Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who's the Fairest of Them All?

Or to put it another way the G8 Summit is coming up next week and everybody's kind of forgotten about it.

Sandwiched between April's emergency G20 Summit and December's Climate Summit this years G8 meeting is likely to be something of a lost summit. No doubt there will be a range of topics discussed including the world economy, the war on terror, global development and global trade rules but unlike previous summits there will be no clear single issue that will focus the meeting. The most widely discussed projects will probably the recent Iranian elections and the apparently growing threat of a nuclear armed North Korea although progress on that last point is unlikely to be made without the Chinese who are not a G8 member so the debate will probably evolve into a wider discussion about further engagement with China.

The events in Iran mean that I've been unable to research the agendas of all the delegations at the summit but Britain's is obvious and focused on two clear objectives;

• Restoring Britain's legitimacy to call itself one of the eight most powerful and therefore competent and able nations on earth. This status was called into serious question at April's G20 Summit when the British Prime Minister's economic and social policy was rejected by Britain's own head of state let alone the heads of state of the other nations at the summit.

• Lay the groundwork for December's Climate Summit. Despite the impression given by Britain's elected representatives Britain's position for this summit will be to do everything in its power to make sure that it breaks up without agreement. There are a number of reasons for this position but it is mainly because Britain's ruling establishment have clearly proved themselves to be lacking in the intellectual ability to cope with a free market economy let alone a more complicated carbon based economy.

To achieve these ends Britain will try and make the situation in Iran one of the most widely discussed things at the summit. The idea behind this is that if you were looking for a country that best mirrors Britain's power and social structure Iran would be top of that list. In both nations ultimate power is held by an unelected head of state who is considered to have been appointed by God to make sure that the countries population adhere to religious law. In Iran this head of state is known as the Supreme Leader while in Britain they are known by the gender specific titles of either King or Queen. Beneath the head of state power in both countries is held by an unelected group of religious scholars and community elders. In Britain this is known as the House of Lords while in Iran it is more loosely organised but broadly defined by the Guardian Council. Below the scholars and elders the next position of power is held by a single, elected politician. In Iran this is the President and in Britain it is the Prime Minister. At the bottom of the power structure both countries have an elected Parliament.

This symmetry between the two countries mean that the British G8 delegation will be able to use discussions about Iran to generally spread confusion by making statements like "there are doubts over whether the head of state supports the first minister" which leave people unclear of exactly who is being referred too, Brown or Ahmadinjed. The will also be able to provide a coded reassurance that Britain doesn't expect Gordon Brown to be it's Prime Minister for very much longer.

The unrest in Iran will also help Britain in what the 2012 Olympic sponsors are already calling the "Fight against Climate Change!" because seemingly even before they began the Iranian protests were dubbed "The Green Revolution." Of course the original Green Revolution has it's roots in the US Army Corp of Engineers who, in the early 1960's, after spending years trying to divert the flow of the Mississippi river began to accept that human science and technology could never truly conquer the forces of nature leading to a revolution in the way humans saw their environment. Much to my annoyance some ill-informed modern politician's have begun using the term Green Revolution to describe the modern climate change movement and the implementation of low carbon technology.

In their planning of the Iranian unrest the British envisioned that I would lead the protests and the whole thing could be passed off as the work of the environmentalists. This little bit of misdirection would have allowed the British to spend their time at the G8 Summit complaining about how the Iranian unrest were jeopardising the American led heart and minds surge in Afghanistan and making statements about how they think the Green Revolution is a bad idea and share the good news that they expect the Green Revolution to die out soon. All this would help them build up a negative association with the environmental movement and the idea of adopting a low carbon economy.

As with all globalised summits protests are expected throughout the G8 week and while I haven't had the opportunity to look into what exactly is planned I suspect it will the standard red-zone assault which all of the G8 Security teams are well versed in dealing with. Therefore there is little chance that the red-zone will be breached and in the unlikely event that it is there will be little risk to the delegation primaries. Outside the venue it is likely to be a different story because this will be the first time that the G8 has returned to Italy since Carlo Guiliani was murdered by the police in 2001. This along with the fact that Alexis Grigoropoulos'murder in Greece and Ian Tomlinson's murder in London are still fresh in the anarchist movements memories means that I expect there to be plenty of people prepared to punish the police where the law has failed to do so. Added to this the growing dissatisfaction at the state of the economy within the Trade Union movement that is expected to boost the number of protesters in a town that following April's earthquake is still a maze of derelict buildings and ad-hoc campsites. Plus the Italian police have long history of treating public order situations as an opportunity for a fight and a reputation for allowing fascist militias to join in. Besides if the protest organisers plan is as good as their mobilization video it looks like being a very lively affair indeed.

This prospect of an explosive couple of days makes me think that Berlusconi's last minute decision to move the summit from Sardinia to L'Aquila must be his kind of punishment for the people of that earthquake hit city who dared to suggest that Mr Berlusconi might like to put the teenage girls down for just long enough to do something about the damage.