Bill Emmott's speech at the GI launch

By Penny Hawthorne | 20 July 2005

The following is the speech by Bill Emmott, Editor-in-Chief of the Economist, given yesterday at the Globalisation Institute's launch party:

What I'm here to do is to congratulate Alex and the Globalisation Institute on its foundation. Not neo-liberals, no, liberals, perhaps neo-globalization compared with the magazine I've got the honour to be the editor of - since we were founded in 1843 and in the way the house magazine then of globalization, founded by an associate of Richard Cobden, who Alex rightly considers to be his hero.

We have not I think been generally treated well by the Church of England, by contrast with Alex. [Laughter] We were described by the Bishop of London a few years ago as the "Magazine of Unbelievers International". [Laughter] However, we are Believers International in free trade and free markets and in the Manchester School very much. It's an amazingly hard sell, globalization. I find it constantly baffling how if you stand in front of almost any audience but this one and try to explain the benefits of free trade you get puzzled looks and critical questions, and tomatoes thrown at you. It's a very, very hard thing to convince people of as is globalization in general.

Now, of course, I shouldn't complain about this in my selfish interest, since if globalization was an easy sell we wouldn't have a business at The Economist and probably Alex wouldn't need to have an institute and he'd be out of a job. And therefore the very fact that it's an uphill sell whether now with globalization or in the past with globalization is to our benefit. But it is. John Lennon, in my youth, penned Imagine. He said imagine there's no countries, image there's no borders, imagine in a way there's free trade, and indeed the Beatles founded one of the great corporate multinational brands of exploitation and slave labour in history, and yet the sort of people who are the successors of the Beatles are all against globalization.

And therefore I congratulate Alex on this endeavour. I wish him good luck and good fortune in making sure that people do become convinced of globalization. The Economist itself was founded by a Scottish man of ideas who was an associate of Richard Cobden, called James Wilson. I first met Alex Singleton - although he's not I think Scottish - I first met him in Scotland - and therefore we are as one. To Alex Singleton and the Globalisation Institute!