by Gordon Brown
Africa presented a bigger headache. The African Union’s 2009 chair was Colonel Gaddafi and I dreaded the prospect of him pitching his tent in Whitehall. On the pretext of the G20 being an economic rather than a political forum, I turned instead to the head of the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, and he agreed to attend as Africa’s representative.
In the run-up to April I visited as many of the G20 countries as I could. In March, I was the first European leader to visit the newly installed President Obama at the White House. I did so amidst the now predictable attempts by our right-wing media to demonstrate that the special relationship was being downgraded. In fact the press pack objected to not being accorded the official press conference they had expected – Barack and I did an impromptu media briefing from the Oval Office – and spent more time complaining about delays in being let in to the White House. When the Daily Mail later wrote that Obama’s gift to me of a set of DVDs of twenty-five US films was ‘as exciting as a pair of socks’, I did not tell them that the DVDs were coded for the US and unreadable by any UK DVD player. The new president was, however, shocked at the treatment meted out by the UK press. In a private call I took from him on our plane just after I flew out of Washington, he said he could not understand the British media pack. They were just ‘hound dogs’, he said.
During my visit I had also delivered an address to a joint meeting of the US Congress and Senate. I spoke of how in fighting the economic crisis, Europe and America had renewed our ‘partnership of purpose’. My theme was that ‘an economic hurricane has swept the world’, bringing us to a point where ‘change is essential’. The very financial institutions designed to diversify risk across the banking system had spread contagion right around the globe. In the depths of the Depression of the 1930s, Roosevelt had battled with fear itself: the agenda I now set out for the G20 would build a new confidence in the future. Once again the media focused less on my words and more on the USA’s supposedly cool reaction to them, but as I received nineteen standing ovations over the course of the speech from the attending congressmen and senators, the media’s preferred story soon died.
By now I was engaged in telephone diplomacy around the clock, often calling Kevin Rudd in Australia first thing in the morning and ending with calls to North and South America in the evening.
When I spoke to the European Parliament in the last week of March I said that the banks had created ‘risk without responsibility’. Despite repeated interruptions from Nigel Farage and the Eurosceptic Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, I appealed to Europe to lead a bold plan for world recovery – the biggest interest-rate cut, the biggest fiscal injection, and the biggest reform in our international institutions that the world had ever seen.
I flew from Strasbourg via New York to Brazil, where President Lula made headlines by blaming the crisis on ‘the irrational behaviour of some people that are white, blue-eyed’ at our joint press conference. I knew instantly that his remarks would be reported all around the world, but joked with him that they would be unlikely to strengthen my case for global unity.
The next stop was Chile. Peter Mandelson and Douglas Alexander came with me to address the Third Way Conference, convened by President Michelle Bachelet. As we stepped out of the aircraft and down the steps, we were greeted by a Chilean officer who said, ‘Welcome to Chile on behalf of President Pinochet,’ quickly correcting himself with the words ‘President Bachelet’. The two could not have been more different, and when she greeted me at the presidential office she showed where President Allende had died. The Chilean visit was the best preparation for the G20: with Joe Biden, the new US vice president, and two G20 leaders – Zapatero of Spain and Kirchner of Argentina – we were already planning an ambitious communiqué.
Back in Britain, three days before the summit, my preparations were completed with a long call with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan and a meeting with Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón, who was already in London on a state visit and staying with the Queen. As the rest of the G20 members arrived in London, I hosted individual meetings with the presidents of China, Russia, Indonesia and South Korea to make sure they were on board for the decisive action we planned. America – still in the eye of the financial storm – remained the key.
The day before the plenary, I had breakfast in the Cabinet Room with Barack Obama. Only three months into his presidency, he had already announced a fiscal stimulus for the US economy. There was, however, one rather awkward moment. There is a tradition that the prime minister makes a gift to the new US president. Tony’s gift to President Bush – a bust of Churchill – had now been removed from its place in the Oval Office, much to the criticism of the British press, so on this, his first official visit to London, I offered Obama a gift from Britain that drew on his own life. It was the loan of the famous nineteenth-century painting by George Frederic Watts called Hope which the president had referred to in his book, The Audacity of Hope. In fact, Watts had painted the same scene twice, so while one original was in the Victoria & Albert Museum, the other was gathering dust in a vault in the Government Art Collection.
But I had not realised when I made the offer to Barack that the painting had become more a source of embarrassment than a memento to be cherished. He had been introduced to both the painting and the phrase ‘audacity of hope’ by his one-time pastor Jeremiah Wright, whose incendiary comments had been a source of controversy for him during the 2008 election campaign. I should have taken more time to inform myself of the circumstances around the Wright controversy and, had I done so, would not have made the offer. I understand now why, sitting across from me in the Cabinet Room, Barack politely declined.
I would later offer another gift instead that was Sue Nye’s inspired suggestion: a pen holder made from the same wood as the renowned ‘Resolute Desk’ used by the president in the Oval Office and which had been gifted by the British in the nineteenth century and later rescued from a storeroom in the White House basement by President Kennedy. This sequel was not entirely pleasant either. When the White House later issued their list of gifts received – alongside valuations – the pen holder (together with some world-history books by my friend Sir Martin Gilbert) was estimated to be worth $16,500. Understandably I was then asked by the press why the prime minister should be spending so much public money during the recession to, as they put it, ingratiate himself with the US president. I had a choice: to live with the criticism or to reveal that the pen holder had actually cost £260. I chose to live with the accusation of being overgenerous.
Following our breakfast that morning, Barack and I walked out of No. 10, across the street and into the far more luxurious surroundings of the Locarno Suite in the Foreign Office for our joint press conference. I started by reminding the assembled international TV crews and journalists of how slow we had been to respond to the Great Depression of the 1930s and that it was not until 1945 that the world came together to reshape the world economy. Without revealing the precise details of the next day’s communiqué, Barack and I previewed our joint proposals for cleaning up the banks, strengthening international institutions and kick-starting global growth.
At the press conference, Obama did everything he needed to do to reassure the British press that when his officials had talked of a ‘special partnership’, rather than a ‘special relationship’, they were not downgrading the British–American link; Britain and America would always be linked by a ‘kinship of ideals’, he declared. We had granted the British and American press three questions each, but when I decided to admit a fourth British question, the Sun’s political editor brushed aside any of his readers’ concerns about the economy and asked President Obama if he, having won a landslide, had any advice that would turn around my poor poll numbers. Good policy was good politics, he countered, and praised me for showing integrity. The morning that Barack and I met and gave the press conference, Sarah introduced Michelle Obama to London, including a visit to Maggie’s Cancer
Caring Centre at Charing Cross Hospital.
Elsewhere there was tension in the air. Arriving in London, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel made what the press reported as a provocative joint appearance when they argued not just for tougher global rules on tax havens but also the regulation of financial markets. ‘The crisis didn’t actually spontaneously erupt in Europe, did it?’ Nicolas opined. It was a direct challenge to America from a French president who, as he told me, felt that his major overtures to the USA – including returning France to the inner counsels of NATO, which had been abandoned forty years previously in protest at American domination – had not been taken seriously enough. Barack had already tried to deflect this European finger-pointing when he said, ‘Some are to blame but all are responsible.’ That same day Sarkozy’s foreign minister warned that tomorrow’s summit would be ‘rather difficult’ because it would involve a confrontation between ‘two worlds’. But while American relations with France remained frosty, America and Russia appeared to be moving closer together: at Barack’s London meeting with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, they announced a reduction in their nuclear arsenals. At least one form of international cooperation was moving forward.
I had asked the Queen to host an early evening reception for all the G20 members, and before that she offered the Obamas their first audience. The pictures of a young US president meeting the longest-serving monarch in the world were to go around the globe. Michelle Obama was criticised for touching the Queen’s back in breach of royal protocol. And once again the gift the Obamas gave the Queen – an iPod preloaded with photos from the president’s inauguration and audio files of his speeches – came under press criticism. But Barack’s words in praise of the Queen were well tuned to both British and American audiences: before, he said, he had known her only from stamps and documentaries; now he could attest to her ‘decency and civility’.
Even the reception at Buckingham Palace did not pass without incident. As all the leaders sat in rows for the standard ‘family’ photograph, with the Queen at the centre, she was far from impressed with Silvio Berlusconi who, seeing the new US president for the first time, loudly yelled out ‘Obama’ and delayed the photograph. Not for the first time was the Italian prime minister at the sharp end of a reprimanding look.
But not even the Obama love-fest could prevent a wave of anti-globalisation protests in the streets of London, during which a newspaper vendor, Ian Tomlinson, tragically died near the Bank of England after he was struck by a police officer as he walked home through the protests.
Harriet rightly wanted us to focus on the global recession’s impact on women round the world – and in discussions with other countries she led a review which did exactly that. I could not invite her to a dinner that was solely for the G20 presidents and prime ministers and the UN, World Bank and IMF leaders. Indeed, I had to tell my friend Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, with whom I had worked for years and was chief executive of the World Bank, that I could not invite her either as the World Bank president was attending. Sarah organised an event for the women present in London from the rest of the world – leaders like Ngozi and the partners of the G20 leaders, who were all making a difference in their own countries. At this event, designed to celebrate the contribution women were making in all areas of our lives, from politics and business to the arts, sports and fashion, prominent British women – including J.K. Rowling; the activist against honour killings, Jasvinder Sanghera; and Paralympic champion Tanni Grey-Thompson – were present at tables chaired by Harriet and the Leader of the Lords Jan Royall.
The model Naomi Campbell, well known for supporting emergency humanitarian causes with her Fashion for Relief, arrived fashionably late, creeping in the side door, but confessed she had wanted to walk through the door of No. 10 as the world leaders had done. Sarah quickly arranged it for her, and she popped out the side door again and then walked down Downing Street to arrive at the famous black door.
My dinner for the leaders did not start on time. This was partly due to an elaborate process whereby each of the leaders arrived separately at five-minute intervals, the later times being accorded to those who had served longest in office. On that basis, Barack Obama was among the first to arrive in a car that I was informed was so big there was concern about how to get it down the street. Nicolas Sarkozy should have come next. Instead he had instructed his driver to take him from the reception at Buckingham Palace back to his hotel rather than straight to Downing Street, and so he arrived last, in the most senior slot.
I started our dinner conversation by urging that we do better than our predecessors had done in the 1930s and recalled Churchill’s words that in that decade, too many leaders had been ‘resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent’. I then invited the other leaders to speak, starting with Barack. When Nicolas Sarkozy spoke he warned that the world economy was in meltdown, and in frustration he challenged the leaders. But when he said that ‘none of us have a plan’, Barack jumped in helpfully and said, ‘Gordon has a plan.’
The UN secretary general rounded off the dinner with a plea that special measures for the poorest in the world, particularly the poor of Africa, should be part of the communiqué that we produced at the summit, in which the intentions and resolutions of the G20 would be formally broadcast to the world.
During the dinner President Lula and Prime Minister Zapatero asked the No. 10 staff for regular updates – not of the latest economic data, but the goal alerts from that evening’s World Cup qualifiers. I did not read out the football results to the assembled leaders, but Spain and later Brazil won – as fortunately did Scotland, England and Northern Ireland, while to British disappointment and Angela Merkel’s delight Germany beat Wales 2–0.
As our dinner ended, we joined the guests from the other dinner for coffee. Silvio Berlusconi could not stop himself from asking for Naomi Campbell’s phone number. I moved to the sitting room of No. 11 to work with Shriti and Jon Cunliffe, who had brilliantly led our official preparatory work, to finalise the $1.1 trillion reflationary measures, around which we believed there could be a consensus the following day.
At 6.30 a.m. I arrived at the ExCel Exhibition Centre where the summit was being held to greet world leaders as they arrived for breakfast and to review the draft communiqué that officials had been working on overnight. One item still in dispute was the target I wanted to set for the growth of the world economy. We could not persuade Germany, whose experience of hyperinflation in the 1920s had ever since led it to focus rigidly on price stability above all else. There was deadlock and I had briefly fallen out with Angela Merkel when I had asked her to unblock Germany’s opposition. As she and I took the lift up to the first floor that morning, I pressed her personally, pointing to the uniqueness of the challenge we faced. I argued that inflation would remain low for some time and if we could collectively pursue something like a 5 per cent global growth target then we could raise confidence, create jobs and speed recovery. I could not persuade her. Although it was the right time to act, I had to back off for the moment.
The ExCel Centre in east London had been chosen not just because it could accommodate such a large gathering at short notice but also because it was to be one of our Olympic venues, and we wanted to publicise the very extensive Olympic preparations that we were making. But when I arrived at the centre I was shocked by the seating plans for our plenary sessions. I had hoped for the kind of informality that allowed a free and frank exchange of ideas. I now saw that each leader would be surrounded by their large entourages and be positioned so far away from other leaders that the informality I sought would give way to a very formal process – long statements being read out and little interaction between leaders. This would make it impossible to go round the table negotiating line by line the final details of the communiqué. I made a quick decision: I told staff that most of the work would now be done during the leaders’ lunch, at which only leaders would be present. We started lunch as ear
ly as possible, and until I had an agreement on the issues that mattered, I refused to let the lunch finish.
So anxious was I to get the business done that our No. 10 staff stood guarding the door preventing leaders’ advisers from entering, and refusing even to allow any of the serving staff in to clear the plates from the table. The advisers were furious. Their staffers tried to pass notes into their bosses but No. 10 officials kept saying that the leaders’ lunch was not finished and could not be interrupted. So angry was the Argentinian president that she pushed Tom Fletcher up against the wall, demanding her adviser be let in. She was right to be angry. We were in effect holding world leaders hostage until the communiqué was agreed. But in the informality of a lunch of twenty-four around one relatively small table, I could work the room, suggest compromise wordings and push through the deal. Sometimes we would break off for a minute or two while I left my chair and talked to the one leader who, on the agenda item under discussion, was still holding out. Barack quickly realised what was going on, and he – and then Kevin Rudd and Angela Merkel – had a quiet word in the ears of leaders in need of persuasion.
The speed at which we were moving became, understandably, a source of complaint from those for whom English was not their first language. Nicolas Sarkozy was determined to wring out concessions on economic reforms and I was as determined to support him. Cross that most of the discussions were being conducted in English, he insisted on his interpreter being at his side. To get the Chinese on board I also agreed that their number two, their expert on tax, now came into the room – and fortunately no one else noticed (or if they did, they did not complain).
Readers might be surprised to learn that the single greatest controversy was not over spending $1 trillion; after all the spadework done in advance, that went through without objection. Instead our talks faced a threatened walkout over tax havens, what the French call paradis fiscaux. Our proposal was to name and shame those countries who refused to take immediate action against tax evasion. Before us was a list of offenders, which included China’s Macau. The Chinese complained that tax was no issue for the G20. This was not the only point of contention between them and the French president: in Poland the previous December, Nicolas had met the Dalai Lama, whom the Chinese consider a dissident separatist.