Mar
2009
The G20 Summit – the countdown begins…
And so the threats start. If Nicolas Sarkozy doesn’t get his way and a global regulator of global markets is not appointed he will flounce out of the G20.
Some less than generous commentators may suggest that could have as much to do with the plans for Jamie Oliver to produce a ‘budget banquet’ for world leaders. Certainly the meal of Cullen Skink, Welsh lamb, Northern Irish cheese and English wine had a similar effect on his predecessor as French President Jacques Chirac when Britain hosted the banquet when holding the EU presidency.
But can Sarkozy really mean it? Two reasons suggest this is posturing, and pretty poor posturing at that.
One, in a time when people around the world have doubts about their leaders’ ability to lead it will not be good for any of the heads of state or government at the London Summit not to be pulling together.
Two, Barack Obama doesn’t want a single global regulator and he is due to visit Sarkozy after the G20. Would he be so keen to see Paris after the French president had wrecked the London Summit and opposed US policy? I doubt it – and with Obama being box office at the moment and the only real attraction in global politics a no-show or a dressing down by the US President is a risk that Sarkozy is unlikely to take.
He seems to have stepped into a trap which Gordon Brown seems to be stepping back from – the desire to be seen as the man who saved the world.
This economic crisis will take time to abate and while helping lead the world to get out of it can bring plaudits, trying to be THE leader may mean in the public’s eyes you own it – and are therefore responsible for the time it takes to recover.
For the Prime Minister the focus will be sharply on delivery over the next 72 hours. The $100 billion fund to help finance exports and avoid protectionism would now seem to be a given – otherwise surely he wouldn’t have mentioned it in an article in today’s Evening Standard.
Now the time for over-claim is past. Now, in the last few hours before the summit starts, is the time to try to go back to a governing politician’s best position – under-promise and over-deliver.
Brown has been criticised for over-hyping what will be done in the Excel Centre. Certainly he is guilty of that to some extent. But he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. Had the Prime Minister started preparations for the summit by saying it wouldn’t be the cure-all for the world’s economic woes, the press and public would have questioned why he was holding it all – and worse no one may have come.
Now he must manage expectation and pray he exceeds them however slightly.
It will be tough. Success has many parents, failure is an orphan – but if the G20 does fail the press and public will demand the PM has a blood test.
The ratcheting up of the rhetoric, particularly by Sarkozy and messianic Obama, may mean the PM finds himself in the same position as one of his predecessors, Lloyd George when he negotiated the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the First World War.
Then the British PM had to negotiate with the pious US President Woodrow Wilson, and the nationalistic French PM Georges Clemenceau.
After the Treaty was concluded Lloyd George was asked how he thought he did in the negotiations. “Not badly,” he replied, “considering I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon.”
Gordon Brown may do well to be able to say something similar come the end of the week.
