Globalisation

Neena Gill (West Midlands, Labour MEP): The financial crisis in the US will have a serious impact on Britain and Europe's economic outlook for years to come. Unsustainable dependence on the world's number one economy, which now faces the threat of a recession as grave as that of the 1930s, brings with it a risk of job losses across Britain and Europe.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I’m working on my delayed response to Iain Dale down in the mean streets of Britain. When I lift up my head there is a very strong sense of fin de regime. The start of what may be a persistent double-digit poll lead for the Tories is a mere signal, with an election perhaps two years away. It’s the whole damn political class: politicians desperate for derisory expenses in comparison with speculators (sorry, our financial services sector) whose hopes for more are nonetheless collapsing in vast losses aided and abetted by global cheapskates such as BA unable to train its staff with the disaster of T5 a lead story around the world, topped off by a slobbering domestic media whose coverage of Mrs Sarkozy was the definitive end of sang-froid.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): There are 'must reads' in the sense of 'catch this latest hot gossip' and there are 'must reads' which are about 'if you have not read this you are not a grown up'. This is about the latter, an article you have to read if you want to know about where we are now. Martin Wolf of the FT has hit the nail on the head. This is its opening sentence: "Remember Friday March 14 2008: it was the day the dream of global free- market capitalism died."

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): A strong article in today's Mail by Paul Kingsnorth in advance of his important forthcoming book Real England: The battle against the bland. He joins together an economic argument pitched in class terms against the influence of global corporations with a national argument, that the fight-back can't succeed if its politics is British based:

Catherine Fieschi (London, DEMOS): It's a well kept secret, but apparently Britons know exactly what it means to be British. They don't need to be taught, they don't need to be told, they, in fact, don't even need to think about it. Or so the Today programme's take on Lord Golsmith's Citizenship report would have led you to believe. Folks, we really need to put this globalization malarkey in perspective because, apparently, all this stuff about our reconfigured and multiple identities, migration flows, security measures, possible threats, the deep transformation of our everyday lives and the institutions that regulate it - all this according to some of the participants on the Today programme doesn't even warrant a quick refresher course on our understanding of what citizenship might cover as a concept or what it might legally entail. As a non-Brit who's lived here for the better part of a decade and half, as a witness to the political and rhetorical contortions to which the debate around Britishness has (almost legitimately) given rise and as a member of the Goldsmith citizenship review, I hate to break it to Helena Kennedy but the fact is that despite her assertion that citizenship oaths are ‘risible' and her intimation that this all a bit over the top, the fact is that the Citizenship review was long overdue and the report covers necessary and refreshing ground.

Anthony Barnett (Edinburgh, OK): I'm up in Edinburgh where I went to hear Tom Nairn deliver last night's 16th Edinburgh Lecture Globalization and Nationalism: The New Deal? (Republished in openDemocracy.) He was introduced by the government's First Minister Alex Salmond who hosted a reception afterwards. Here is a picture of the two of them, the First Minister is just sitting down after lauding the speaker. I think I need a new camera but it is the only picture there is.

Sunder Katwala (London, Fabian Society):  We are exactly a year from the happy prospect of a new US President taking office. Bush’s progressive critics must now deepen the debate. So this year’s Fabian conference – ‘Change the World’ – was dedicated to global issues,– to ask what change in America and the year in which China will take the global spotlight will mean for us, but also to ask how progressives in Britain and Europe should respond. Hopes of progress on the great issues we face – from climate change to a response to terrorism - which uphold our democratic values depend on making 2008 a year of new ideas in foreign policy.David Miliband offered a thoughtful keynote speech arguing that a number of fundamental power shifts were reshaping our world.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): “We need a party which will speak for an interest other than self-interested, amoral plutocrats. None exists.” With these words Will Hutton concludes a swinging attack on “degenerate Britain” in today’s Observer.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Back from Greece where I attended a wonderful 'Symi seminar' run by George Papandreou, leader of PASOK, the socialist opposition party hoping to win the elections due within the year. On the way back I was privileged to meet Professor Pandermalis, the head of the New Acropolis Museum now nearing completion - and then to be given a hard-hat tour of the building. It is going to be magnificent. My own photos will follow, this image from the plans gives just a taste of its quality and daring. On the top, built to the scale of the Parthenon itself, which can been seen through the glass, are the walls on which the original panels and sculptures of the Parthenon's frieze will be hung. Most of them, the so-called 'Elgin Marbles' are in the British Museum. It will be impossible to keep them there in the face of world opinion after the Athens museum opens.

Kanishk Tharoor (London, ToD): British debate over terrorism is thin, memory-less, comparison-free and prone to hysteria because of its lack of depth. Despite all the talk of a global threat, after Brown's statement on terrorism you'd have thought that it only matters in the UK and anywhere the UK has troops (or any place its foreign secretary is visiting). This parochialism is reinforced by the only point of reference for the government's critics being the lessons of Northern Ireland.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): In a challenging article in openDemocracy drawing on her exceptional international and comparative work, Saskia Sassen takes a look at Gordon Brown’s reforms from the point of view of globalisation. She argues that with globalisation “the executive branch becomes more ‘international’ while the legislature becomes more ‘domestic’”. That is, part of the hollowing out of traditional democratic politics by corporate and international power has come about not because of a cross-the-board weakening of the state by globalisation but because it has structurally advantaged one part – the executive, often negotiating in secret or at a technical level – to the disadvantage of the other – the legislature.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): As Gordon Brown declared that he would reach out to all people of goodwill to overcome the country's problems, was the man who embraced globalisation aware that Merrill Lynch and Capgemini reported that the total wealth of high-net worth individuals rose 11.4% to $37.2 trillion (£18.6 trillion) in 2006.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Just back from a warm and crowded Compass conference (see post below) where I substituted for Helena Kennedy at a Power Inquiry session on globalisation and democracy, along with John Keane, chaired by Pam Giddy. As the remit was global, I talked about the three great fronts of democracy today and the forms of solidarity they demand: assisting the achievement of the fundamental of democracy - eg: free voting, free speech and the rule of law - to those societies which do not have them (from China to Saudi Arabia); developing appropriate forms of democracy for the shaping global institutions (transparency, accountability); and joining participatory and deliberative forms of democracy to representative mechanisms in countries like our own. The internet will help with this. I drew heavily (well, completely) on the article I wrote with Isabel Hilton that sets it out, called Democracy and openDemocracy. It was a small but packed room, a serious atmosphere, good questions. I met Katharine Hamnett who was in the audience and who has been a hero of mine.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): In his farewell speech an hour ago Tony Blair said that this country “gets” the "essential" interdependent character of today’s world, he boasted that the British are “comfortable” with globalisation and the country is “at home in its own own skin”. In these short reactions he exposed his originality (no previous Labour leader could have thought or felt like this) and his delusions. Globalisation is essentially discomforting even when it is positive and to be welcomed, as it transforms the meaning of ‘home’. To suggest otherwise is callous. Inter-connectedness is complicated and needs rules, it is not something you “get” or fail to “get”. When I heard Blair say this I thought of his ex-foreign policy advisor Sir Patrick Wall talking to Michael Cockerell in his TV films on Blair. He recounted how they were meeting with other European leaders just before the Iraq war. President Chirac told Blair that he had fought in Algeria and that invading Iraq was a mistake Blair would regret. As they left the meeting Blair rolled his eyes and said that Jacques didn’t “get it”. Three years later they were watching Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers in the Pentagon... Far from Chirac not "getting" what modern leaders needed to do, it was Blair who failed to learn from the living past and showed no curiosity about it. A terrible failure for a leader. Much has improved in Britain since 1997. But if the Scottish and Welsh votes show anything, it is that we are not at home in our current skin, not to speak of how few of us feel comfortable with Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness being our leaders in Northern Ireland. Blair's talk of "getting" things turns what should be judgements which can be challenged into instincts and feelings.

Tom Nairn (Edinburgh): After the Holyrood election of 2003, a deep psychological shift got under way among Scots. Intended to stabilize Great Britain under Labour Party control, devolved government unlocked deep-seated attitudes and collective emotions, whose cumulative effects have only now been seen. In a post-electoral interview SNP leader Alex Salmond put his finger on it: ‘A new self-confidence has begun to show itself’ — in a population notably cursed by its absence. The secular ‘cringe’ deposited by self-colonization has broken up, to release an acquifer long contained by the permanent-seeming rock-plate of Britain. ‘Acquiclude’ is the geologist’s term for the latter, a formation normally impermeable but susceptible to break-up by earth tremors, or continent shifts. In this case, ‘globalization’ is of course to blame. Rockplate (or ‘Establishment’) warriors like Gordon Brown naturally rush to restore the old days: their persons and parties owe everything to the latter. Hoping to stay the collapse, they have aggravated it by warfare and all-British ‘cringe’ in Washington. Their present hostility towards the SNP and Plaid Cymru carries on the same Dodo tactics. In truth such changes are going with the global grain, not against it: they express what Aviel Roshwald has called The Endurance of Nationalism (CUP 2006), reanimated by a democratic warming that (fortunately) accompanies the global kind. David Cameron does seem slightly more aware of acquiclude collapse, but not much. Yet what can it be that he feels lapping uncomfortably somewhere between socks and underpants? What but the larger acquifer of England? Do the contributions of Peter Oborne and David Marquand in OurKingdom signal a moving of the waters?