Gordon’s April Fool

We at The Spectator would like to say sorry to the Prime Minister. When he declared in October that the world needed a ‘new Bretton Woods’ — a reference to the 1944 conference that established the global financial system — we took him at his word. And when he swore that the G20 summit in London would be a great event, and that world leaders would do ‘whatever it takes’, we assumed he meant what he said.

We now realise that we severely underestimated the PM’s sense of humour and failed to see the twinkling eye of surrealist humour in those dour features. In fact, the G20 has been the grandest April Fool in living memory, a spectacular raspberry to the planet by the men and women who are meant to be co-ordinating the recovery of the global economy.

The truth, of course, is that these heads of government can barely co-ordinate their motorcades and photo-opportunities, let alone the restoration of confidence in the battered capitalist system.