Meeting the challenge of the globalisation paradox: Andrew Little outlines a Labour vision for meeting the global challenges ahead.

AuthorLittle, Andrew

Labour's historic record in forging an independent foreign policy has always been the product of ambitious and principled thinking. That tradition must be maintained if New Zealand is to ensure that its voice is heard in a changing and unpredictable world. New Zealand must ensure that it continues to be trusted as an honest broker and a strong and principled actor in international affairs. An approach to international affairs that is outward looking and does not shy from the huge challenges that we face as a global community is essential. Above all, the growing disillusionment across many sectors of society must be addressed.

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The evidence continues to mount that we are in a time of great political change. Around the world, the political ground is moving. Last year the United Kingdom experienced its political earthquake --which we now know as Brexit. And at the end of the year the American political establishment was shaken as Donald Trump won the presidency.

It is not that either of these developments was unpredictable or unlikely, despite them coming as a surprise to many. Both enjoyed significant levels of popular support in their respective jurisdictions before the ballot results were known. But the political establishment in both of those countries expected--or maybe they just hoped--that neither of the outcomes would achieve the majority support they did. So, what stands out is that both results ran completely counter to the conventional political commentary.

The political establishment failed to anticipate either event because of something I suspect many are still struggling to accept: that our democratic systems--flawed and imperfect as they always have been--are increasingly incapable of keeping up with the changing demands and expectations of the complex communities they are meant to serve.

Conventional political systems are proving themselves to be out of touch with ordinary people--the vast, unrecognised, unseen and unheard sea of the alienated and marginalised citizens who have been left behind by technological and economic change; systems that are out of touch with those who are just disillusioned by politics and political systems that seem incapable of dealing with the major challenges of the day--like growing inequality, intractable poverty and environmental neglect.

These same trends have continued in France, where the French people have turned to Emmanuel Macron, the youngest president in the history of the republic, whose party was really only started as a movement a year ago but is now the largest party in that country's National Assembly. This year, in the United Kingdom, the Conservatives entered their general election campaign confident they would increase their majority. It was supposed to be a slam dunk for Theresa May, and Jeremy Corbyn was written off from the outset. But as it turned out on 8 June, Corbyn destroyed May's majority and delivered the biggest increase in the Labour Party's support since 1945.

Conventional politics of the past 30 years is being challenged. These trends reflect the bankruptcy of so-called orthodox solutions in the face of the increasing wealth gap and widening technology gap, along with a growing sense of economic and personal insecurity and the polarisation of many communities today. These changes have huge implications for politicians in election campaigns, and for foreign policy practitioners. The fact is there is growing disillusionment across many sectors of society. If political systems do not respond effectively and meaningfully, then unpredictable change will occur. The soothing balm of political rhetoric and propaganda is not a meaningful response.

Legitimate expression

We should also accept that what is happening is nothing other than a legitimate expression of the democratic system. This groundswell of change is looking for ways to be expressed and to be represented in our political system. To ignore this change would be to choke our polity; to demean our democracy. These movements are what make democracy effective. For those of us at the progressive end of politics, the changing political world brings huge opportunity.

Much of this popular disillusionment we are seeing is aimed at the failed promise of 21st century globalisation. Globalisation, by which I mean the deregulation of international trade and investment rules to allow the faster movement of capital, goods and services across borders, has been around since the rise of modern capitalism in the 18th century. Twenty-first century globalisation was meant to enable countries to...

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