Hanger-on May is no more than a bit player at the G7 summit
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Donald Trump and the other world leaders found little time for the prime minister in Canada
Shinzo Abe, Giuseppe Conte and Jean-Claude Juncker. China News Service/VCG via Getty Images
Four years ago the G8 became the G7 when Russia was kicked off the top table after its invasion of Crimea. Sometime over last weekend’s summit in Quebec the G7 became the G6 + 1. Fed up with Theresa May’s inability to make up her mind whether to sack several members of her cabinet – let alone come up with anything remotely coherent on Brexit – the other members of the G7 unilaterally decided to sideline the UK.
Donald Trump refused either to waste any time having discussions with the British prime minister or use up valuable tweets insulting her, while Angela Merkel, Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron were at the centre of most of the discussions with the US president. May was reduced to an unwanted hanger-on and only just made it into the fringes of the group photo after Trudeau realised she had got herself locked in a cupboard and took pity on her.
To make things even more confusing, the G6 +1 further subdivided into the G5 + 1 + 1 when Trump chose to disassociate himself from everything that had been agreed and to abuse those leaders he could remember having met. So it was wholly understandable that the British prime minister was a little shaky on the details of what had taken place at the G5 +1 +1 when she came to hand in her Canadian mini-break homework to the Commons in the form of a statement.
On the whole the prime minister thought the summit had gone OK. At least the bits of it she had managed to overhear. All the plastic cups they had used had been recycled and almost everyone had agreed that the oceans should have as much water in them as possible. But there had also been gossip, which one of the French delegation had passed on to her, that the whole thing had been a complete disaster with Trump threatening to escalate a global trade war. So perhaps the fairest thing to say was that the weekend had been a mixed bag.
Even this assessment was too much for Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader declared the entire summit to have been a failure. And the responsibility for its failure rested solely with one person. Normally he likes to blame May for everything but as she hadn’t really been there, Corbyn directed all his anger at the American president. The White House policy of putting America First was a menace to the international rules based order. Steel tariffs, Iran, climate change.
May appeared visibly shaken to hear this. Perhaps it had all been a bit worse than she had thought. Britain and the EU were right to retaliate with tariffs of their own, she said. A statement she immediately contradicted by insisting it was in no one’s interests to indulge in tit-for-tat protectionism. So we might be doing a little bit of retaliation but not enough for anyone to call it retaliation. Even by the prime minister’s usual standards of ambivalence and indecision, this was a stretch.
“We have been very clear,” she declared. “Through the United Nations process we will be continuing the United Nations process.” At times of stress her speech algorithms invariably fail and her sentences become longer and longer and more and more opaque. As if she is hoping that in the process of speaking she will – by luck if nothing else – stumble on a series of words that mean something. If not something related to the question she was asked.
The prime minister stumbled on, putting her hands over her ears whenever MPs suggested that what the summit had really shown was that Britain was better off remaining in a customs union with the EU than hoping for a trade deal with the US. Not at all, she insisted. The intensity of the disagreement between the UK and the US was a sign of how strong the relationship really was: the time to worry with Trump was when everything appeared to be running smoothly.
It wasn’t long before MPs from both sides of the house began to pick holes in May’s logic. Never that difficult a job even on a good day, but an open goal when she was hell bent on finding method in Trump’s destructive narcissism. The US was on our side. It just had a funny way of showing it. So why was Trump calling for Russia to be reinstated to the G5 + 1 + 1 + 1? May had no idea.
Rebecca Pow – not one of the brighter Tory backbenchers – tried to come to May’s rescue by pronouncing the summit a magnificent success. May looked confused all over again. She had only just come round to accepting the G5 + 1 + 1 had been a fiasco. She made a note to try to pay more attention next time. If she was invited.
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