Does the populist revolt now sweeping across the developed world mean that globalisation will be reversed? Donald Trump was elected on the back of nationalist populism.
Theresa May will get her big majority in part because of her rejection of the globalist agenda of Tony Blair and David Cameron. Beyond the developed world populism has been harnessed by elected populist leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdo?an. One sentence of May’s caught the force behind the revolt with brutal clarity:
“If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere”. The forces behind the rise in populism have been brilliantly analysed by David Goodhart in his book The Road to Somewhere, published in March. In it he describes how greater economic openness in the West has not benefited all of its citizens. The effect is that there is a now a new divide between the mobile people who feel they can achieve their own identity as global citizens – the people from Anywhere – and those who feel marginalised and identify with their roots – the people from Somewhere. There are two sides to the revolt. In part it is a political and social movement, an assertion of identity, a desire “to have our country back”. But it is also an economic movement, a push against some aspects of a more global economy. Of course they are interlinked. But looking at the economics, nearly everyone wants the benefits of globalisation, such as an iPhone made in China, even if they resent immigration from Mexico or Continental Europe.
That leads to a huge question: can economic globalisation continue, despite the populist push-back against social globalisation? This is the theme of a new book by Stephen D King, Grave New World – The End of Globalisation, the Return of History. He is senior economic adviser to HSBC, and Independent readers may remember that for many years he was the Monday economic columnist for the paper. Until recently most people in the West, whatever their views as to its benefits or costs, believed that globalisation was inevitable. Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General, famously put it this way: “It has been said that arguing against globalisation is like arguing against the laws of gravity.” But now globalisation is stuck. Take a simple measure. For the past three or four years international trade has no longer been rising as a proportion of global GDP.