Faced with an emergency the like of which has not been seen for generations, global organisations have proved to be unreliable. And the idea of globalisation peddled by elite opinion-formers and influencers has been exposed as unrealistic.
A global free market was coming into being, they told us. National borders were fading away and, where they still existed, stood for nothing but racism. Nations themselves – those of Western countries, at any rate – were grubby relics of an imperial past.
But it is international institutions that are now failing and nation-states that are responding effectively to the emergency. In the EU, national borders have been reinstated and free movement shut down. The chronically flawed single currency is coming under desperate strain. The inherent divisions are more exposed than ever.
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