Last night at the left-leaning London School of Economics (LSE), scores of students gathered to watch election results come in – and, most hoped, to see Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party denied a majority. Some here had volunteered for opposition parties or worked on voter registration; virtually all hoped to derail Mr. Johnson’s drive to achieve Brexit.

So when an exit poll projected onstage indicated a Conservative landslide, groans, jeers, and cries echoed across the auditorium. As the evening went on, the projections were borne out: Mr. Johnson earned an overwhelming mandate for Brexit, while the main opposition party, Labour, suffered its worst result in decades.

“This result is incredibly upsetting,” says Ella Holmes, a politics undergraduate student. “We have been excited to have a voice in this election and, perhaps naively, thought we’d have more of a decisive [anti-Brexit] swing than we did.”

Mr. Johnson’s commanding election victory Thursday dealt a decisive blow to a fraught, often quixotic, rearguard campaign to stop Brexit in its tracks. Young people have been a key part of that campaign, including those who were too young to vote in the 2016 referendum and saw an opening to reverse a political project that they saw as crimping their future opportunities and changing the country they will inherit into something unfamiliar. Thursday’s election represented their last best chance – and Mr. Johnson won it hands down.

Now, “remain”-minded youth have little choice but to come to terms with the fact that Brexit will happen. Far from fighting on, some may be ready to pivot toward shaping a post-European Union future and bridging divisions at home and with the rest of Europe.

“Remain” on the rocks

Thursday’s vote was an imperfect proxy for Brexit. The Conservatives and the Brexit Party polled less than half of the popular vote. More than half went to parties that either vowed to remain in the EU or, in Labour’s case, promised a revised EU deal and another referendum. Attempts to forge an anti-Brexit tactical voting alliance came to little as Labour refused to join.

Under the first-past-the-post system, that translated into 365 seats for the Conservatives in the 650-member Parliament, the biggest Tory majority (80 seats) since Margaret Thatcher’s in 1987. Labour’s tally was its lowest since 1935.

One problem for the “remain” side of the Brexit debate was geographical: Outside Scotland, “remain” voters cluster in cities, which have more younger and educated voters who skew left. Analysts say the best predictor of votes on Brexit and other issues is age, not social class.

“It’s Trump in the States. It’s Brexit here. Never in my life have I seen such a divide in age,” says Simon Pia, a journalist and author who lectures at Napier University in Edinburgh.

Matt Dunham/AP

Supporters of remaining in the EU take part in a People's Vote protest march in London on Oct. 19, 2019. With the collapse of Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the election, protests like this will have little leverage over the next government.

Emily Douglas, a geography student at LSE, said she hadn’t volunteered in this campaign but stayed engaged in political debate with friends and family, making the case for Labour and for staying in the EU. She was 16 when the referendum was held. “Brexit was a turning point. I realized that I needed to get involved and to have my own opinion,” she says.

For young people drawn into politics by Brexit, the battleground may now shift to the United Kingdom’s future relationship with Europe. Some students say they want to work to defuse a rise in xenophobia they blame on Brexit and its focus on curbing migration to the U.K.

But as the dream of stopping Brexit dies, many of the social and political movements that have led the fight – and inspired young activists – are in disarray. A well-funded campaign group for a second referendum, or People’s Vote, collapsed last month. The Labour Party faces an uphill struggle to rebuild and rebrand after party leader Jeremy Corbyn announced he would step down by early next year. The Liberal Democrats, which adopted the strongest anti-Brexit stance, failed to win seats; its leader, Jo Swinson, even lost her own parliamentary seat. (Rebel Conservatives purged by Mr. Johnson who stood as independents also lost.)

“The organizational expressions for young people [opposed to Brexit] are all in crisis,” says Stephen Fielding, a professor of political history at the University of Nottingham.

Some will call for “resistance” and try to replicate the People’s Vote movement, but they won’t get traction since Mr. Johnson has little fear of losing votes, he says. ”You can have as many [demonstrations] as you want, but there’s nothing that they can do to influence Parliament.”

“There are still things to campaign for”

Election defeats are bitter, but for young activists there’s always the next vote. Brexit’s finality – the unwinding of four decades of fitful integration with Europe – feels different, but its end destination is still in play, says Tony Travers, a professor of government at LSE who hosted Thursday’s election party.

“They can put their energies into trying to shape the future policy of the U.K. towards the EU, towards a softer, more rational version of Brexit than a harder no-deal version,” he says, referring to the trade accord that Mr. Johnson now has to negotiate with EU leaders. “There are still things for people who didn’t like Brexit to campaign for.”

Ms. Holmes, whose mother is Dutch, accepts that the U.K. is leaving, but is hopeful that it won’t fan “little England” nativism that she has seen rising since 2016. She says her generation must push for greater tolerance and inclusion, including toward Britain’s closest neighbors.

“Young people should be actively engaging in policies that will keep us as close to Europe as possible. Obviously for many of us, that would be remaining a member of the European Union. But that’s not possible.”

Tolerance cuts both ways, says Sophie Collins, an LSE graduate who now works at the university. “I think it’s important for people who are ‘remainers’ to understand some of the strong arguments for ‘leave’ as well. There needs to be more of an active dialogue now.”

She says her parents voted “remain” after consulting her and her siblings about their views since it would affect their future. (In other families, the generational divide has become a touchy topic around the dinner table.) And while Ms. Collins was unhappy about Mr. Johnson’s victory, she also saw a Brexit rollback as improbable, if not impossible. “I think it’s important to realize that a lot of people do want [Brexit],” she says.

Vindication for Conservatives

Amid the groans of students inside the auditorium, Samuel Joynson let out a cheer. He wore a jacket with a blue rosette, the emblem of the Conservatives, a rare species on campus. Mr. Joynson, an LSE graduate who recently earned a business master’s in France and will soon start a job in London as a business consultant, says the election was a vindication for his party.

“I’ve campaigned to get Brexit done and then we can move the country along,” he says.

Mr. Joynson, who voted “remain” in 2016, says youth participation in politics on all sides is positive, but he cautions that students in London may not see their political silos. When he goes back to his hometown near England’s southern coast, Brexit has a patriotic hue.

“It’s more about British values and traditions, and about opening Britain up to the wider world, not just European Union,” he says.

Earlier in the night, Jack Watkins-Hughes, a real estate agent in his 20s, cast his ballot for Labour at a polling station inside a library. He grew up in rural Wales and is dismissive of his village for voting for Brexit. “I don’t want to leave. I’ll still be fighting. But what more can you do?”

Cheryl Senter/AP

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg answers questions posed by members of the media Dec. 5, 2019, at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire.

Since Pete Buttigieg shot to the top of polls in Iowa and New Hampshire in late November, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has suddenly found himself – and his relative lack of experience – under a much brighter spotlight.

If he were elected, he would be the youngest president in history and the only mayor to go straight to the White House. Yet he has accrued an increasingly large throng of supporters and donors who aren’t concerned by the fact that he would be going from running a city of 100,000 to the world’s most powerful nation. Thanks to their enthusiasm and robust funding, he appears well positioned to do well in both Iowa and New Hampshire – the nation’s first contests, less than two months away.

“He is in a good position, probably a better position than most people – certainly the people at the top of the heap because he seems to be peaking after everyone else,” says Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center – and now it’s his turn to feel the heat, just as Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and others felt it before him. “The question is whether they can withstand the scrutiny that the press is going to give them when they’re the new kid on the block.”

After Senator Warren of Massachusetts surged ahead of Sen. Bernie Sanders earlier this year, she faced a withering spate of criticism, particularly over her “Medicare for All” plan. Now, her supporters and others are turning their scrutiny on Mr. Buttigieg, who in recent months has softened his progressive rhetoric and sought to fashion himself as a moderate unifier.

Among the criticisms: his consulting work for McKinsey clients, which included Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and appeared to coincide with controversial layoffs, though he disputes this; for holding closed-door events for wealthy donors; and for his Medicare for All-who-want-it plan as a boon for health insurance giants, thanks to the plan’s preservation of a private insurance option. In addition, a South Bend policeman’s shooting of an African American man this summer raised concerns about the disproportionately low number of African Americans on the city’s police force and a 60% increase in shootings in 2019 so far compared with 2018. Mr. Buttigieg has yet to expand his base of support beyond white, college-educated voters, raising concerns about the viability of his campaign in the key early state of South Carolina and beyond.

And then there is the fact that he is one of only a handful of candidates in the 2020 field with no state-level experience, let alone federal. This is the first presidential election cycle in which Mr. Buttigieg is even old enough to be eligible for the office.

The scrutiny may already be taking its toll: In the past two weeks, he dropped from 16% (2^nd place) to 9% (4^th place) in Quinnipiac University’s Democratic primary poll.

N.H. voters’ penchant for young candidates

Many New Hampshire voters have been vetting would-be presidents since before Pete Buttigieg was born, but even supporters from that elder cohort seem unfazed by the mayor’s youth and relative lack of experience.

“I don’t think I’ve seen anybody that’s a better politician or a better communicator than him,” says State Rep. Ray Newman of Nashua, adding that such youthfulness is not unprecedented in U.S. government. “Our forefathers were a lot younger than we imagine them to be.”

Indeed, many of the leaders of the American Revolution were around Mr. Buttigieg’s age of 37 or younger when the Declaration of Independence was signed: John Adams was 40, John Hancock 39, and Thomas Jefferson 33. Their adversary, King George III, was 38.

Cheryl Senter/AP

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg greets supporters after speaking at a campaign event Dec. 5, 2019, at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire.

To be sure, America today is far bigger and more complex than it was at its founding. The U.S. government now employs 2.6 million civilians, more than the entire population of the 13 colonies when they declared their independence from Britain. Counting the military, the president oversees an executive branch of more than 4.1 million employees. That’s about 4,000 times more than those currently working for Mayor Pete in South Bend.

Part of Mr. Buttigieg’s support may be explained by the fact that New Hampshire primary voters have a bias toward young, reform-minded politicians – even if they’re relatively untested, says political scientist Dante Scala at the University of New Hampshire.

“You can look back on Jimmy Carter or Gary Hart or Barack Obama and there is this tendency toward finding what’s new in American politics to be especially appealing,” says Professor Scala. “Buttigieg fits in that trend thus far, so in that sense the lack of experience isn’t necessarily a minus but it’s something of a plus.”

However, Mr. Carter was coming off a term as governor of Georgia, Mr. Hart had served as a U.S. senator for nearly a decade, and Mr. Obama had done stints in both the Illinois statehouse and in the Senate. Bill Clinton, another young contender, was finishing up his fifth term as governor of Arkansas. And even John F. Kennedy, whom Mr. Buttigieg became fascinated with as a child, had served three terms in the House of Representatives and another as senator before he was elected to the White House at age 43.

Little future for Mr. Buttigieg in Indiana politics

Mr. Buttigieg, raised by parents who were professors at Notre Dame and sent him to a top Catholic high school, went on to Harvard and then Oxford University on a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. While campaigning for Mr. Obama in rural Iowa, he says he was inspired to join the U.S. Navy reserves, becoming an ensign in 2009 and later deploying for seven months to Afghanistan to serve as an intelligence officer and armed driver. After three years with McKinsey, he won the mayoral election of his hometown at age 29. After coming out as gay in 2015, he won reelection with 80% of the vote. He is now wrapping up his second term.

The fact that Indiana is largely Republican may be one reason why Mr. Buttigieg decided to shoot straight for the White House, because a bid for the statehouse or governor was unlikely to succeed.

But in an age when Washington is seen as deadlocked, some voters value effective local governance over time on Capitol Hill.

“I’d much rather have a young mayor in [the White House],” says Tim Bobinsky, waiting for Mr. Buttigieg to arrive at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire. “I’ve worked with a lot of mayors in the past. ... And I do believe that they know how to solve problems.”

That’s certainly Mayor Pete’s pitch. During the Henniker event, a young man got up and asked:

“You’re a mayor – we’ve never seen a mayor jump from that office to president of the United States. So what about that position makes you uniquely qualified or qualified [compared] to your other competitors for this office?”

“When you are a mayor, you’re responsible for getting things done,” responded Mr. Buttigieg, wearing his signature blue slacks, white dress shirt, and navy blue tie. “You’ll never hear about a city shutting down the government because they have a disagreement over politics. ... Cities don’t get to print their own money when there’s a deficit, so you just have to figure out your finances and get stuff done.”

He is credited with leading a renaissance of South Bend, which saw its unemployment rate drop by half during Mr. Buttigieg’s tenure. The mayor is known for taking an innovative, tech-savvy approach to governance, as seen in the city’s “smart sewers” that are reputed to save South Bend $500 million, according to city officials.

Interestingly, it’s younger voters in New Hampshire – ages 18 to 49 – who are less likely to have a positive view of Mr. Buttigieg, according to a late October CNN poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.

“It’s not a liability – in fact, it’s probably an asset because he brings a lot of enthusiasm,” says state Rep. Peter Petrigno of Milford, New Hampshire, walking out after a packed town hall with the mayor, whom he says he is getting close to endorsing. “The bottom line is – are you competent for the job?”

Should internet access be seen as a human right?

To answer that question, activist Onica Makwakwa likes to begin with a story.

In 2015, South Africa’s capital Pretoria began setting up free Wi-Fi hotspots across the city. Local media interviewed a teenage boy from Atteridgeville, a poor black community on the city’s fringes, who regularly walked four miles roundtrip to use the nearest hotspot.

Why is this free Wi-Fi so important to you? they asked.

“I live in a shack,” Ms. Makwakwa remembers him replying. “But when I’m on the internet I’m no longer a kid living in a shack.”

The internet, in other words, opened the world to him. Today, roughly half the planet’s population is online, and the gap between the vast universe they can access there – from information to employment to digital money – and the analog existence of the other half is opening wider every year.

Activists like Ms. Makwakwa, Africa coordinator for the Alliance for Affordable Internet, say that’s a crisis. Without internet, many of the world’s poorest are being left behind in the global economy. Those who are most oppressed are being denied knowledge and ways to organize.    

But increasingly, activists are finding success in pulling down barriers to internet access by framing their campaigns as a matter of human rights. In South Africa, for instance, after years of pressure by activists, a business tribunal found earlier this month that two main providers’ high costs for mobile data were “anti-poor” and that they must slash their prices in order to create “greater economic and social inclusion moving forward as the country moves into the digital age.”

“In another era, we decided that education was a right, and that it had to be ensured even if you couldn’t pay. That’s the point we’re coming to with the internet now,” says Ms. Makwakwa. “We need to treat it like a basic utility, a commodity like water or electricity that the poor deserve access to in order to live a dignified life, even if they can’t pay.”

Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/AP

People access free Wi-Fi on their phones at a public spot in Mutare, Zimbabwe, Nov. 23, 2019.

The South African case underscores that point. The Competition Commission wrote in a report that the country’s two largest cellular providers – MTN and Vodacom – had engaged in “exploitative price discrimination.” The problem was both the high cost of data – around $10 for a gigabyte – and the higher costs of pay-as-you-go services compared with contracts, which activists argued discriminated against poor South Africans who could only afford to purchase airtime in small increments.

The commission agreed. It demanded that the companies cut the price of data within two months, likely by 30% to 50%, and provide all prepaid customers “a lifeline package of daily free data to ensure all citizens have data access on a continual basis, regardless of income levels.”

The report nodded to the fact that the “right to communicate is a fundamental right,” says Lazola Kati, who organizes campaigns around communication rights for the South African nonprofit Right2Know, which advocated heavily for the reduction in data prices.

That view is also backed by the United Nations, which has made increasing internet access part of its sustainable development goals – indicators that are meant to track the quality of life in different countries.

Not everyone agrees with that assessment, however.

“Technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself,” wrote internet pioneer Vint Cerf in 2012. A human right “must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience.” By putting the internet in the category of human rights, others have argued, it places an unfair burden on states to pay for their citizens to have web access, even when they cannot afford it.

But for many governments, restricting the internet is not about saving money. It’s a tool to suppress dissent.

In 2018, for instance, at least 21 African countries experienced a full or partial shutdown of the internet, mostly in response to protests. In countries like Zimbabwe, where more than 95% of financial transactions happen via mobile money, those kinds of shutdowns have profound effects on daily life.

But those shutdowns, ironically, also showcase the internet’s growing importance as a tool for free speech on the continent. In 2018, a quarter of Africans were online – well below the 51.4% worldwide, but a substantial increase from the 4% of Africans using the internet a decade ago.

“The rising number of users is posing an ever bigger threat to governments,” Juliet Nanfuka, a researcher at the Collaboration on International ICT Policy in East and Southern Africa, an internet think tank and advocacy organization based in Kampala, Uganda, told the Monitor in January.

At the same time, even in African countries where government doesn’t interfere, the high prices of internet access also shut out many potential users. Across the region, for instance, the average cost for a gig of data is about 8% of the average monthly salary. In Congo, Central African Republic, and Chad, the cost is more than 20%. (For an American worker earning $50,000 per year, paying 8% per month would be about $330.)

Approximately half of South Africans are online, but the divide between users and nonusers mirrors the divides in wealth and opportunity in the country more generally. Rich South Africans are far more likely to use the internet than poor South Africans. People in urban areas use it more than those who live somewhere rural. White people have better access than people of color; men better access than women.

Those gaps can never be filled by the market, says Ms. Makwakwa, especially in a place like South Africa, where resources of all kinds were until recently divvied up according to race.

“These kinds of inequalities didn’t create themselves,” she says. “And so our governments have to act intentionally to close the gap as well.”

Small things loom large in Catera Scott’s world. A smile, while requiring so little, can bring hope. A turn of phrase, while just dialect to one listener, represents familiarity and even comfort to another. And while some see math as just numbers, math equals opportunity to Ms. Scott.

Ms. Scott sees the power of small things – and she sees what happens when they’re missing. She’s determined to do her part to prevent that.

“Without thinking, we may steal people’s joy. We may steal people’s voice,” says Ms. Scott at the church where her husband is pastor.

She spoke to the Monitor about the Eighth Commandment – Thou shalt not steal (Exodus 20:15) – as part of our series on the Ten Commandments, which explores the ways in which these ancient religious principles continue to matter in modern life.

While the taking of property may appear to be the most obvious violation of the Eighth Commandment, Ms. Scott sees the more insidious withholding of seemingly small things to be a truer threat. She wants to ensure these things are there for others.

The only child of a single mother, she made good use of the opportunities available to her. After graduating from the Gesu School – an independent Roman Catholic school in Philadelphia that has become a national model for urban education – she earned an academic scholarship for high school at the exclusive Springside School, located in a tonier part of town. From there she went to the historically black, all-female Spelman College in Atlanta.

Along the way, the message and sense of mission were clear, she recalls: “You matter. You have a voice – a chance to change the world in a positive way.”

These days, Ms. Scott is still in school – as an educator. For eight years after Spelman, she was a math teacher, and recently, she was named assistant principal, responsible for eight middle school classrooms in her public charter school. She focuses on maximizing her students’ opportunities so they, too, have choices later – a critical intangible denied to urban students when academic preparation is thwarted, she observes.

She is proud of her school and its standards. “A lot of students [elsewhere] aren’t put in front of grade-level material. By lowering the bar, you may have prevented them from accessing the SATs,” and thus college and good jobs. Her own charges keep up with grade-level curriculum material, even if that means extra tutoring or remediation time.

There’s no slacking. “Only in education can you either put kids in front of a movie every day or teach circles around the class and still be paid the same,” says Ms. Scott, a believer in teacher incentive pay.

She makes sure her students are aware she came from a world like theirs, and that often she was studying while others played. “I let them know I grew up in Philadelphia, in a single-parent home, to let them see that it’s possible to live your dream, and also to see what it took to get there.” When students graduate, they know where to find her, and even from college will FaceTime her with a request for an internship recommendation or for help with a particularly thorny math problem.

Sabina Louise Pierce/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Catera Scott and her husband, William Scott III, share a moment with their sons at Philadelphia’s Harold O. Davis Memorial Baptist Church, where Mr. Scott is pastor. In the future, Ms. Scott envisions doing more church outreach, such as bringing in a speaker on financial affairs.

As a student, Ms. Scott liked it when she recognized her own “voice” in the academics, and she tries to find academic content that resonates for her own students. Her elementary school threaded the black experience into the curriculum with assemblies and special assignments. In her high school, which had a different demographic and usually a more classical curriculum, she remembers being touched when assigned Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” hearing in the characters’ dialect her Southern-born grandmother’s voice. At Spelman, even the black voices were diverse – from Congo, Trinidad, and Nigeria, for instance.

“I identify very strongly with my race. Instead of shying away from race,” she says, “let’s lean in. Let’s learn from each other.”

“A tough cookie”

Margaret Mary O’Neill, who worked with Ms. Scott’s mother at the Gesu School, watched the young woman grow up. “I appreciate what a strong family she and her mother made,” Ms. O’Neill says. She recalls that as a child, Ms. Scott had a very clear sense of herself that persisted through recurrent family crises. Ms. Scott’s mother endured frequent and serious hospitalizations for heart failure, and ultimately received a heart and  lung transplant in 1997. “For all her softness, Catera is a tough cookie,” says Ms. O’Neill.

The child, Ms. O’Neill recalls, was “clearly the star” of her eighth grade graduating class of about 50 students. “If an opportunity were presented, she was wise enough to seek more information and see if the opportunity was right for her,” says Ms. O’Neill. But she wasn’t one to take an opportunity from someone else: “She did not make herself shine by dimming someone else. She’s always the kind of person who is happy when she sees you, and always happy for someone else’s good fortune.”

Ms. Scott is a woman of prayer. She’s “asked and received” many times over in her young life, and as a result she’s confident that she is heard by God. Through her mother’s illnesses, church was her constant, a place of joy and peace that her grandmother kept in place for her. She remembers praying for her mom, and feeling answered when her mother received the transplant.

She also prayed that she would surmount the paperwork and financial hurdles of college and would graduate, which she did. Even about seemingly lesser concerns, she detects answers: “It’s like, ‘OK, God. You’re showing me you’re here.’ Things like that strengthen your faith.”

If some of her other college prayers had been answered as she’d hoped, however, Ms. Scott wouldn’t currently be thinking about middle school math. Aiming to make a lot of money via a career in business, she prayed many times for opportunities that never panned out. Today, citing Romans 8:28 – “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” – she believes that her desire and God’s will were not aligned back then, but are now: “‘OK, God, whatever is Your will.’ I don’t see everything in my limited scope.”

Guardian of congregation’s joy

On Sundays at Philadelphia’s Harold O. Davis Memorial Baptist Church, Ms. Scott sees her role as guardian of the joy of the congregation. This is the church where her husband became pastor in 2017 at the age of 26. But Ms. Scott’s plate is full with work as well as their two young children, so she’s not yet doing the kind of outreach she envisions – bringing in a speaker on financial affairs, for example, or on health and wellness. And she hopes the church’s Christian school will expand its enrollment.

But she knows from experience what brings people to the church. Sitting in a former classroom, surrounded by the bulletin board remnants of spelling and geography lessons, she reflects, “Life is hard. There are family issues. There are work issues. When you walk into a church, you want to walk out feeling that you’ve received joy and hope.”

The gossip, rumors, and spats that can be part of human endeavors undermine that joy, she says. “‘You weren’t supposed to walk that way,’ or ‘You shouldn’t have said that’ – I’ve seen that multiple times, people have left the church because they’ve been hurt.” This preacher’s wife is not afraid to speak, keeping her reprimand short and simple, usually “that was not nice.”

At the same time, she knows what to do to foster joy. “I’m kind of shy, and here there are hundreds of people. I have to push myself. I make sure I’m smiling. I’m calling people when they’re sick, when they’ve lost a loved one.” At church, she says, “I try to speak to every single person, by name, and to have personal conversations with each of them. I want them to know they’re seen.

“I hug them,” she adds. “They may not even have received a hug that week.”

Part 1: The Commandments as a moral source code in modern life

Part 2: How does the First Commandment fit in today?

Part 3: ‘I have to have humility’: How Second Commandment helped man find freedom

Part 4: One woman embraces Third Commandment in feeding 1,600 at Thanksgiving

Part 5: ‘Remember the sabbath’: How one family lives the Fourth Commandment

Part 6: ‘Growing up is hard’: How Fifth Commandment guided a child during divorce

Part 7: Is saying ‘I’d kill for those shoes’ OK? One woman and Sixth Commandment.

Part 8: Is chastity old-fashioned? An NFL veteran’s take on Seventh Commandment.

Part 9: ‘Thou shalt not steal’: Even someone else’s joy, says one educator

Part 10: ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness’: Ninth Commandment goes to Princeton

Part 11: Jealousy at Ivy League level: How a law professor views Tenth Commandment

Reuters

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson delivers a statement after winning the Dec. 12 general election.

In just one week in December, the world trading system saw three big course corrections. China and the United States reached an initial deal to end a tariff war and set new rules on trade. Washington signed up for a revised North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. And in a Dec. 12 election, Britain firmly chose to leave the European Union with an overwhelming victory for the Conservative Party.

The theme in all three? Globalization, or the flow of goods, people, money, and information across borders, is not fading away. It is being fixed to help those who feel “left behind” and unable to adjust.

“Let the healing begin,” declared British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in his victory speech Friday. His government will now be finishing Brexit after a three-year, exhausting debate. Yet it also seeks new trade deals with the EU and the U.S. while giving Britain more control over its economy and immigration. Mr. Johnson promised citizens who wanted to stay in the EU that he “will never ignore your good and positive feelings of warmth and sympathy towards the other nations of Europe.” 

His promise, like the other trade events this week, reflects a new type of globalization. Instead of turning toward isolation, countries such as Britain want the international system to better respect the interests of local communities and each nation’s identity. Economic integration will go on but at a pace and in directions that cause less pain to workers and neighborhoods as well as the environment.

Old trade rules are being ripped up for new ones. Yet cross-border interactions keep rising. “The world remains more connected than at almost any other point in history, with no signs of a broad reversal of globalization so far,” according to the latest survey of global connectedness from New York University.

Much of the rage against globalization has been in the West, bringing with it a rise in populist politicians. Yet the West represents only about 1 billion of the world’s 7 billion people. And the proportion of people living outside the countries where they were born – about 3.4% – has barely risen in the past century. Migration may need better management in its flow and legality. But it is hardly a new danger to world order.

The latest course corrections on trade show that the fears and damages of globalization can be addressed. Rather than deglobalization, the world needs reglobalization, or the rethreading of the bonds between nations. The breaks in trade, like Brexit, can be merely a pause to end any suffering from trade.