Don’t let ‘globalisation’ become a dirty word, Boris Johnson says

The Foreign Secretary has launched a defence of economic globalisation, arguing that opposition to global free markets “makes no economic sense”.

In a speech to business leaders on Tuesday Boris Johnson said Britain should not let ‘globalisation’ is become a “boo-word” in the political lexicon – as other countries erect tariff and trade barriers.

Mr Johnson’s warning comes despite his own government’s move to pull out of the single market and Theresa May’s pledge to cut off the free movement of people from the continent.

Speaking from the same stage just an hour earlier former chancellor George Osborne had said leaving the EU single market and dialling down trade with European countries would be “the biggest single act of protectionism in the history of the United Kingdom”.

Mr Johnson said that “hauling up the drawbridge and to call time on globalisation” was the wrong approach, claiming Britain would continue to be a “great trading nation” that would make trade deals around the world.

Mr Osborne had however said that “no amount of trade deals with New Zealand are going to replace the amount of trade we do with our European neighbours”.

Challenged directly on the contrast between his comments and those of Mr Osborne, Mr Johnson said: “I don’t think that’s true, I think that Brexit, as I’ve said, is an opportunity for a great free trading country, a country that built its wealth and its success once again to be the world’s leading agitator and champion for free trade.”

Mr Johnson told the British Chambers of Commerce conference: “Today globalisation is a word that’s acquiring negative overtones and it’s become a sort of boo-word in the political lexicon. This afternoon I want to reclaim globalisation, I want to show you all that this is a positive force and that a global Britain is prosperous one.

“Trade for the first time in decades is declining as a proportion of the growth of global GDP. For the first time we are seeing protectionist measures on the rise across the world and – as everybody knows, we’re seeing a rise of related but by no means identical political events in which populations are said to be rebelling against what had been seen as a second consensus.

“People feel that they aren’t getting a fair suck of the sauce bottle as they say in Australia or that the wealth gap is growing. There’s been a temptation amongst some politicians to respond in what I think is the wrong way – by hauling up the drawbridge and to call time on globalisation. I think that instinct is profoundly wrong and it makes no economic sense as I’m sure everyone in this room understands.

“History teaches us, all the economic evidence shows: if we close our markets, if we put up barriers, then we raise the costs for those that can least afford it, we make our industries uncompetitive, we entrench complacency, we discourage the investment in capital and technology, we stifle innovation and of course we breed distrust between nations.

“We should never forget the old truism that when goods and services no longer cross borders then troops and tanks do instead. By rebelling against globalisation we endanger as system that has been associated with 70 years of post-war peace and prosperity and that has allowed billions to lift themselves out of penury by toil and enterprise.”