20 december 2009, G2 is with us

Tuesday 5th January 2010

Along with every European think tank worth its salt, I’ve been warning for a long while that europe’s satisfaction with being a political dwarf will mean a world run by the usa and china – the G2. The no hopenhagen result shows that the waiting is over. The countries that did the late night deal were the us, china, india, brazil and south Africa - and the latter ones quickly disowned it. From start to finish, going back a year, this was a us-china dialogue. Forget the brown/miliband “it was us wot won it” claim, the uk, france, germany and russia were not even at the top table, despite on the face of it the eu having the strongest hand, having already legally signed up to a 20% emissions cut from 1990 levels, and with another pre-arranged 10% to bargain with (see attached). So, the world isn’t waiting for us to get our act together. The uk cannot hold its own on the world stage unless it leads the eu, when a g3 scenario materialises. As this is unlikely, the us-china duopoly is one we better start getting used to.