Gordon Brown, whose Financial Services Authority is criticised strongly in the Daily Telegraph today for the extensive powers of the inspector, has been keen to talk up his position about global financial reform and in particular the debt relief agenda.
Yesterday he gave a news conference with an elaborate satellite connection to enable him to talk to a woman in a village in Africa.
At the weekend ahead of the G8 foreign secretaries meeting, he went on record praising the Jubilee 2000 campaign for increasing pressure on politicians, and allowed others to voice his fear that he was experiencing opposition (from the USA???) to proposals to go much deeper than 50 billion pounds of debt relief for the poorest countries. His arguments went beyond giving charity to the minority of helpless beggar countries.
"Debt relief brings the global economy together as part of one moral universe. If we don't take poverty relief in Africa seriously we will pay a heavy price in the next century. We must leave behind in the old century the injustices that have no place in the new century".
He argued that debt relief was necessary to demonstrate that globalisation works for more than the "wealthy few".
But as the west, particularly the USA, complacently comes out of the financial fears of 1998 (see Greenspans latest signal against overheating) the momentum for really structural change at G8 is much diminished. How big the charitable gesture to the indigent of the world, is the question on the table.
Whether such campaigns can really expose "the evils of capitalism" may depend on the ability of would be marxists to abandon dogmatism and work with others to show the relevance of the fundamental critique of Capital.
Chris Burford
London