Change of tide

The presidents of the G-7 countries at this weekend's summit.Getty Images

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• The G-7 proposes to strengthen cooperation on vaccines, climate change and taxation to get out of the pandemic

The G-7 in Cornwall symbolizes a profound turning tide in the West. The summit is the image of the reunion of the Atlantic democracies after the tear of the Trump era and, at the same time, of the construction of a new consensus in several areas that represents a turn from the recent past. Time will reveal your real range ability. Important frictions remain —such as between the EU and the United Kingdom—, the definition of devilish details to advance in initiatives in which there is theoretical agreement, the challenge of executing them and, of course, discrepancies of vision in certain matters. But all this cannot hide a growing alignment of the great democracies around various ideas that have the potential to translate into an important and welcome factor of change.

First, in socio-economic terms, the G-7 enshrines the shared conviction to respond to the pandemic crisis with expansive and inclusive measures, with the fight against inequality, which inflicts suffering and generates populism, as a prominent objective. In this context, the will to revert excessively lax fiscal policies to certain types of companies is affirmed. All this represents a strong change compared to the European response to the 2008 crisis and with a fairly general fiscal dynamics for some time.

In geopolitical terms, a growing harmony is being consolidated with respect to the need to respond to the Chinese rise with firmness and cohesion, both in bilateral relations with Beijing, as well as developing alternative global plans - for example in terms of infrastructure - to reinforce the global projection of democracies, their ties with developing countries and, ultimately, the influence of their values.

It is also in this framework that the effort that the West must make to support vaccination in less prosperous countries must be understood.

In this area, the first thing is the health of the citizens of these societies;

the second, to be aware that until everyone is vaccinated, the risk can return to rich countries in the form of harmful variants;

and the third, knowing that countries like China and Russia are very active in a pandemic diplomacy that must be countered.

Other important elements of the new consensus are environmental and trade, where the change in the US facilitates a new concerted push to fight climate change and calm the serious frictions unleashed by Trump's stark protectionism.

All these concepts together constitute a common base that facilitates the traction capacity of the democratic powers on the global stage. This newspaper shares the main lines of this incipient consensus, in terms of expansionary policies that counteract inequality, less lax taxation before large companies, greater determination in helping less prosperous countries, in the fight against climate change and in the defense of free trade with attention to the sectors harmed by it.

This realignment of powers behind shared ideas does not mean that the harmony is perfect or that momentous results are guaranteed. The tax pacts are a step forward, but the markets' own reaction to the details of the preliminary agreement shows that for the moment it is a toothless tool; long will be the road to implement common plans before the rise of China; the effort to provide health support to the less prosperous countries is late and its real effectiveness will have to be verified; the fight against climate change is a path surrounded by ravines.

In political terms, it should be noted that the main vectors of this new consensus have roots in the social democratic ideology, especially the fight against inequality and climate change. Curiously, this success of ideas coincides with low hours of the parties of that family in the European nations present in the G-7 (Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Italy) and in other parts of the continent. They will have to reflect in depth on why and how to tackle the challenge of certain rights rooted in nationalist identity politics.