COP26 is not your typical power summit, because world leaders, NGOs and hacks are all in the same scrum. Outside their gilded fortresses politicians reveal different habits. John Kerry has the most purposeful stride, eyes rigid to the front, refusing to acknowledge the melee. Macron gives an impromptu press conference at the drop of a hat: he always has an articulate opinion to share, though his macho minders manhandle anyone who gets a little too close. Trudeau is predictably generous with his flirtatious smile. And Modi is the most huggy, which I hadn’t anticipated. He hugs everyone. Except me. I was particularly struck by his warm embrace of Luxembourg’s PM, Bettel. It felt like a symbol of this whole sprawling, dizzying affair: a country teeming with aspirational people putting the squeeze on a tiny country overflowing with surplus capital.
COP is a world away from the immediately preceding G20 summit in Rome, which was held in Mussolini’s modernist EUR district, and where the 20 assorted duci were separated from us hoi polloi with fascist rigour. I tell you one thing though about the G20 autarky: food was free, plentiful and yummy (the vitello tonnato was particularly good), whereas COP26’s is not even up to Pret standards, and the sausage rolls run out fast. When it comes to summits, perhaps benign dictatorship has its good points.
The portable loos in the vast Glasgow conference centre are an unfortunate example of what’s wrong with the British economy. There are far too few of them, and an army of latex-glove-wearing men armed with disinfectant and J-cloths wipe them down after every use. It is the most horrible and arguably the most important job here. But this is what happens when too little is invested in kit — in this case, decent loos and more of them — and instead we rely on cheap labour.
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