Fly the flag? It is time to forget it

The emergence of global brands with not just products but values is more important than the balance sheet

When it comes to funky New Labour values, we already have them graven on our hearts. We care about education, especially hi-tech, Internet- type education. We want the environment to flourish for our children. We love the idea of the world joining hands in a great multicultural hymn of solidarity. But when politicians start talking earnestly about such values it's hard to hear for the sound of roaring laughter. So who else can best promote these - let's say it - lefty values most successfully? Some surprising champions of New Labour values are emerging, and strange bedfellows they make for former socialists.

In education and technology, it is not David Blunkett's words which convince us; it is those of Bill Gates of Microsoft, and Sir Iain Vallance of BT. No matter how many London Underground trains the spin doctors force poor John Prescott to take he'll never have the clout with the eco-consumer of Anita Roddick of The Body Shop. Robin Cook and Clare Short can chase the sun around the globe preaching interdependency and multiculturalism, but it's Benetton's ads and BA's new tailfins that are defining our new internationalism.

The BA corporate makeover is by no means unique. Almost all our multinationals have abandoned the "British" tag. Imperial Chemical Industries carries no baggage from the past in the global brand ICI. But many have gone further. Not only do they strive not to be seen as British, but increasingly they pose themselves as being above national boundaries and interests, ready to serve the consumer, whoever or wherever he or she is. BA's boss Bob Ayling rightly points out that a frosty, middle-class, white brand does not do BA much good. That's commercial sense, but the emergence of these global brands with not just products but values is more important than just a balance sheet item.

The power of the multinationals to market a way of life is not new. American companies have always done it. What is totally new is the way in which they are using it. As villains go it used to be hard to beat a multinational corporation. As a student activist I was jet-propelled by outrage at the hard-faced bogeyman who led mighty, rapacious outfits which bestrode the known world like modern day Caesars. They were great targets - selling unnecessary baby milk to poor Africans, reaping the harvest of death from tobacco plantations, holding democratically elected governments to ransom with threats to withdraw and take their lucrative taxes and goodwill (ie. bribes to corrupt officials) with them. And every now and again there would be a juicy link with the CIA. A committed lefty could get up in the morning with a song in his heart - probably The Red Flag - and know that there would be a windmill to tilt at come what may.

Virtue, on the other hand, could always be found at home in the beleaguered public utilities, often headed by talented working-class boys made good - Marsh at the railways, Ezra at coal, others so anonymous you'd never know their names until they retired - who toiled away at distributing social goods for little reward other than the thanks of a grateful nation and a seat in the House of Lords.

How things change. Today, the bosses of our great utility companies are about as popular in polite circles as stinging nettles at a nudist camp. The "fat cats" are fair game for every passing demagogue, the object of scorn by stand-up comics and leader writers alike and the targets of rage by consumers.

The multinationals are another story. Today, they even call themselves something different - transnationals. The change is meant, I think, to suggest that instead of dominating nations, they connect them. We should not be starry-eyed about this; the idea of Ford, or Coca-Cola, or even BT merely being a gentle facilitator of good relations across the planet would take some swallowing. Worse still, nothing can excuse Shell's apparent neutrality in the face of state terror and summary executions in Ogoni in Nigeria. Ford's embarrassing record of insensitivity and its murky record of discrimination against its black workers is nothing to write home about. Yet increasingly it is these transnational corporations which are carrying the most progressive values across the world. They do it for their own reasons. They believe that democracy creates stability - a prerequisite for successful business. They dislike war, because it sends share prices plummeting. They want more and more people to have the money to buy their goods; and their endless search for dominance fuels technological advance that provides new choices to humanity every day. Eventually, one hopes managements may be forced to realise that discrimination or turning a blind eye to evil in one country will lead to their being punished elsewhere in their empires. That too, may well lead the transnationals to exercise a more benign, civilising influence.

Even the banks are getting in on the act. The French farmers' bank, Credit Agricole, anticipating the euro's arrival has now taken to giving account holders their balances in the euro-currency, probably as a way of blunting the French people's notorious dislike of their neighbours, especially the Germans. This is heady stuff. All capitalism is about self- interest; but that self-interest can be defined and satisfied in different ways. If the American style is capitalism without constraint, and the Australians bring us capitalism with cojones, we may be seeing a new European contribution to 21st century global economics: capitalism with a conscience. Is it now time, as Dr Strangelove might say, to stop worrying and learn to love the transnationals?