"Globalisation is a force of nature, not a policy," said Tony Blair six years ago. "It is a fact."
Now, with Donald Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs upending the near century-long process of integrating the global economy, the current prime minister has declared that era effectively over.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
What did the commentators say?
Starmer's message was "received by some with bewilderment, treated as a knee-jerk reaction to Donald Trump abroad and Nigel Farage at home", said George Eaton in The New Statesman. But the "most striking thing – in a government not renowned for its consistency – was that we'd heard this before".
His chancellor, Rachel Reeves, declared on a visit to Washington almost two years ago that "globalisation, as we once knew it, is dead".
"It's a reminder that the death of globalisation (or at least a form of it) has been a process rather than an event," said Eaton.
The truth is that in his "assault on globalisation, Trump has been pushing on a door that was already ajar", said the Financial Times. The loss of jobs to less developed countries and the global financial crisis had "damaged public confidence in postwar economic orthodoxy" both in the US and in other Western nations.
With the rise of China, Trump has successfully "fused these resentments about trade with his own psychology. The globalisation era was defined by the idea of win-win – that both sides can benefit from compromise." For Trump, there can only be one winner.
"When regimes end, they end in phases," said Wolfgang Munchau on UnHerd. Communism collapsed over a decade, starting with the Solidarity strike at the Gdansk shipyard in 1980 and ending with the 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev.
"Trump's first term was Gdansk, the canary in the coal mine." Last week's "Liberation Day" was "globalisation's Gorbachev moment".
What next?
The US-led post-war world order may be "finally starting to crumble", said Dr Amitav Acharya in The New York Times, but "chaos will not inevitably follow".
"That fear is partly based on two errors": that the period since the end of the Second World War has "not been as good for everyone on the planet" as it has been generally for citizens of the West, and that "the very precepts of order are not Western inventions".
And that is a "reason for optimism. To understand that the American order is not the only possible system – that, for many countries, it is not even a particularly good or fair one – is to allow oneself to hope that its end could augur a more inclusive world."
This in essence is what Starmer is aiming for as well. "The world has changed, globalisation is over and we are now in a new era", a Downing Street official told The Sunday Times. "We've got to demonstrate that our approach, a more active Labour government, a more reformist government, can provide the answers for people in every part of this country."
That might not mean "the end of globalisation entirely", but Starmer is hoping "a more balanced version can emerge", said Eaton.
-
Metaverse: Zuckerberg quits his virtual obsessionFeature The tech mogul’s vision for virtual worlds inhabited by millions of users was clearly a flop
-
Frank Gehry: the architect who made buildings flow like waterFeature The revered building master died at the age of 96
-
Is MAGA melting down?Today's Big Question Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Laura Loomer and more are feuding
-
How will China’s $1 trillion trade surplus change the world economy?Today’s Big Question Europe may impose its own tariffs
-
Phish food for thought: Ben & Jerry’s political turmoilIn the Spotlight War of words over brand activism threatens to ‘overshadow’ the big ice cream deal
-
Coffee jittersFeature The price of America’s favorite stimulant is soaring—and not just because of tariffs
-
What a rising gold price says about the global economyThe Explainer Institutions, central banks and speculators drive record surge amid ‘loss of trust’ in bond markets and US dollar
-
US mints final penny after 232-year runSpeed Read Production of the one-cent coin has ended
-
Should Labour break manifesto pledge and raise taxes?Today's Big Question There are ‘powerful’ fiscal arguments for an income tax rise but it could mean ‘game over’ for the government
-
Argentinian beef is at the center of American farmers’ woesThe Explainer ‘It feels like a slap in the face to rural America,’ said one farmer
-
Will latest Russian sanctions finally break Putin’s resolve?Today's Big Question New restrictions have been described as a ‘punch to the gut of Moscow’s war economy’
