Leadership Quote by Clare Short

Clare Short’s line works because it refuses the premise of the argument. By likening “being in favor of globalization” to “being in favor of the sun rising,” she recasts a political choice as a physical inevitability, and in doing so shames her accusers for treating a structural reality like a moral confession. It’s a classic politician’s judo move: take a loaded charge and flip it into a category error.

The intent is defensive but not timid. Short isn’t just saying globalization is happening; she’s saying the accusation itself is unserious, as if critics are railing at the rotation of the Earth. That metaphor does two things at once. It projects competence (I deal in realities, not fantasies) and it narrows the acceptable debate. If globalization is “the sunrise,” then the only grown-up question is how to live with it, not whether to “support” it.

The subtext, though, is where the line bites. Globalization is not actually a natural phenomenon; it’s a set of policies, institutions, and power arrangements that winners often prefer to describe as weather. Calling it inevitable can function as political anesthesia, dulling scrutiny about who writes the rules, who absorbs the shocks, and who gets told to “adapt.”

Context matters: as a center-left British politician shaped by the post-Cold War consensus, Short is speaking from a moment when “there is no alternative” rhetoric traveled well in respectable circles. Her metaphor aims for pragmatism, but it also reveals a fault line: treating globalization as dawn can sound like enlightened realism to some and like elite fatalism to others.