WEEKEND news reports are already filling up with talk of the doings of the Group of Eight meeting in Northern Ireland, Britain being the current G8 president.
For the record, the G8 is the political verison of the G7, which is primarily a grouping of finance ministers and central bankers. The G8 is the G7 (Britain, the US, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Japan) plus Russia. Just to keep everyone thoroughly confused, there have been in the past gatherings of G8 finance ministers.
It is not an original thought, but the effectiveness of these meetings is in inverse proportion to the surrounding publicity. The more press conferences, communiques and television cameras, the less will anything important be decided.
Indeed, it is sobering to note that back in the days when the G7 was the G5 (Canada and Italy had yet to be brought on board), meetings were not publicised at all.
Here is former Chancellor Nigel Lawson reflecting on the so-called Plaza Agreement of 1985, in which the G5 agreed at the eponymous New York hotel to a managed devaluation of the dollar.
'By the standards of the G5, which normally met in secret and had never issued a communique at all until the January meeting in Washington, the publicity that came after the plaza agreement was astonishing.' (Memoirs of a Tory Radical; Biteback; 2010).
With the focus shifting from the G7 to the G20 (essentially the G7 plus the emerging giants), there had been suggestions that the G7 could return to its roots as an informal meeting group. Alistair Darling as Chancellor was keen to encourage this.
The sooner the better, I'd have thought.
PPS: A book review
I have reviewed an intriguing new book on British foreign policy for Lobster magazine. Six Moments of Crisis: Inside British Foreign Policy is written by Gill Bennett, former chief historian at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It can be found here
http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster65/lob65-six-moments-of-crisis.pdf
Thanks again for reading and enjoy the weekend.
Going South: Why Britain Will Have A Third World Economy By 2014 by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson is published by Palgrave Macmillan.