Even Peter Mandelson thinks globalisation is dead
Photo byIn 2005, Tony Blair said debating globalisation was as worthwhile as debating whether autumn followed summer. Twenty years later, his old cabinet minister Peter Mandelson, now Britain's ambassador to America, gave a lecture pronouncing the demise of 'hyper-globalisation'. Trump, it seems, has the power to reorder the seasons.
Mandelson is integrating well into Trump's America. The last time he was in public he was grinning through a car window on the White House driveway, moments after the president praised his 'beautiful accent' as they signed a deal on tariffs in the Oval Office. He was soon being heralded back home as a Trump whisperer. Mandelson's profile soared, even as evidence of a Special Relationship dwindled.
There's an irony to Mandelson's mission in Washington: he has been tasked with shepherding Britain through Trump's dismantling of the very global system which he helped to create. He was the EU's trade commissioner between his slots atop the pro-globalisation New Labour government. Now, on the 11th floor of the moneyed Atlantic Council, he said the World Trade Organisation rulebook is unfit for the 21st century, and that Nato must go through a 'reinvention'. The institutions he had spent decades building up were crumbling around him. Washington's old diplomatic guard had gathered to hear how the Special Relationship would endure this tumult.
Mandelson's prescription is for the UK to prove its 'huge usefulness' to America. Britain must become 'less dependent [on the US] but still inseparably linked'. The country is not torn between the EU on one side and America on the other. Instead, the UK can 'serve' – his word – both allies.
Labour's strategy has been to hug Trump desperately close. Mandelson said he 'could not complain' about the administration's welcome. He meant that they'd treated him well – but it's also literally true: complaints in Trump's Washington do not go unpunished. His call for Britain and America to renew their 'vows' over the coming months was an unfortunate metaphor for a president with a predilection for divorce.
Nonetheless, Mandelson is more candid than a traditional diplomat, happy raising a telling eyebrow, or alluding in answers to his regret over Brexit – a political dart no traditional civil servant would publicly throw. This authenticity suits Trumpland, where respect for procedure is long gone. Ditto that soporific drawl.
Beneath the accent, and the dire prognosis for globalisation, Mandelson's message was temptingly optimistic – and specific: the Special Relationship will be revived in the labs of Silicon Valley. Where once globalisation was both inevitable and beneficial, now Britain's saviour will arrive bearing Artificially Intelligent robots. Mandelson is positioning the UK for a big deal on technology; he talks of the tariff deal as a precursor to something more substantial. This speech sounded like an invitation to America's technologists to realise his techno-futurist vision of Britain as 'an AI-driven, new model economy for the 21st century.'
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If Mandelson pulls off some such deal then his influence would extend far beyond the sphere of a traditional ambassador. He would be shunting the British economy into Silicon Valley's fiefdom.
[See more: Meet Britain's Joe Rogan]
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