The G20 summit is lousy value for money. Cancel it

Ross Clark looks ahead to Gordon Brown’s summit at which he will try to revive his own political fortunes, found a new global economic order and stage a Bretton Woods for our times. No chance: the whole thing is an expensive sham

It is difficult to look at the photographs of the world’s finance ministers, bank chiefs and assorted hangers-on assembled at a hotel in West Sussex last weekend without thinking of those old BT ads with the slogan, ‘Why not change the way we work?’ Has anything come out of the meeting of G20 finance minsters in Horsham, or will come out of the follow-up heads-of-government summit in Docklands on 2 April, which could not have been achieved by phone, email or video-conference? Maybe the world’s leaders should have followed their usual platitudes about looking to the future and engaging the young by holding the whole thing on Facebook instead.

We all know the real reason why 22 world leaders — the presence of Spain and the Netherlands has spoiled the name somewhat — will be trekking to the workaday ExCel Centre a week on Thursday. Gordon Brown wants to create himself a Bretton Woods moment. He wants to pose at the centre of a photograph of men saving the world (and it really will be the men, as Ms Merkel is clearly in no mind to do Gordon’s bidding for him). He wants to thumb his nose at Nicolas Sarkozy and say, look, I got Barack Obama first. Above all, he wants to create the image of himself as a seasoned operator on the international stage and David Cameron as a pipsqueak outsider who can’t be trusted in such turbulent times.

It has become a standard tactic of a leader under pressure at home: go and strut the global political stage.