The Foreign Office faced embarrassment today after a secret memo suggested that Russia, Australia and Canada were all “second division” countries at the G20 summit.
A confidential paper, issued to PR agencies ahead of the next month’s London gathering of global leaders, says the UK should focus lobbying efforts on 11 “high-priority states” such as the US, France, China, India and Saudi Arabia.
The memo consigns other countries, including some of the world’s biggest economies, to a “Tier 2” status. Russia, Mexico, Canada and Australia are all effectively relegated to a “B list”.
A Foreign Office spokesman insisted that the list of countries was “absolutely not a firm hierarchy of the most important states for our political relations”.
He said the “high priority” nations had been targeted for lobbying on the basis of the health of their media, civil society, non-governmental organisations and sovereign wealth funds.Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague said: “The downgrading of some participants before they have even set foot in London sends completely the wrong message.”
The G20 summit is to take place on 2 April.
7 Comments
We will be expendible during times of crisis as has happened in the past.The big players will be looking for ways to make us pay for their mistakes.
What is happening already is that our companies, land etc will be bought for far less than market prices.This concept of Globalisation is about the dominance/wealth of the few at the expense of the majority.
When will we wake up and realise that we have to make pro-active choices about developing our own wealth and ownership of our own country?We are pretty much serfs in our own land now.
Dick Smith has been warning about this for yrs, but we took the poison chalice of debt in return for short term avarice.
The solution is to reduce the size of Govt and our debt. We don’t need the central banks of the world to print our money for us. We can print our own money with far more responsibility and pay far less interest.
Australia in the “B grade”? On any basis apart from sport, a “B grade” status is flattering.
Maybe if we worried less about spectator sports we would direct our energies into something more useful and prevent our forthcoming relegation to the “C grade” as the “poor white trash of Asia”
It might be appropriate to move the G20 summit to 1st of April.
Australia is an economic passenger rather than a driver. We shouldn’t be offended at being picked as 12th man. Unless there is a paradigmatic leap in political stocks in our country we’ll continue to see the serfs in long lines of coffles shuffling off to the quarries.
I think rather we are going to be colonised by the Chinese. They’ve already cherrypicked and copied whatever manufacturing techniques we developed way back when.
All we have is finite resources and a not very educated or skilled or in any way numerically comparable workforce.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States
Isn’t being part of the ‘B Team’ the whole point of middle power diplomacy?
Though the Dr. Evatts and Billy Hugheses of our history may have punched above their weight on the world stage, surely none of our statesmen could have ever suffered from a pretension to Great Power status?
Delusions to former empire, fading ever faster at the moment.
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