Globalisation In One Country

The title of this post is a neologism I would dearly have loved to have coined myself; alas, somebody beat me to it.

Yesterday, Gordon Brown (pictured) proclaimed a new world order. No, I'm not kidding. He really did.

He said,

"Today’s decisions, of course, will not immediately solve the crisis. But we have begun the process by which it will be solved... I think a new world order is emerging with the foundation of a new progressive era of international co-operation".

Proclaiming a new world order is a completely different ballgame from aspiring to one. As a matter of routine, those who proclaim new world orders should be asked what planet they're on; before pumping them full of Thorazine when the balls inside their heads start to rattle. The man seems batty; get him a tinfoil hat. And the need for a General Election in 2009 just became a great deal more necessary.

Stalin's famous doctrine was 'socialism in one country'; New Labour has given us 12 years of the policy, not a process, that gypsy in leprechaun's clothes, called 'globalisation', whatever it actually is. To all intents and purposes, it's been 'globalisation in one country', to the social dislocation and impoverishment of all but a very few. A new world order based on more of the same would be a disaster for civilisation, such as it is; to my mind, that the British Prime Minister has felt the need to proclaim it means that he needs to be spending a great deal more time on his porch in North Queensferry, watching small boats and corpses float past on the Firth of Forth, than he is doing at the moment.

And it is gratifying to see that Joseph Stiglitz agrees with my now seven month-old analysis of the bailouts. The name of Cassandra is often used as a slur; it should never be forgotten that she knew what she was talking about.