From the editor’s desk

Hopes rise for radical G8 summit

ONLY A recently re-elected government could have run the risks involved in the British strategy towards the forthcoming summit of world leaders. At any other time the electoral disaster that could follow a humiliating failure at the so-called G8 conference at Gleneagles, Scotland, would have blocked such risk-taking. Tony Blair has ambitiously set himself three main objectives: an agreement for the writing-off of the intolerable burden of debt owed by the poor world to the rich; an agreement for substantially increased development aid from rich to poor, including the ultimate realisation of the UN?s target that countries should give 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product; and a new basis for world co-operation to control global warming by restricting carbon emissions. American opposition was a key difficulty in each case.

But he is much nearer success on each of them than once seemed likely. Africa is now top of his international agenda, and he is powerfully helped by the equal commitment of his Chancellor and likely successor, Gordon Brown. Together they have gained the agreement of world leaders to the cancellation of debt, initially in 18 cases. The criteria agreed mean that more countries should quickly qualify. Thanks to the conditions attached, debt relief should not feed the greed of African dictators, nor inflate their armies with new weapons. Indeed, it should help Africa to throw off the curse of endemic corruption. This means the West must also put its house in order. Bribery always involves a briber as well as the bribed.

Similar anti-corruption conditions should ensure that the doubling of aid flows over the next few years will also reach those who need most help. The issue of trade and economic development is more ambivalent, not least because globalisation and privatisation have brought very mixed blessings to poor economies so far and they are naturally wary of the effect of more of the same. But the ability of economic growth to transform backward economies is amply demonstrated by the phenomenal development of China, and to a lesser extent, India. Above all, however, the way protection and subsidy by rich nations impose unfair trading conditions on the rest is crying out for attention, and Mr Blair?s efforts to force the European Union to look again at its Common Agricultural Policy signals an important way forward.

On global warming America has yet to join the international consensus that the planet faces a real crisis, though Mr Blair is clearly more optimistic after his recent talks with President Bush. Even in America, public opinion seems to be moving his way. Indeed, public opinion globally has rarely been so manifest a force for good in international affairs. If the G8 achieves Mr Blair?s main goals, much credit will go to those who conceived and executed the Make Poverty History campaign. While the British Government has applied political pressure from above, as it were, the campaign has applied mass pressure from below. As a result Gleneagles may actually make the world a better place, which is what hardly anyone would have expected six months ago.