All the best for the West, but what’s in it for the Gulf?

The Group of 20 (G20) meeting in London, which the British prime minister Gordon Brown said marked the emergence of a “new world order”, is likely to go down in history as a triumph of form over content and a victory for the “smoke-and-mirrors” school of economists.

In particular, the Middle East appears to have put little into, and therefore got little back from, the meeting, which was the region’s best opportunity yet to make its mark on the post-crisis world.

I suppose it was an achievement of sorts that all those heads of state were able to sit together for a day without a major diplomatic incident, and the impression of unity, however fleeting, in the face of the great challenges facing the global financial and economic systems is to be welcomed.