Who do you think you are kidding Mr Putin?

As Britain is mocked by Russia as a small island which no one listens to, one writer begs to differ and asks the question:

ONE question above all others has mesmerised the British security services throughout the G20 summit in St Petersburg: is there a Scottish double agent inside the Kremlin?

For months now, Scottish Secretary Michael Moore and Foreign Secretary William Hague have been issuing warnings that Scotland will lose whatever influence it has on the world stage by voting for i ndependence next September.

Their narrative runs thus: only as part of the United Kingdom can Scotland exert any global persuasion.

And then, with one insidious intervention, Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, secures his two-night, all- expenses stay at next year’s SNP party conference with the putdown: ‘The UK is a small island that no one pays any attention to.’

Was this the quid pro quo for the SNP’s pledge to ditch Trident in an independent Scotland? Alex Salmond may have enjoyed a hearty chortle over Mr Peskov’s reported remarks, but they show that the Russians – even after a century – have still not heeded the lessons of history.

It’s doubtful that President Putin will be sending his spokesman to a darkened room with a cyanide pill any time soon. And it’s certain that almost every other country represented at the G20 will have had a gleeful giggle at Mr Peskov’s remarks – while publicly deploring them.

Each of them, at some point in the last 50 years, will have had cause to resent the subtle influence of Britain curling around its doorstep and insinuating itself into their cultural lives.

Hegemony

Britain, though, has long endured the jibes of those who would love to possess just a fraction of its 300-year cultural and social hegemony over their lands and peoples. ‘England has 42 religions and only two sauces,’ observed Voltaire, native of a country with a sign above its door that reads: ‘Wipe your feet here.’

And there’s this from George Mikes, the Hungarian author of How to be an Alien. ‘Continental people have a sex life; the English have hot-water bottles.’ Perhaps he was proud that in one pursuit, and one pursuit only, does Hungary lead the world – the production of hard-core sex films.

Russia, it seems, is still wedded to the idea that power means having millions of people living under a brutal and corrupt regime which likes to spend its nation’s wealth on amassing an army so big that it still takes half a day for them to conduct that Kremlin march-past every year.

Since the Communist revolution in 1917, Russia has squandered its vast natural reserves and huge cultural and artistic legacy in enslaving its people and separating itself from the world.

When it sacrificed the flower of its youth to help deliver the world from a Nazi future, Russia had the opportunity to take its place as one of the great civilisations.

Once again, t hough, it retreated into isolation and brutalised its own. The Soviet Union was merely the poor man’s Nazis. Until the inevitable collapse of its political system, the commissars spent all their energy and wealth killing other cultures and trying to match up to the US.

The first sign of their defeat, only a few decades later, was a proliferation of Uncle Sam’s fast food franchises. One can only imagine the horror of Lenin and Stalin if some wraith from the future had told them that 70 years of ideological brutality would be trounced by an army of milkshakes and hamburgers.

Since then, the Russians have given us corrupt billionaire entrepreneurs – after flogging its industries to them – and world- class gangsters. It still has imaginative methods of dispatching overseas opponents, so no change there.

It has become the go-to state for psychotic despots who require a hug. The evil of its leaders has been a tragedy for ordinary Russians and for the rest of us too.

The sheer volume and diversity of Russia’s peoples and their language, their music and their literature, their wealth and their technology could have made us all Russian.

Instead, they are still bumping people off in the night and the world still speaks English.

If you have never done so, you should listen to the wonderful Russian national anthem. In it is conveyed all the pride, glory and tragedy of this desiccated old nation.

We in Britain have long since given up any pretence of being t he world’s pre - eminent authority on everything.

The size of Brazil, India and China and the productive capacities of their vast populations mean they will soon be able to join the US and Russia as superpowers – if their corrupt governments don’t destroy their economies.

There is a view in this country that the so- called decline of our armed services in the last generation has diminished our ability to act decisively in theatres of geopolitical stress (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan).

Charles Moore, The Spectator’s finest columnist, in an article highlighting our state of emasculation over Syria, pointed out that in 1980 Britain spent twice as much on pensions as it did on defence. Today, it is six times as much.

This is a bad thing, according to Mr Moore, especially when our spending on foreign aid is ring-fenced. Like the Russians, Mr Moore seems to be equating increased influence with greater military strength.

Obsession

We need to let this obsession go and cease our endless search for lost power. Instead, we should reflect more on influence that isn’t expensively bought and carried on the backs of armies and rockets.

There are two ways of interpreting the fact of our ageing population and the concomitant pension provision.

Do we regard it as a bad thing because of the demands on resources? Or do we celebrate it as evidence of how good and healthy it is to be brought up in this country?

A measure of Britain’s world influence was provided last year by the international affairs magazine Monocle in its annual ‘soft power’ survey. It concluded that Britain is the most powerful nation on Earth.

Joseph Nye, one of America’s most celebrated academics, coined the phrase ‘soft power’ more than 20 years ago to describe the ways in which a nation can influence the world without having to use economic or military might.

The fields of culture, sport, education and business are where a country can wield significant global influence and, right now, Britain – and not the US (which we displaced at the top of the table) – is the world’s most charismatic country.

The year 2012 was a triumph for Britain in many of the sectors where soft influence is wielded.

The Olympic Games were a triumph in design, execution and endeavour, while Skyfall revived cinema’s most successful movie franchise.

There is even some good news for Scotland. When you examine these areas, an undeniable tartan shape begins to form: Andy Murray, Sir Chris Hoy, Michael Gove, James Bond, Muriel Spark, Tony Blair and Billy Connolly. That’s before we get to Johnny Walker Black Label and Tunnock’s.

When you factor in the Scots i mmigrants who built the White House and that the American Declaration of Independence was based on the Declaration of Arbroath, it’s clear Scotland is, very probably, the greatest wielder of soft influence the world has ever seen. We’ve also managed all this without invading anyone.

And as for President Putin and his cheeky sidekick Peskov: the next time they are crossing the Neva in St Petersburg, they might reflect on the fact that all its steel bridges were made in Falkirk.