It was an unlikely venue for a triumph but even Gordon Brown’s opponents privately concede that a draughty hangar in London’s docklands saw his finest moment. Barack Obama showered the Prime Minister with praise at the Excel Centre at the conclusion of the G20 summit in April.
“By any measure the London summit was historic,” said the US president at his first international summit. “It was historic because of the size and the scope of the challenges that we face and because of the timeliness and the magnitude of our response.”
Mr Brown’s own rhetoric was unusually grandiose. “This is the day that the world came together to fight back against the global recession, not with words, but with a plan for global recovery and for reform and with a clear timetable for its delivery,” he said.
A little over five months later, on the eve of the follow-up meeting in Pittsburgh, it is becoming apparent how difficult it will be to maintain that vaulting ambition now that the immediate threat to the world’s economy has receded. And whereas in the immediate aftermath of the G20 summit there were hopes it might help Mr Brown to recover some of his lost popularity, it is now clear he made no political capital.
The resignation of Damian McBride, Mr Brown’s disgraced spin doctor, barely a week after the summit marked the beginning of a series of political disasters for the Prime Minister that has seen Labour’s poll rating fall to record lows. Nevertheless, he has already decided that his only hope of a comeback in the polls lies with the economy. The encouraging signs of global economic recovery, if they sustain, will allow Mr Brown to claim some of the credit.
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His claim that Mr Cameron — who opposed measures such as the VAT cut on the grounds it could not be afforded — leads a “do nothing” party might gain ground in a changed economic scene.
That’s why September 24, the start of the Pittsburgh summit, has for so long been a red-letter day in the Downing Street diary. It provides an international backdrop for Mr Brown to preview an attack on the Tories that he will repeat at Labour’s conference the following week and continue in the pre-Budget report later in the autumn.
But ironically it is the success of the unprecedented interventions taken around the world in the spring that could scupper a repeat of the triumph of the London G20. The mood of international co-operation that so buoyed Mr Brown in London will be hard to sustain as arguments surface about when and how countries should start to remove the support.
Economic recovery brings almost as many difficult and urgent questions as the advent of the downturn. The danger that nations and regions will quickly revert to seeking their own economic self-interest over that of global financial stability worries both Mr Brown and Alistair Darling, the Chancellor.
A squabble between Europe, led by the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, the US and Britain over how to limit bankers’ bonuses will make it harder for Mr Brown to claim, as he did in London, to have built a “new consensus”.
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Called to account
The pledge: $500bn for the IMF to lend to troubled economies.
The reality: $380bn so far. The total includes: $160bn from European nations but not an additional $120bn promised from the EU. Japan has delivered $160bn, China $50bn, $10bn from Russia, but officials admit “stragglers”, particularly in emerging economies, have so far failed to deliver. The US is committed to adding a further 20 per cent of the final total.
The pledge: $250bn in additional world trade finance.
The reality: $65bn of trade covered so far. The headline figure turned out to be the value of the trade rather than the extra export insurance nations were willing to provide to get trade moving again.
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The pledge: $250bn for a new IMF “overdraft facility” that countries can draw on.
The reality: Pledge met, with the so-called special drawing rights achieved.
The pledge: $100bn that international development banks can lend to poorest countries.
The reality: Pledge met, but because of the depth of the recession institutions such as the World Bank are pressing for more.