In the midst of a tectonic shift in the new world order
Last night I found myself in the ornate circumstance of the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall. I also found myself too in the midst of a tectonic shift in the new world order.
For this was an event in which the old world of European kings and queens were making way for a citizen of the new world. The man the old world was celebrating was Brazil’s President Lula de Silva.
The bibs and tuckers around the hall – and it was crammed with businessmen, lawyers, bankers and the rest – gave all the impression of supplicants at the great man’s table.
Lula – bearded and younger looking than his 64 years. Charismatic with a real twinkle in his eye, he cut a forceful and persuasive dash as he picked up the Chatham House Prize – a kind of micro Nobel Peace Prize awarded by the UK diplomatic think tank.
His speech majored on climate change and clean energy, but it also made the plea for the world’s 10th largest economy to have its rightful place at the world’s top table – a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
It was a good speech – talked of Brazil’s renewal depending upon the renewal of Latin America itself. Talked too of Brazil’s strength flowing not from its massive new deep sea oil deposits, but from its sustainable energy supplies from sugar cane and its new found determination to sustain the Amazon rain forest at all cost (a campaign likely to prove one of the few tangible outcomes from the Copenhagen climate change summit).
As he delivered his speech I noticed the missing little finger from his left hand – lost in an industrial accident in 1960.
Lula’s life is an extraordinary story from peanut seller and shoes shine boy who grew up in great poverty, to the leader of the huge Metal Workers’ Union and thence in 2002 to the democratically elected president of a country that had basked in its unfair share of corruption and military dictatorship.
Brazil, for all its inequality and development challenges, is a power house of a nation that has come of age. Its thrusting growth is an opportunity for British business. But the headsets listening to the English translation of Lula’s Portuguese spoke volumes of Britain’s lack of readiness to engage.
We shall be hearing much more of Brazil on Channel 4 News in the weeks to come. Can’t yet tell you why, but you won’t be disappointed.