As the world comes to terms with the biggest political upheaval the west has seen for decades, there is one thing on which most analysts agree. Donald Trump’s election victory in the US represents a rejection of the political class, the “elite”, who have done well from the past few decades of globalisation while those left behind have had to deal with stagnating wages and diminishing opportunities.
The same is true of the Brexit result in the UK five months ago. Most people who voted for Trump and Brexit were not members of the working class, but it was that group that proved decisive in the swing from Democrat to Republican, and from remain to leave. Some voted in hope of radical change, some simply failed to turn out to vote for an establishment they didn’t think was on their side.
Without denying deep-seated cultural issues, not least racism and misogyny, economic depression is the key factor behind this year’s political shifts.
Across Europe, the story is the same: the far right is expected to do well in next year’s Dutch, French and German elections, partly because some people on the wrong side of decades of global growth will express their frustration by voting for extremists.
So what does it all mean for the international development industry?
Unfortunately, there are few sectors that exhibit greater detachment from the reality of the national economy than “international development”.
The aid industry is booming, with private companies and major international NGOs growing like never before in the UK and remaining stable and highly profitable in the US. And this at a time when almost all other public spending in the UK is cut severely, and so many US citizens – black and white – continue to wait for serious investment in their infrastructure (be it physical, educational or otherwise).
When an entire sector keeps assiduously quiet about growing inequality at home while riding a wave of growth and profit, it could fairly be accused of complicity in a highly unequal and potentially disastrous global economic order. Yes, we need a strong international development sector, but at what cost to powerful advocacy and dignified truth-telling?
This difficult situation is not entirely the sector’s fault. The focus of its work is overseas, so you could argue it is reasonable to disengage from domestic concerns. Moreover, attempts by some major charities to advocate on national poverty issues, in the UK and US, have been met with firm rebukes from government watchdogs, prompting NGO chief executives to batten down the hatches and concentrate on building political relationships and financial stability.
But there is a fine line between safeguarding important organisations that make a difference in the world, and keeping silent on the key issues of our time.
Five years ago, I asked on this site how long the international development sector could continue to ignore domestic economic issues, support aid increases without mentioning the fact that services for the poor are being cut, and campaign for fairer rules for banks and multinationals abroad while obediently refraining from carrying out advocacy on exactly the same issue at home.
As Trump and Brexit sink in, the answer is ever clearer: not much longer. We cannot respond to international poverty and inequality without also responding to problems at home.
Conversely, only an international perspective and political platform can come close to challenging the power of the 1% in the wealthier countries as well as the poorer ones. The barriers, the challenges, the threats are increasingly the same, north or south of imaginary lines.
Yet most of the international development sector maintains the absurd charade that global poverty is fundamentally removed from national concerns, and that attempts to address such poverty can be apolitical.
Led by a well-to-do urban elite, it talks of the need to educate those who don’t get aid and development. But what if the development sector itself needs to be educated? What if people in the sector, like the political class with which it is so closely entwined, are cut off from the reality of life for millions who are not benefiting as they are from globalisation?
The international development sector comprises a spectrum of organisations, from community campaigners to big businesses making big money. One part of this spectrum that has emerged with some credibility from 2016 are the radical left organisations such as Global Justice Now (formerly World Development Movement) and War on Want, which have long backed calls to “globalise resistance”, linking struggles at home with those abroad. While I don’t always agree with their political solutions and strategies, this fundamental analytical insight is correct.
Tactical silences and apparently practical political alliances can create tension with the strategic campaigning necessary to turn around a kind of globalisation that is increasing inequality in almost every country, with consequences not only in the west but in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where decent growth rates belie entrenched unfairness. They stifle the emergence of a popular public discourse that coherently marries global struggles with national ones.
The development sector must listen better to people at home and abroad who are hurting, and speak out ever more boldly on their behalf.
