Inside Croydon

We need to break out of our cycle of doom, despair and decline to become a confident, outward-looking country again, says ANDREW FISHER

Our planet is more connected than ever.

We switch on the television and see events from all over the world. Atrocities are livestreamed through apps on our phones, with first-hand accounts bringing home to us the realities of war, natural disasters and extreme poverty.

Yet we’re also becoming more insular as a country. Ten years ago, we voted to leave the European Union, narrowly. Despite war, famine and extreme inequality, we have cut back massively on the amount of international aid we give – from 0.7% of our gross national income to just 0.3%. Successive governments have also reduced spending on diplomacy and the “soft power” of the BBC World Service.

Events continue to show how interconnected our world is – from the impact on Britain of wars in Ukraine and Iran, to climate change and the covid pandemic. No matter how hard we try, we cannot close the borders and pretend the rest of the world does not exist.

Yet there have been more positive visions for the world and our responsibilities within it.

In 1977, Robert McNamara, the president of the World Bank, suggested something called The Independent Commission on International Development Issues. The commission was chaired by Willy Brandt, the former Chancellor of West Germany, so that when its report was published in 1980, it was known as The Brandt Report.

The report’s subtitle was “A programme for survival”.

At a time when global politics was defined by the Cold War, and East v West, The Brandt Report looked forward, towards the end of the century, and the potential for global economic conflict between the North and the South. It was a seminal work, perhaps one of the most important since the Second World War.

Brandt’s report recognised the interconnectedness of the world, as well as its divides. Continue reading →