Timms: Time is right for progressive G20
Friday, 13 March 2009 12:01 AM
By Alex Stevenson
This year's G20 summit in London offers strong prospects for advancing progressive goals, Stephen Timms has said.
The Treasury minister told a Fabian Society event in London he believed the prominence of the Put People First coalition, which is expected to launch its policy platform in the next few days, demonstrated the promise these groups had.
"Here there is a very important moment for the progressive side of politics to come forward," he said.
"The field and conditions are right for progressive political to have some very compelling answers for the problems we are facing at the moment."
Other panellists at the seminar on the G20, whose finance ministers meet tomorrow, expressed doubts at the summit's ability to achieve a real breakthrough.
Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, president of the Party of European Socialists and former Danish prime minister, said: "The preparations for Bretton Woods took three years. The preparations for the summit itself took 16 weeks.
"My point is this is a very important meeting in London but please don't expect we will solve everything. That would be against historical experience."
And American commentator Stryker McGuire warned that Gordon Brown's hopes that he could "enlist Barack Obama as a partner" were misplaced.
"Barack Obama. has been consumed by what's going on in his own country. At this point we need to lower expectations about what can happen," he explained.
"They frankly have not been paying much attention to this meeting in London. They're not that engaged."
Mr Timms argued the broad agenda for the summit meant significant progress could be made.
Among the issues to be discussed were stimulating the world economy; strengthening financial regulation; reforming global financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank; and ensuring longer-term goals like MDGs and climate change don't get left behind.
"We mustn't lose sight of those longer-term priorities," Mr Timms pressed.
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