International Affairs
Who is Blessing-Miles Tendi? He’s a DPhil student at Oxford and he writes for various publications, including the Guardian. He reviewed the film Mugabe and the White African for the Guardian and I commented on my blog upon his review. Apparently, I “wholly misunderstood” this review, according to a response to my blog made by Blessing-Miles. This sparked a debate between us, which you can read below my original blog. I’m not sure I have ever been so publicly and strongly put down by a budding public intellectual. But, then again, I’m not sure I’ve ever come across a public intellectual with whom I disagree as much as Blessing-Miles. While I feel I have contributed as much to our debate as I feel inclined to, it has been quite an experience to lock horns with him.
HSBC commissioned the Futures Company to report on the key considerations for European business of Asia’s rise. The final product, Looking East: The Changing Face of World Business, tells a daunting story. Globalisation has entered a new stage and the sooner its lessons are absorbed by European businesses, politicians and policy-makers the better.
Globalisation brings opportunities and threats. While this observation has become cliché, it remains true. But the nature of these opportunities and threats is rapidly changing. Failing to keep pace with these changes threatens the health not just of European business but also European society. Mrs Duffy confronted Gordon Brown with some of the insecurities generated by globalisation. These insecurities may become more visceral if the next stage of globalisation is not properly responded to.
Asia’s role in this next stage is, to use a vogue word, unavoidable. Indeed, Asia’s continued rise is far more so than George Osborne’s budget; much of which was ideological choice, not unavoidable necessity. As we fret about whether these choices will reduce us to a double-dip recession, China grew at a rate of 11.9 per cent in the first three months of 2010 and India is expected to grow at 8 per cent this year and next. European growth rates may crawl from the wreckage of the credit crunch, but China and India, along with much of the rest of Asia, have rapidly returned to a gallop.
A key plank of the last government’s response to the credit crunch – the promotion of new industries and new jobs - was a variant on a well-trodden European reaction to globalisation: stressing high skills, R&D and the fruits to be reaped by British industry on the innovation frontier. But what if Asia is reaching this frontier before Europe? While low value production may have shifted from places like Mrs Duffy’s Rochdale to Asia, Europeans have tended to seek reassurance in the view that cutting edge skills and technologies would save their bacon (even if ever less of it is consumed in places like Rochdale).
This view now seems, at best, a simplification. “Globalisation and the integration of the world economy isn’t turning out the way many people expected”, claims Joe Ballantyne of the Futures Company. Take some of the supposedly new industries proclaimed during Peter Mandelson’s tenure at the Department of Business: electric cars, nanotechnology, wind technology. No doubt these industries will continue to be eulogised by the coalition. But the HSBC report flags up examples of new technologies in each of these fields being pioneered in Asia.
These developments expose as outdated a view of globalisation that sees the West as the innovators and Asia as the producers. The outsourcing of production jobs caused the CBI to declare six years ago that by 2014 there would be no jobs for unskilled workers in this country. Asia’s growing innovative capacity places the skilled workers of Europe under the kinds of competitive pressures that the unskilled have known for a generation or more. 75,000 people graduate from Chinese universities each year with higher degrees in engineering or computer sciences; 60,000 in India. Given the ascent of a highly-skilled, entrepreneurial and innovative Asian middle-class, the extension of the CBI’s logic may be that in ten years time no jobs for unskilled or skilled people will exist in this country. But this zero-sum thinking wasn’t right six years ago and certainly isn’t right now.
Instead of fearing Asia, British firms should seize its opportunities. These exist both in terms of demand and supply. Sluggish growth in Europe and America means that if the low value of the pound is to fire an export-led recovery it will be via satiation of Asian demand. The HSBC report notes that half of Unilever’s sales come from developing markets and the company’s Indian branch – Hindustan Unilever – is one of India’s biggest consumer-goods companies and its biggest advertiser. Mumbai wants its champagne chilled. And rightly so.
But what else does it want? British firms, whether established global players like Unilever or much smaller concerns, should be asking this question. Markets have always been conversations. Our firms must now listen to and engage with new consumers. “Successful businesses will need”, according to Ballantyne, “to understand how the dynamics of cultural change play out across different markets”.
As well as servicing Asian markets, British firms should consider what impact Asia’s rise will have on their supply chains. It will be no surprise if demand for raw materials continues to rise. It may be more of a surprise to observe, as the HSBC report does, that Microsoft’s biggest R&D facility outside America is in Beijing. This facility continues an infusion of Asian and American knowledge heralded by an influx of Asian science and technology graduates to Silicon Valley. British firms that fail to structure themselves in ways that leave them open to the best new Asian thinking risk falling behind. “Innovation will need to become more global in focus”, says Ballantyne. This means seeking new kinds of partnership with Asian businesses and universities, as well as, pace Theresa May’s immigration policy, always being able to recruit the best Asian talent.
The HSBC report is not the only sign recently that globalisation is changing shape. Strikes have swept China. The low wages and poor conditions that gave Chinese production facilities an edge over facilities in places like Rochdale seem increasingly unacceptable to Chinese workers. This may limit future outsourcing to China. Equally, the HSBC report leaves a sense of China, like the rest of Asia, increasingly being less a repository for outsourcing and more a generator of new ideas, techniques and products.
This doesn’t mean that British business can no longer generate such things. But to do so they shall increasingly need to be abreast of Asian developments. The role of government is to support and incentivise firms to do so. For example, the competitiveness guru Michael Porter has recently argued that a carbon tax would drive innovation in the green economy. This drive is likely to build upon ideas pioneered in Asia. Smart government – not big government or small government – should unlock this potential. If David Cameron doesn’t deliver this, he’ll discover his own Mrs Duffy soon enough.
There is a fascinating article in the Economist on the large-scale pattern of atmospheric circulation which links the heatwave in Russia and the floods in Pakistan. There is also a great article in the Sunday Times by Jemima Khan on the floods and Pakistan’s future. There are some obvious dots to be joined up between these articles.
The Economist writes:
“As Russia burns to a crisp, thousands of kilometres to the south-west torrential storms visit unprecedented flooding on Pakistan. Both events can be attributed to the same large-scale pattern of atmospheric circulation. They are also both the sort of thing climate scientists expect more of in a warming world.”
It concludes:
“Both heatwaves and heavy precipitation are more common everywhere than they were 50 years ago. Reflecting the latter trend, the Indian monsoon has been seeing more of its rainfall in extreme events than it did in the past. No single one of those events can be directly attributed to climate change; nor can Russia’s heatwave. The pattern of increases, though, fits expectations—and those expectations see things getting worse.”
Khan provides some perspective on the comparative challenge which the floods create for Pakistan:
“On top of the war against the Taliban, with almost daily suicide bombings, a separatist uprising in the province of Baluchistan, a hostile neighbour, recession, inflation and unemployment, Pakistan seems to face a natural disaster almost every year. Nothing, though, compares to the catastrophe of the floods … 14m people — about one in 10 of the population — need help … Two million people are now homeless, electricity grids have been closed down to prevent electrocution, water supplies are contaminated, livestock drowned, 1.7m acres of crops destroyed, bridges, roads, schools, whole villages swept away. Experts have warned of the high risk of a cholera epidemic and further monsoon downpours are forecast.”
Pakistan’s President, who, according to Khan, ”is alleged to have acquired up to $1.5 billion (£960m) through corruption” continued with a planned trip to the UK to launch the political career of his son, Bilawal Bhutto Zadari, heir apparent to the Bhutto dynasty, rather than attempt to attend to this devastation. Unsurprisingly, Khan reports, this exacerbated ill-feeling towards the government, who have been unable to fully address the problems created by the floods.
Into the void and despair left by a natural disaster and an ineffectual and ineffective government step jihadi-linked charitable organisations, who, Khan writes, ”have been very effective at providing aid in times of crisis. The 2m children in Pakistan’s madrasahs are provided with free shelter, food and limited education where there is no government-funded alternative.”
Khan is right that “the floods are likely to lead to massive poverty and unrest in an already volatile nuclear-armed country.” She’s also right that this is potentially a geopolitical catastrophe and is certainly an immense human suffering, which demands our fullest response. However, as climate change not only makes our weather warmer and weirder but also threatens festering niches for extremists to exploit, it seems the kind of situation which may become increasingly commonplace. It should motivate us not only to address the immediate suffering of Pakistan but to redouble our efforts to both mitigate climate change and to improve the ability of all parts of the world to adapt to its already inevitable consequences.
As Neil Buckley describes in the FT today, Russia’s infrastructure has coped poorly with the demands placed upon it by the fires. Given that Russia is a richer country than many in the world, this gives us some indication of how ill-prepared many countries must be for the adaptive challenges that climate change will surely present them with. Where states fail to meet these adaptive challenges, extremists could well step up to the plate. In this context, the dirty power stations which the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition are now set to allow to be built are not just ill-advised features of our energy and climate change policies but also potentially add to the security threats facing the UK.
Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson have directed a fantastic, graphic and very moving documentary, Mugabe and the White African, on political violence in Zimbabwe. Michael Burleigh’s new book, Moral Combat: A History of World War II, has impressed George Walden, who has today written in The Observer:
“His conclusion is sane and simple: reducing individuals to culpable groups, and seeing the solutions to the problems of mankind in their extermination, is the ultimate crime, whether perpetrated by Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin or Hitler. End of discussion, I should have thought, though for diehard romantics, notably on the left, it never is.”
Michael Campbell and his family are the individuals depicted in Bailey and Thompson’s film, which powerfully makes clear that these individuals have been reduced to a culpable group, by virtue of being white farmers in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. But this is not the end of the discussion as far as Blessing-Miles Tendi is concerned.
He argues, amongst other things that, “the documentary shows us that Mugabe implemented a racist land reform programme in 2000, but we are not told why, and how he gradually became racist.” This is an argument that seeks to defend the indefensible, because the mob beatings experienced by Campbell and his family are entirely without defence, irrespective of historical and political context. As such, Tendi provides a striking contemporary example of the “diehard romantic” trait bemoaned by Walden. We should never stop trying to learn the lessons that Burleigh aims to teach us.
The hustings in the Shakespeare Centre, Kendal, last night for Christian Aid/SLACC/WDM were much fun. I paste below the speech which I used to kick off my contribution to this really positive event. I departed slightly from this script at points, but not greatly.
I don’t mean to be self-pitying but it’s not always easy being the Labour candidate in Westmorland and Lonsdale.
The local press treat you as a slightly amusing distraction, in spite of representing the party of government.
And today even the Guardian – supposedly a newspaper with some Labour sympathies – put an eight and a half minute video on their website about Westmorland and Lonsdale with not one mention of my candidacy.
At the same time, some constituents have 13 years of frustration with this government that they’d tried to take out on me.
I felt like a bit of a punch bag at the Federation of Small Businesses hustings on Monday night.
And it’s not easy to be a Labour activist, either.
I was talking to one Labour activist, who had been active locally in the 1980s but only recently became active again. She said:
“It was different in the 1980s. No matter where you were in the country, there were causes that kept you active within the Labour Party:
The Miners strike,
Section 28,
The abolition of the GLC,
The Poll Tax.
Now we don’t have any causes”.
When this activist was taking forward the Labour causes of the 1980s, I was at primary school and Roy Hattersley wrote the words that concisely sum up my political credo better than any others: “the only ends of socialism are justice and equality; everything else is means”.
Now, if we care about justice and equality, as I do, then, we have to care about climate change and development.
These are the great causes of our time; these are the causes that should – and often do – get Labour activists out of bed in the morning.
Some observations on these causes:
1.) They are not unrelated
2.) They are international
3.) But government can’t really solve them on its own
They are interrelated because the biggest losers from the effects of climate change are the poorest people in the developing world.
They are international because the carbon emissions that are driving this don’t respect international borders.
And as they are international, government inherently has a role:
Taking forward the Millennium Development goals;
Fighting for the best deal possible at the Copenhagen conference;
Having a positive role in Europe that enables us to reform European Union environmental policy.
But government can’t really solve all of these problems alone.
Government can force towns to become fair trade, but it would be quicker and more effective if towns took on this status for themselves – and well done to Kendal for being one of the first towns to gain fair trade status.
Government may have to force the kinds of lifestyle changes that climate change requires upon us, but it would, again, be quicker and more effective if we made these changes for ourselves – and well done to the community groups here who are working towards this change.
However, this is not an argument for government to take a backseat; an invitation to every NIMBY and vested interest to take over the government.
This is an argument for intelligent, reforming government; government that makes it easier for households and communities to transition to more sustainable lifestyles.
Let me give you two examples of this kind of government.
First, I’m campaigning to have the size and composition of South Lakeland’s carbon footprint published on an annual basis.
It is the responsibility of government, in this case the District Council, to do this.
Once government fulfils this responsibility, community groups can better target their efforts to live more sustainable lives.
Without this information, the low hanging fruit goes unpicked and community activity remains unfocused.
Second, only government action and regulation will clip the wings of “vulture funds”.
These funds buy up poor countries debt cheaply and, then, often years later, when these countries receive international aid, sue them for these debts, plus interest and damages.
Thanks to a Private Members Bill, introduced by Labour MP, Andrew Gwynne, the UK recently became the first country in the world to stop vulture funds using its courts to profiteer from poverty.
These vulture funds prove that almost 30 years after the Miner’s strike, we’ve discovered that the enemy within is, actually, in the City of London.
If we want justice and equality, we need to stand up to this enemy.
I’m standing up for my beliefs in justice and equality by being the Labour candidate in Westmorland and Lonsdale.
I urge you to vote, not for tactical reasons, but for your beliefs and if you believe in justice and equality, I still believe that means voting for the Labour Party.
