all, daily engagement for every child. It can't. Pretending our economy isn't strong enough to bear the strain of extra money spent on weans. It must.

Nobel prize-winning economist James Heckman has shown society gets the biggest return on investment by spending on three-year-olds – and that's only because no figures are available on the 0-3 cohort. The curve dwindles to virtually zero by the age of 19. Children from dysfunctional families denied access to the socialising impact of kindergarten are almost born to fail. Cash spent retro-fitting skills on to broken teenagers is relatively ineffective.

A small mountain of evidence is available – but we shrink from the change needed to transform the life chances of all our children.

Former Labour minister Frank Field is arguing for a huge shift in resources to fund early years care. If we don't listen – again – hell mend us.