The ExCeL centre is the land that God forgot

Welcome to the end of the earth. Welcome to the land God forgot..

I am in the ExCeL centre. But worry not, the ExCeL centre excels at nothing. It has the shared misfortune with 20 of the world’s most powerful leaders of being the place that this summit is being held.

Even in the best of times, this is a dump, a warehouse in which absurdly large events are staged. Devoid of character, nestling the City airport, it is stuck in the middle of a place that appears never to have seen a shop, never to have seen a pint pulled, never to have seen a baby born, let alone a body buried.

It is the waste tip of east London. And presumably now that the Olympic site has been cleared, basks alone as a gateway to nowhere.

Travelling in here on the security-strewn media buses, I wondered how a Mexican or a Brazilian, or indeed a German or a Frenchman would view this taste of England. Imagine if your only glimpse of Europe was this ghastly pile of metal and concrete. You would think that development meant some voyage into outer Hades.

The thought that there are 3,000 hacks here, sending postcards home, telling mum and dad they have been to Blighty and tasted of the forbidden fruits of the ExCeL centre, fills me with a real fear that this will become emblematic of Britain’s cascade through the economic meltdown.

I am hoping that my view of the otherwise charming ExCeL centre has not been coloured by the fact that it took me two and a half hours and a £110 black cab ride to get here in the small hours of the morning.

There are those who ask: where the hell is it? Rest assured, it is beyond anywhere you have ever been or would ever want to go. I asked the COI man who was organising this event, and he told me that with the shortness of notice, the scale of the operation, the nature of the threat, this was, alas, the only place in Britain that this summit could be staged.

People seem to have forgotten that in the only days the whole idea of these meetings was to gather in private, away from the maelstrom, have serious talks, and then let us know what had been concluded.