When the world trade round meeting in Seattle blew up in into recrimination in the chamber and street demonstrations out of it, the obituary of the post-war process of trade liberalisation was easily penned.

The WTO had only ever been a rich man’s club, it was said. The third world had neither the capacity nor, in may cases, the economic interest in offering themselves as sacrifices to the corporate ideology of multi-national business.

A variety of non-governmental organisations, claiming to represent the views of developing countries without always taking the trouble to check back, celebrated the perceived challenge to globalisation.

Well, Humpty Dumpty was put back together again. The Doha round took shape and last September the world’s trade, development and agriculture ministers from 148 countries settled behind the barricades in the plush Mexican resort of Cancun to hammer out the agreement. That meeting fell apart, though the cause of the collapse was disputed.

One camp said that the issues proved impossible to bridge. Another, including the veteran participants in trade rounds under the GATT, suggested that had the chairman had more stamina and forced the meeting onwards an agreement would have been grudgingly extracted.

What the discussions showed was that the WTO was certainly no rich man’s club. A new bloc of countries, some, like Brazil, with developing world social characteristics but emerging economic super-powers had their own agendas, especially in the crucial field of agricultural trade.

A new range of issues – the so-called Singapore agenda covering investment, competition, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation – was pressed by the EU.

Now there is a new drive to revive the talks. The EU, in the throes of a complex reform of the common agricultural policy which is "decoupling" support from production, is offering to eliminate farm export subsidies and to tone down the Singapore demands. The EU is not usually the recipient of congratulations in the field of farm policy but the Australian-led Cairns group of agricultural exporting countries, the US (which has some of the most abusive farm subsidies – sugar, for example) and even Oxfam have praised Brussels.

The talks need to succeed. It cannot be emphasised enough that trade liberalisation works and that a significant part of the world’s rising prosperity – in the third world as in the first- is due to the steady liberalisation of trade.

Anti-globalisation protesters are not just plain wrong: they are dangerously deluded in thinking that they are supporting the needs of the third world rather than undermining them.

Globalisation is king: Long live the king!

David Curry is Conservative MP for Skipton and Ripon.