Superpower supremacy to saving the planet – the big challenges for the G7
Face to face multi-lateral diplomacy is back. The band is getting back together, but the world has changed since the G7 last met.
Our species and our planet face grave threats and the West’s autocratic rivals have prospered and grown more powerful.
There is a huge amount at stake for those who want the world led by open, democratic, free societies.
COVID vaccines
Coronavirus is the biggest challenge for the G7‘s first face-to-face summit since the pandemic broke out. Until the entire world is vaccinated, we all remain at risk of a new variant sending us back to square one.
Former British ambassador to the US who knows Joe Biden well, Sir Peter Westmacott, told Sky News the president and his allies know this is their number one priority.
“This virus is going to contaminate international business, travel, holiday making, unless we can eradicate it or pretty much eradicate it. It’s not good enough for one or two countries to do really well. So we have to work together on this, just like we have to work together if we’re going to save the planet,” he said.
And if the West fails to lead in vaccinating the world, its claim to global moral leadership could be fatally undermined.
Climate crisis
Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the world must apply the lessons learnt in the battle against COVID to tackling the second biggest challenge – climate change.
On the eve of the summit, America’s new president wrote that the US is “back in the chair on the issue of climate change” and “we have an opportunity to deliver ambitious progress that curbs the climate crisis”.
Economic recovery
The G7 needs to resuscitate a global economy weakened by the pandemic.
But even before the virus, millions were so disenchanted with the way things are run economically that they voted for populists like Donald Trump.
The G7 must convince them that the economic integration, globalisation and multilateral institutions that the West has worked so hard to build up are worth their mettle. Otherwise the populists will be back, maybe even Trump himself.
Sir Kim Darroch was British ambassador to the US.
He told Sky News that allies will remain nervous about that for some time to come, saying: “More people voted for Donald Trump [in 2020] than they did in 2016. So there is a way to go for them to be convinced that the American cause has been reset in a stable and consistent way for the foreseeable future.”
China
China is a thorny issue the G7 knows it must handle carefully.
Its trampling of human rights in Hong Kong cannot be ignored. Likewise its treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang – genocidal, or near enough. And its bellicose statements about Taiwan.
If the G7 is serious about what it calls values-based diplomacy, it cannot turn a blind eye to any of these. But it can’t afford to alienate China either. It will be a tricky balancing act.
Former NATO secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Sky News the G7 needs to be robust when it comes to the way China is behaving.
“An attack is not necessarily by tanks or aeroplanes,” he said. “On the contrary, you can use economic coercion as part of your aggressiveness. And that’s exactly what China is exercising.”
Mr Rasmussen suggests the free world applies an “all for one, one for all” approach to China’s economic bullying. That way Beijing might think twice about using its size and power to coerce smaller nations economically.
Superpower supremacy
For some there’s nothing less at stake at this summit than who is going to run the world in the years ahead. Democracies or autocracies?
Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned the main challenge in the coming years will be the fight between autocracy and democracy, autocracy primarily represented by China and Russia, and to counter the advancing autocracies there’s the need to rally around basic democratic principles.
If that sounds a bit abstract, don’t underestimate how much that contest could effect us all. “It’s an existential question, it’s a question about who will set the global norms and standards in the future,” he argues.
Giving one example, Mr Rasmussen said: “You can use artificial intelligence to make our lives better and easier, but you can also use artificial intelligence to strengthen surveillance of your people, controlling your people. And if it’s Beijing who sets the international norms and standards for the use of artificial intelligence, semiconductors and data flows, etc, then we would undermine privacy and individual liberty. And that is what is at stake.”
Fortunately for the West, if it can get the individual challenges right, it has a better chance of winning the bigger battle, seeing off the threat from autocracies.
An alliance of democracies that can lead on COVID, lead on climate change and lead a global economic recovery will be a more appealing alternative to autocratic regimes in Moscow and Beijing – and more likely to reclaim its preeminent position. Failure will only strengthen Russia and China.
Hope for global action
What happens in Cornwall will have an impact on all our lives.
The good news is this G7 is better placed than many before to achieve unity and success. Recent summits have been marred by Donald Trump’s impatience with the whole idea of western multilateral democracy.
Before that, the inclusion of Russia as part of the G8 group led inevitably to watered down compromise resolutions.
This G7 includes a reenergised America deeply committed to its principles, and the state of the world gives an urgency and potential for focus we have not seen in a long time.
American Senator Ted Cruz has broken ranks with fellow US conservatives and
hit out at talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, saying it was “mafioso” behaviour.
Disney-owned ABC has been widely criticised after it pulled the long-standing host of Jimmy Kimmel Live following comments in his show about the alleged gunman charged with right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s murder.
Kimmel implied the suspect was a Maga Republican, despite the man’s mother telling police he had “started to lean more to the left”.
As a result, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr threatened Disney and local broadcasters with investigations and regulatory action if they aired Kimmel’s show – which led to dozens of local TV stations affiliated with ABC pulling it.
US President Donald Trump, who appointed Carr, lauded the decision.
But Mr Cruz criticised the threats as “dangerous as hell”.
“I got to say that’s right out of ‘Goodfellas’,” he said, evoking the Martin Scorsese gangster movie. “That’s right out of
a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here.
“It would be a shame if something happened to it’.”
Senator Ted Cruz. Pic: AP
Explainer: What did Jimmy Kimmel say about Charlie Kirk?
The senator, a former constitutional lawyer, then adopted a broad mafioso accent to quote Mr Carr’s comments about broadcasters this week: “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.”
Mr Trump fired back, telling reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that he disagreed with Mr Cruz – one of the most
powerful Republicans in Congress – and calling Mr Carr “an incredible American patriot with courage.”
Demonstrations against his suspension have sprung up. Pic: AP
The Texas senator’s remarks are a rare example of a prominent member of the president’s own party publicly
criticising the actions of the administration, highlighting deepening concerns over free-speech rights and Mr Trump’s threatened crackdowns.
Prominent Democrats and civil rights groups condemned the Trump administration’s pressure to punish Kimmel and others who speak negatively of the president.
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US talk show titans speak out
Kimmel’s fellow late-night hosts have rallied around him, as did former US president Barack Obama, who wrote on X: “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.
Barack Obama on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2016. Pic: Susan Walsh/AP
“This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent, and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating it.”
Conservative activists had been angered by Kimmel’s comments on his show that they were using the assassination to score “political points”.
Right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was shot dead on 10 September as he took part in a public debate at a college campus in Utah .
Tyler Robinson, 22, was charged with aggravated murder, weapon, and obstruction of justice offences.
US talk show host Stephen Colbert has condemned the cancellation of fellow late-night star Jimmy Kimmel as a “blatant assault on freedom of speech”, as America’s top late night presenters came out fighting.
He used the opening of Thursday night’s edition of his Late Show to address the pulling of Jimmy Kimmel Live over comments made about the assassination of the right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel used his show earlier this week to accuse the Trump administration and its allies of “working very hard to capitalise on the murder of Charlie Kirk”, with the president among those to pin it on left-wing extremism.
The move by Disney-owned ABC has been widely criticised, with the network accused of kowtowing to President Donald Trump, who celebrated the decision.
Also airing on Thursday night, Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s Daily Show, appeared in a garish gold set, in parody of Mr Trump’s redesign of the White House, to tell viewers the episode would be “another fun, hilarious, administration-compliant show”.
Stewart, playing the role of an over-the-top, politically obsequious TV host under authoritarian rule, lavished praise on the president and satirised his criticism of US cities and his deployment of the National Guard to fight crime.
“Coming to you tonight from the real […] crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City. It is a tremendous disaster like no-one’s ever seen before. Someone’s National Guard should invade this place, am I right?” he said.
He then introduced his guest – Maria Ressa, a journalist and author of the book How To Stand Up To A Dictator.
Jon Stewart. Pic: Associated Press
Over at The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon told his audience he was “not sure what was going on” but that Kimmel is “a decent funny and loving guy and I hope he comes back”.
Fallon then promised viewers that in spite of people being “worried that we won’t keep saying what we want to say or that we will be censored”, he was going to cover the president’s recent trip to the UK “just like I normally would”.
He was then replaced by a voiceover describing Mr Trump as “incredibly handsome” and “making America great again”.
Jimmy Fallon on Thursday’s Tonight Show. Pic: The Tonight Show X
Seth Meyers also joined the fray.
“Donald Trump is on his way back from a trip to the UK,” he said at the top of his show Late Night, “while back here at home, his administration is pursuing a crackdown on free speech… and completely unrelated, I just wanted to say that I have always admired and respected Mr Trump.
“I have always believed he was a visionary, an innovator, a great president, and an even better golfer.”
Kimmel’s removal from the show he has hosted for two decades led to criticism that free speech was under attack.
But speaking on his visit to Britain, Donald Trump claimed he was suspended “because he had bad ratings”.
It came after fellow late-night host Colbert saw his programme cancelled earlier this year, which fans claimed was also down to his criticism of Mr Trump, who has since railed against Kimmel, Meyers, and Fallon.
He has posted on Truth Social that they should all be cancelled.
Jimmy Kimmel hosting last year’s Oscars. Pic: AP
Figures from both the worlds of entertainment and politics lined up to lament ABC’s removal of Kimmel.
Chat show doyenne David Letterman said people should not be fired just because they don’t “suck up” to what he called “an authoritarian” president.
During an appearance at The Atlantic Festival 2025 in New York on Thursday night, he added: “It’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous.
“I feel bad about this, because we all see where see this is going, correct? It’s managed media.”
Barack Obama on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2016. Pic: Susan Walsh/AP
Former US president Barack Obama wrote on X: “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.
“This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent, and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating it.”
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