Am I alone in finding every G8 meeting a massive anti-climax, self-sustained only by fawning media coverage?
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for "World Leaders" - and those who think they are - meeting other heads of nation states. But this has become a forum with increasingly little basis in economic and geopolitical reality. Inflation, if you like, runs rife on the international meet and pose for the cameras mediafest that has come to dominate our daily news. So I would ask you to ponder these questions;
- How can China and India not be part of the G8 when Russia has a smaller economy and shows less respect for international law? (Both their GDPs are bigger by purchasing power parity and India is only just behind Russia in nominal terms - probably not for long. Moreover, neither the India or Chinese governments have been strongly suspected by our own security services of ordering the murder of a British citizen on British territory).
- And much as I admire, genuinely, Italy, a fellow G8 member, on all sorts of levels (the easy civility of the people, eternally beautiful art, a cuisine that reaches the world and successful family-owned businesses in the North), who seriously cares what their latest revolving-door leading politicians think?
The G8 has had its day. I don't buy into the idea that all we need instead is a league of democracies (imagine the trouble France would cause) or an annual anglo-saxon nation state talkfest (bound to attract an infinite numbers of obfuscating detractors). What we really want is to start emphasising state-to-state relations, on an evolutionary, when necessary, basis.
The world is globalising. But it's not because of über-Blairite events like these currently taking place in Japan. At the very least, the G8 should be reduced to meeting every 2 years rather than every 12 months and save us all a bit of money.
