Globalisation's forward march was once assumed to be unstoppable. The world would ceaselessly become more politically, economically and culturally integrated. In his 2005 Labour Party conference speech, Tony Blair declared: “I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation. You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer.” When asked in 2007 which US presidential candidate he was supporting in the forthcoming election, Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chair, remarked: “We are fortunate that, thanks to globalisation, policy decisions in the US have been largely replaced by global market forces. National security aside, it hardly makes any difference who will be the next president. The world is governed by market forces.” Politics, it was thought, had been reduced to an exercise in technocratic management. Yet this proved to be a false dawn (in the title of John Gray's prescient 1998 book).
