The G20 may be a talking shop, but that’s better than the alternative

Editorial: It is always better that world leaders talk to each other face to face rather than strike poses at a distance

Downing Street sources suggest that Sunak will use one-to-one meetings with other leaders to put pressure on non-aligned nations to back away from Putin (Getty)

If Rishi Sunak had to skip one global summit before Thursday’s autumn statement, it would have made more sense for him to miss the G20 meeting in Bali, Indonesia, this coming week, than the United Nations climate conference in Sharm el Shaikh, Egypt, last week.

As it is, he changed his mind about the climate summit and so will be attending both. The rationale for going to Sharm el Sheikh was clear: it was to follow up the commitments made at the previous climate summit in Glasgow, presided over by the UK’s representative. It was a chance for Mr Sunak to emphasise Britain’s continued leadership role on the path to a low-carbon world – a symbolic message that was unfortunately muffled by his initial intention to give the summit a miss.

The rationale for the G20 meeting is less obvious. The main point of the G20 is as a wider forum for economic coordination than the G7. The G20 was commandeered to some effect by Gordon Brown as UK prime minister in 2009, after the financial crisis. That was when it ceased to be a mere talking shop, and became a practical means of coordinating policy among countries representing three-quarters of the world’s population. That summit, in New York, did a great deal to restore global economic confidence.