This is a rare themed edition of Global Insight; these are uniquely challenging times. The notion that we should consider how to ‘build back better’ may seem anathema when the death toll is rising and economies are contracting at unprecedented rates. What’s become abundantly clear, however, is that, just as Covid-19 plays on a person’s underlying health issues, the pandemic highlights the pre-existing ethical weak points of societies and indeed the international community itself.

At such a time of crisis, it’s understandable, indeed desirable, that leaders seek to achieve solidarity. There were statements early in the pandemic that suggested the virus does not discriminate, that we’re ‘all in it together’. This proposition has been shown with absolute clarity to be patently untrue. See our feature, ‘Low wage and low priority’.

This is, then, a unique moment in history. The realisation has dawned that doing the right thing, not just at a point of crisis, but constantly and consistently, is what protects people, societies and the international community. Not just from pandemics, but from the ravages of enormous and fast-accelerating inequality, unchecked global warming, and the divisive, anti-democratic tendencies of both states and non-state actors that are inimical to the rule of law – think China, the current US administration, and big tech. See our features ‘China’s future in a post-Covid world’ and ‘Agenda for the next President of the United States’ and our column ‘Avoiding a tech-driven dystopia’.

The features and columns that follow are based on the fundamental need to ‘build back better’ – not just in the limited and obvious sense of repairing decimated economies, not just greening them, though this is important, too. Acting primarily in the public interest, in all areas, and not motivated purely by the unregulated, free market-fundamentalist drive for profits, is not a bad starting point. The financial crisis of 2008 taught us the lessons; we ignored, obfuscated or forgot them. We do so again at our peril.