Future historians may possibly see 2016 as when it started. Some may look back to the middle of 2007, when the collapse of a couple of hedge funds linked to sub-prime events would spark the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The great recession and the era of austerity that followed in much of the developed world did much to undermine faith in a globalised world, paving the way for the age of populism that brought about Brexit in the UK in 2016 and, later that year, Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election on an isolationist “America First” ticket...

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