At the g7, the queen stole the show — but the politicians must try harder | thearticle

The G7 came, it saw and it was conquered. By the Queen, that is. Once again, our nonagenarian, recently widowed monarch stole the show in Cornwall by providing the most memorable moment of

the summit. As the bigwigs posed for their group photograph, she said, very audibly, in that inimitable voice, still clear as a bell: “Are you supposed to be looking as if you’re enjoying

yourself?” The leaders laughed; the ice was broken; her job was done. When it comes to putting people at their ease, she is world class. She looked immaculate and gracious, as always,

helping everyone to feel at home. Later, after taking tea at Windsor Castle, Joe Biden said she reminded him of his mother. But the Queen put the President through his paces, grilling him

for 40 minutes about politics, including his views on Putin and Xi Jinping. She probably has a better grasp of US foreign policy than anyone else alive, having observed its evolution over

nearly seventy years. Biden is the 13th President she has known personally. He may not be the last.  The fact that the first gathering of global leaders since the pandemic began almost a

year-and-a-half ago could be so preoccupied by what ought to have been a localised dispute in Northern Ireland is, perhaps, a sign that Brexit has cast a longer shadow than some may have

hoped. The Protocol, like the partition of Ireland a century ago, is a messy solution to an inherently insoluble problem. The G7 was never going to be the occasion for a compromise to be

hammered out, but all the grandstanding has only made it worse. In an earlier era, the testy exchange between Macron and Johnson would never have become public — or only decades later, when

the two long-retired elder statesmen came to write their memoirs. It may have suited both to let it all hang out, but it is the poor people of the Province who will pay the price. Laws are

like sausages, as Bismarck probably never said: it is better not to see how they are made. Sausage wars may make good headlines in London and Paris, but in Belfast bangers are no joke. Like

most summits, the Cornwall G7 will soon be forgotten. The promises of a billion free doses of Covid vaccines and other contributions to poorer continents now struggling to contain the

pandemic are welcome, to be sure. Such gestures by the West tend to be taken for granted, whereas those from China, for example, invariably have political strings attached. But no

overarching vision emerged from the Cornish jamboree. Perhaps we should not expect a vision; what is required for reconstruction may be an eye for granular detail rather than grand designs.

Yet the world seems to have reached a dangerous juncture. The present is still precariously poised; the future seems more than usually opaque. By November, when he next struts his stuff at

the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, we must hope that the Prime Minister has a coherent message for the planet. More of the same boilerplate diplomacy won’t cut it, Boris.  A

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