21st Century Vision: Much thanks

Many readers will share our sense of relief at the change if not of regime then of tone in the leadership of the British government. An end to the vain posturings, hollow phrases and empty promises of the previous incumbent is most welcome; but there are conditions. The "new" team - for the most part exactly the same people who condoned, loudly supported or indeed were leading members of the old one - must recognise that they inherit a society more deeply divided by inequality, class and even ethnic antagonism than for thirty years, and one in which if recent studies are to be believed "social recession" is compounded by an unprecedented malaise among young people. We are invited to imagine that a new beginning is being made, and indeed there are some hopeful signs. Most striking of these is the appointment of ex-UN deputy secretary-general Mark Malloch Brown as a Foreign Office minister with a seat in cabinet and responsibility for the UN, Africa and Asia. Forthright critic of US unilateralism - the very principle with which Labour under Blair colluded at every turn - Malloch Brown is destined either to make a difference or to find himself in a very uncomfortable position. We wish him well.

But of late we have learned a lot about the road to hell. Even when delivered with the solemnity of a Scottish manse, affirmation of goals is an empty exercise if it is not accompanied by a reassessment of the strategies of the past - in the words of George Santayana, "those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it". And here we encounter an illuminating contrast.

Just as the Labour government in London was seeking to renew itself, so a distinctly conservative president in Paris was succeeded by an apparently even more conservative president now with a large majority in the National Assembly. And just at the moment of handover in Britain, European Union leaders were debating the "constitution by another name", with our government as usual demonstrating its commitment to being at the heart of Europe with a display of nationalistic intransigence. Then suddenly l'Américain, as Sarkozy is known to the French left, that apparent neocon apostle of a new Gallic Atlanticism, made a deeply subversive move: he challenged a basic tenet of the neo-liberal economic consensus.

Sarkozy's point was simple enough: he objected to the inclusion in the new statement of EU principles of an absolute commitment to "free and undistorted competition". In other words he wanted to open a space for nation states to practise protectionism in the interests of their people. Devoted readers of this blog will recognise the idea from our account of former French socialist foreign minister Hubert Védrine's recent book Continuer l'Histoire (6th February). And what was the reaction of our new masters on this side of the Channel? It was to denounce Sarkozy's statement as something between apostasy, heresy and treason. Blair, we are told, was ordered by those about to succeed him to go back to the negotiating table and undo the damage.

Let's not get excited. By flirting with narrow nationalistic protectionism the French president was indeed playing with fire: his proposal if unilaterally exploited by wealthy countries like France would risk a reversion to the economic meltdown of the 1930s. But that is not the point. As looming failure at the G4 foreshadows the collapse of the Doha round, we see once again the unwillingness of western economic leaders - amongst whom we must now number our own prime minister - to contemplate even the idea that open-market policies are not only not universally valid, but that they are often deeply damaging, particularly to poor countries.

Sarkozy may be an opportunist, but he seems to have blurted out another "inconvenient truth".

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