How should politicians respond to globalisation?

The speed at which people, money and ideas all flow round the world has created a new challenge for political leadership.

A more connected world brings more opportunities in terms of trade, work and global influence. But anger over immigration and concerns over security also bring challenges. Some see only the opportunities and new possibilities. For others all this change can be disconcerting. And some are deeply opposed to it.

As the recent Autumn statement showed, the debate about Britain’s fiscal position and our future economic path will be central to the coming election campaign, but the debate over migration and our relationship to a more connected world will also feature highly.

One response to concerns about migration and to wider change in Britain is offered by Ukip and their sympathisers in the Conservative Party: we don’t like all this; things are not what they were; I want to stop; I want to go back.

There is no doubt that globalisation has brought a sense of loss to some communities. Those fears should not just be swept aside. Change does open new possibilities but has also been disruptive and economically harsh for some. Factories and identities have gone. Sometimes local pride and identity have too.

But however genuine the feelings of loss over globalisation are, the politics of anger leads nowhere. There is no rewind button to a country and a world that is not coming back. And trying to find one does not create a single job or open up a single opportunity for young people, though it might well destroy much economic confidence and certainty. Leadership today is about how we respond and shape this more closely interconnected world.

Nor was the past as rosy as some depict. After all, which young woman today would swap her life chances for those of her grandmother?

But if amplifying anger is not the right leadership response, what is?

The first thing to realise is that this is not just an argument about individual policies or measures taken. Those are needed but they mean little if they are not rooted in a wider view of the world, an explanation of what change means and what our place in it should be.

Every successful country is going to be more connected and more diverse than before. Things are going to move faster. This will create both opportunity and disruption. The movement of people, money and ideas are not diseases from which we should seek a cure—they are facts to be responded to and shaped. That does not mean Governments are powerless to effect change or to agree new rules. But it does mean that a small backward looking politics that seeks to withdraw from change is not leadership. It is its opposite.

Britain is well placed to make the most of a more interconnected world. We have unrivalled networks in the EU, Commonwealth and other international alliances. We have an enterprising innovative tradition. We have immense cultural and soft power. We are used to adapting to a changing world.

But even with these strengths and with a positive outlook, a faster more interconnected world still needs rules. Leadership has to match opportunity with a sense of security.

So on the financial front we need proper stability in the system. Strong regulation is necessary to get the taxpayer off the hook for the failures of banks and other financial institutions.

The connected world also has to battle the rejection of co-existence which drives extremism, for co-existence is central to our future well-being and prosperity.

And in a time of greater movement of people, while turning our back on the outside world is wrong it is legitimate that there are proper rules about who can access finite public goods. Citizenship is not meaningless, and the system should work fairly for citizens.

More must be done to enhance opportunity for our own citizens. In a faster moving world with a more demanding labour market, low aspirations and ambitions in education are all the more unacceptable. No one should be written off because of their background. There should be a passion and urgency about equipping our young people for today’s world, not yesterday’s.

Most of all, leadership has to be about equipping our country and its people to succeed in the world as it is and as it will become, not a lament for a lost world. That most basic point is not always fully understood. It must become so if Britain is to remain an open, outward looking, confident country.