At a CBI conference in November last year Gordon Brown called for a ‘world-wide campaign in support of globalisation and its benefits. He said the anti-globalisation and protectionist forces ‘fail to recognise the great truth that free trade, open markets and flexibility are the preconditions of modern economic success’.Does he really believe this? The answer to that must be, ‘Yes, he does.’ It is possible that in the early 1990s, when he was made Shadow Chancellor by the late John Smith, he did not believe it but thought he had to go along with the so-called ‘Washington consensus’ to get Labour into office; but for at least a decade he appears to me to have been a true believer. And you can see the appeal of this to someone in Brown’s position: if the ‘Washington consensus’ is the best of all possible worlds, it means that he doesn’t have to oppose America, the City and the multinationals. On the downside it does mean that he has to switch his brain off and believe something which is obviously and demonstrably falsified by the example of Japan and all the so-called ‘tiger economies’ since the war – and China, of course, today. None of those economies have had free trade and open markets. Indeed, for most developing economies, free trade and open markets is a recipe for not developing. (Which is why the US and its allies encourage/force developing countries to adopt such policies.) Concealing these banal facts has been one of the major triumphs of the free marketeers.
RR