Caroline Lucas: Globalisation always hurts the poorest

From a speech by the Green Party MEP at a debate on globalisation, held in London

The development of our international institutions has not kept pace with the development of international financial markets, and our political arrangements have lagged behind the globalisation of the economy – as a result, poor people have not benefited from globalisation.

The challenge, then, is not making globalisation work for the poor: it is not about simply trying to make globalisation just a little bit kinder and gentler – the challenge is to develop practical alternatives to it. One of the reasons for this is that the process of trying to achieve ever greater international competitiveness is a zero sum game which depends on there being winners and losers. The losers aren't an accident of the system – they are a fundamental requirement of it.

Adding a few environmental clauses here, or a social clause there, won't alter the fundamental nature of the beast. The bottom line is that a planet of finite resources and increasingly unmet social needs cannot sustain an economic system based on ever increasing international competition and ever greater free trade, driven by, and serving, corporate interests.

Of course that brings us up against a huge public relations exercise that says that economic globalisation is inevitable. For Bill Clinton, globalisation is "not a policy choice, it's a fact". Tony Blair has called it "irreversible and irresistible". It's clear that these descriptions of globalisation are deliberately designed to pre-empt any radical alternatives being proposed. If we genuinely want to support poor people around the world, we can do better than simply trying to make economic globalisation just a little less ruthless and a little less brutal.