The Spectator’s Notes | 14 June 2018

‘Trudeau or Trump?’ was a choice which Theresa May, with unusually ready wit, evaded in Parliament on Monday. No doubt I am in a minority, but I feel that, of the two, Mr Trudeau — the G7 host at La Malbaie — is the more absurd figure on the world stage, being just as vain as the President and far more pointless (if you doubt me, compare the two men’s tweets). In the same parliamentary statement, Sir Vince Cable asked ‘What is the point of the G7?’ It is part of President Trump’s subversive skill that his actions prompt people to ask such questions. There is no need for such annual meetings, and the whole concept of the G7 is out of date anyway — with the European Union heavily over-represented — because of the shift of economic power in the world. The original idea of a ‘summit’ was that it was called for a specific reason, so that the relevant heads of government could sort out a major problem. Now it has degenerated to the globalists’ equivalent of the ‘Season’, with the G7, climate conferences, etc playing the roles of Henley and Ascot. The bland communiqués which gloss over reality do more harm than good. The ‘initiatives’, in which participating nations compete to invent programmes, take our money and bypass our democratic power. By contrast, what has just happened in Singapore was undoubtedly a summit, and undoubtedly matters. Trump or Kim Jong-un? Weird if the answer turns out to be ‘Both’.

‘He looked as if he was wearing a pink frock,’ said Kate Guthrie when I rang her to ask after her husband. She was referring to the hue of the bruises on Field Marshal Lord Guthrie, who slid from his horse at the Trooping the Colour on Saturday, probably after fainting.