Bill Clinton’s theme for re-election back in 1996 was “building the bridge to the twenty-first century”. Some 20 years on and another Clinton is fighting to be President of the United States, but the rhetoric of this campaign is not about bridges, but walls and borders.

In the same period and on this side of the Atlantic, multilateralism in the shape of the European Union has given way to the bilateralism of the nation-state. Debate about a more open and globalised world overcoming the post-industrial challenges has given way to one about whether globalisation is the cause of, or the cure for, our problems.

Professor Dani Rodrik of Harvard, writing in his book, The Globalization Paradox, describes the current phase of globalisation as hyper-globalisation, fuelled by an unprecedented burst in technological change. This, and the domination of free-market thinking in the aftermath of the Cold War, has fuelled it.