DAN ATKINSON: Let's let go of past glories

By DAN ATKINSON, MAIL ON SUNDAY ECONOMICS EDITOR
Updated:

How unfortunate, from the official point of view, that last week's news of an American plan to create an elite economic Group of Four that would exclude Britain should have coincided with the Irish vote on the European constitution.

There was, we were told, little chance that the G4 would come to anything. Britain humiliated? Perish the thought.

But events in Ireland will have reminded some that we were told exactly the same thing a few short years ago about the notion of a European constitution. 'Nobody', they said, wanted one.

Gordon Brown

Prime Minister Gordon Brown signs the EU's Lisbon Treaty as President of the European Commission in 2007

We can only hope that ministers and officials are kidding themselves, because they are not kidding anybody else.

Given there is every chance of a G4 without a British voice, we have to ask if it matters, or if it might give us a chance to find a different economic direction.

However, this is anathema to Whitehall officials. That there may be a committee somewhere, holding a meeting to which Britain has not been invited, is a prospect that fills them with dread. Among senior mandarins, Britain must have a seat at the top table where it can punch above its weight.

This mangled metaphor brings to mind the sort of restaurant that may have been frequented by the late Norman Mailer, the famously pugilistic novelist. Most of us prefer to sit at tables, 'top' or otherwise, at which punching is kept to a minimum.

Now it is true that every gathering of the global great and good is said to be historic, but there is every reason to believe the recent Istanbul economic summit was a watershed.

The Western-dominated Group of Seven retired gracefully, making way for the Group of 20 (and the putative G4). The International Monetary Fund moved to reorganise its affairs to reflect the world of 2009, rather than that of its founding year, 1944. And out of the turmoil of the world economic crisis, it seemed tomorrow's giants were emerging rather more robustly than the developed world.

In the light of these changes, trying to hang on to our lost glory would mean more of what has brought us to our present pass - a bloated financial sector, an indifference to manufacturing and the sort of corporate economy that, among many other things, is responsible for our identikit High Streets.

Above all, it would mean yet more surrender of our rights to bodies such as the World Trade Organisation and the EU on the baffling grounds that doing so increases our influence.

A contrarian strategy would involve a much smaller financial sector, more manufacturing, more craftsmanship, more self-employment and small firms and more, not less, independent national decision making.

Top tables - who needs them?

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