Never has a host had so little in common with her guests. Standing serene in a salmon pink trouser suit having topped the poll in the European parliamentary elections, Italy’s far-right leader, Giorgia Meloni, waited to greet her fellow G7 leaders. She stood on a small stage under an awning and an azure sky with the backdrop a suspiciously imported-looking olive tree, a pointless rustic water pipe and the brash G7 flags discreetly put to one side so they did not spoil the view’s centrepiece – Meloni herself.
To her right was a large stone arch that acts as the entranceway to Borgo Egnazia, the purpose-built “medieval” holiday complex giving celebrities an authentic sense of Puglia’s rural life, including a Michelin-starred restaurant, spas and wellness clinics.
In intervals of three or so minutes, haunted-looking world leaders one by one trooped through the arch to be greeted by their host. Hollowed and broken by the electoral battlefield, it was a parade of the living dead. They each received a consoling handshake and photograph with Meloni.
The suited statesmen bore the look of people who knew this was their last such summit, and who if they could would have skipped the opening session on Africa and migration and instead headed straight into the wellness clinic and locked the door.
One of the first through the arch of shame was Charles Michel, the outgoing European Council president reportedly plotting to prevent the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, from being given a second term. The two top EU officials pointedly did not arrive together, and Meloni is said to be arbiter of von der Leyen’s future. Michel was given the quickest of handshakes before being dispatched by the Italian prime minister to sign a pointless-looking piece of declaratory paper, a sort of G7 visitor’s book. He looked as enthused as a man signing his own death warrant.
Next through the arch was Rishi Sunak, 21 days away from what may be the biggest Conservative party rout in history. At the last G7 summit, in Japan, Sunak had been the life and soul of the party, wearing the red socks of the Hiroshima baseball team, Toyo Carp. This year the socks were funeral black, and after his now notorious early departure from D-day commemorations in Normandy, his minder’s only instruction will have been to stay right until the last glass has been washed and put away. Meloni, an insurgent in office, and Sunak, an incumbent, may be Eurosceptic buddies but are on very different glide paths.
Next through the arch came that great wordsmith, Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, still digesting a set of results in which his party scored 13.9%, a record low for the European parliament, faring worse than the scandal-ridden, far-right Alternative für Deutschland.
No sooner was Meloni waving off Scholz than the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, arrived. Two days ago he will have discovered that his popularity had fallen to 21%, a record low. He faces the prospect of being thrown out by his own party in September, and as he was ushered away by Meloni to sign the G7 death warrant, she could have been thinking that here was one man she would not be seeing at the next G7 in Canada.
But if she had pity for Kishida, look who was next. Through the arch of shame came another lame duck, albeit a well-presented one, in the form of Justin Trudeau – blue suit, brown shoes, big smiles and a poll rating that is at a 50-year record low for his party, driven in part by opposition to his green policies. There again, most politicians are hated in Canada. He is widely expected to lose next year.
The next arrival was Emmanuel Macron, the gelignite still on his suit from just having blown up French politics, and in the process possibly destroyed his own party. In their brief exchange Meloni would have been looking for signs of residual sanity in a man recently driven mad by fighting populism. Given that Meloni, with her party’s fascist roots, represents much of what he is trying to unmask and defeat in France, the exchange between the two was courteous.
And then, with one leader to go, there was a pause, followed by a further pause, and another one, as Meloni adopted an infinite variety of patient poses waiting for the president of the United States. As time passed, she inspected the water pipe, took a selfie with the photographers, motioned for a chair and even gave a disparaging glance at the nylon flags spoiling the authenticity of her venue.
Meloni may even have reflected on the fleeting nature of power, or on whether Joe Biden’s driver had got lost in the medieval village. But then, 21 minutes late, the president arrived, wearing dark glasses and moving gingerly through the arch and on to the stage, a raw display of mortality.
Given the vastness of the G7 agenda over the next two days, and the collective power of the G7 economies, it was not an altogether reassuring opening passage. Perhaps the summit’s first session should have been on politics.