Roger Lyons, like many right thinking persons, does not want your insurance company to shut its call centre in Sutton Coldfield and open one in Cochin.
In other news, Roger Lyons and many other bien pensants are also against globalisation. For the most part what they mean by "globalisation" is free trade under WTO rules, and they do not oppose the WTO system out of selfish motives. Many are motivated by an unreasoned feeling that the WTO is actually trying to hurt poor people. This is a sentimental hatred, not thought through, perhaps stemming from bad experiences with authority figures in early youth. But under the sentiment, there is a rational core: the idea that globalisation is unfair to the poorer countries.
This is quite true. Please don't run away with the idea I'm against free trade. Free trade is a Good Thing. Even though the WTO system is unfair, the worst that can be said of it is that it gives the developing world a smaller slice of a much larger cake. But the system is still unfair, and this is lamentable both because unfairness is wrong, and because unfair trade gives rise to less wealth than fair trade.
The unfairness is not about subsidies and tariffs. We do indeed give money to our farmers, which poorer countries cannot afford to do. This makes our food unfairly competitive, and free trade exposes the third world to this unfair competition. This does undermine local producers: but only by selling them food cheaper than either they or we can grow it. EU tax payers are putting money into lower food prices in Africa: and whilst there are many reasons for regretting this, on the question of fairness it's not obvious who's getting the fuzziest end of the lollipop.
No, the reason the WTO system is unfair on the third world is much bigger and much better hidden than that. Economists often think of the world for analytical purposes as made up of three markets, namely the goods market, the capital market, and the labour market. WTO rules are about the first two. Poor nations have to open their borders for our auto exports, and we must put no imposts on their fine coffee beans. They must let us own factories in their countries, whilst we make no objection to their buying whatever capital asset they may be able to afford over here, ho ho. This is called trade, and it's good for everyone because it lets us do what we can do cheaply (cars, earth-moving equipment, aeroplanes, that sort of thing) and the developed world likewise (another cup?). In both cases, the low cost producer is the one who gets to produce. So everybody's happy.
Not quite. Because of course the one market in which the developing world is staggeringly competitive, is the one market the WTO leaves out altogether, the one market in which states employ regiments of border guards to ensure trade is the opposite of free. There is no free trade in labour.
There may be good reasons for this. I think free movement of people across borders on a large scale probably does disrupt culture and civil order. It certainly disrupts lives and families. Also people with the gumption to cross the world in search of work are the very people their home countries need most, as tax payers and pillars of the community. In other words, free trade is good economics: but there's more to life than economics. Hence I confess I agree with the ideological sleight-of-hand that says free trade in goods is alright, but free movement of people across borders is not on.
But it's a compromise. And the wonderful thing about the offshore call-centre wheeze is that it squares this circle. It reconciles free trade with national identity. Men and women for whom a fraction of a British pay cheque is a very attractive salary can now compete for jobs here without getting on a 'plane.
Rich countries are up for free trade, but only in the markets we lead. We love to see goods and capital flow across borders but not people, because the developing world is the market leader in low cost labour. Sorry if that sounds cynical and cruel - but don't tell me it's not true. How happy one would be if it were not true: for that would mean wages in India were the same as they are here. And it may come to that. If it does, though, it will come because - thanks to ingenious Karnatakan telecommuters - the gross distortions in the labour market are going the way of the Corn Laws.