G20: A view from the sidelines

By David Higgerson on Apr 4, 09 04:38 PM

The closest I got to the G20 summit was traveling to Canary Wharf two days before the seven-hour meeting to save the world began.

Our company had put out a memo, reminding people to be security minded at all times, so it was a little harder than usual to get into the office.

If that's the only impact the G20 summit has on my life, it will have failed, and perhaps that is why holding such an event - and allowing the spin doctors to make a lot of big claims ahead of the occasion - was such a big risk for Gordon Brown (now seemingly known around the world as Prime Minister Brown thanks to his new pal, Barack).

For at what point can the G20 summit be described as a success? It's all well and good for it to be likened to the Marshall plan which rebuilt the world post 1945, but only once it passed into history was it described as a success.

The suggestion by some that the G20 is already a success because it got the 20 world leaders in a room and got them to agree on something is little short of bobbins. After all, them working together for the good of the wider world should be part of the job description, not a noble gesture in times of hardship.

As President Obama pointed out, the consequence of the G20 has to be that the current global recession doesn't become a depression. Economists will have a set of yard sticks to determine if the G20 actions listed in the communiqué announced on Thursday do, in fact, stop the global slide short of being a global depression, but what does the man on the street have?

If G20 is to be a success for Labour, and therefore Gordon Brown, the pain the ordinary man or woman on the street is feeling needs to start rolling back quickly. The rapid loss of jobs needs to halt, the ability to get sensible credit - for both business and the individual - needs to return and a sense of optimism needs to re-emerge.

On the last point, the signs initial signs appear to be good. The national press has responded positively, although the question over how much of the £1trillion pledged for various projects is actually new money remains unanswered.

The FTSE has responded well, up above the 4,000 mark for the first time in five weeks and RBS, among others, has pledged to start lending more to people and firms who do actually warrant it.

But will it stop the rapid loss of jobs? Will the question marks over firms like Vauxhall and LDV be removed as a result of what has been discussed at G20? In theory, yes, because more money in credit availability helps secure jobs and lead to more money being spent as the optimism returns.

The £1trillion figure means nothing to you or I. The numbers that have been thrown around during this crisis as so mind-boggling that they have numbed to us to the noughts.

And this isn't a crisis which grew up over night. Northern Rock went to the wall in late 2007. We're now in March 2009. A lot has happened since then but it has taken us nearly two years to get to a point when economists are talking about the recession bottoming out. The climb back out must be much swifter if G20 is to feel like a success for people on the British high streets. For it to have been a success for Gordon Brown, it needs to put the Tories on the back foot and show him to have been the man who started turning the economic ship round.

In a year's time will it be easier to move house? Will the first thing friends talk about when we meet up for a pint no longer involve job security? Will phrases such as 'credit crunch' and 'recession' be figuring less in news bulletins, and more frequently in first-stab historic essays?

So far, the G20 summit has delivered a timely boost for London's hotel trade, an extra day off for most people working in the City and proof that most middle aged stockbrokers really shouldn't wear jeans on enforced dress-down days.

However, it needs to mean much more than that, and quickly. President Obama was quick to mention the individual pain of the current crisis, but for G20 to have worked, the pain relief needs to start arriving soon.