The G20: a reminder why we should never take our world leaders seriously

Who knows what they were talking about? Perhaps President Macron was scolding MBS for missing the hotel’s cooked breakfast by oversleeping. “I told you.” “Yes you told me.” “You never listen to me.” Or perhaps he was instructing him about something altogether more sinister. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is what communications wonks call the “optics” – how the conversation looks to the wider world. In that respect it doesn’t look any more or less toe curling – camp weed Macron giving it the steely-eyed tough guy mere inches from the beard of the Middle East’s current most terrifying despot – than any of the other toe curling moments these kinds summits never fail to throw up. There’s nothing, nothing, like a G20 meeting for seeing what dreadful hams our world leaders are.

Every delegate, of course, is madly excited, which is why they seem such berks. For each of them, being there is as good as it gets – rubbing shoulders as equals in some heavily fortified, god-awful conference centre with the most potent men and women on the planet is the dirty power orgy dream that lurks in every politician’s heart.