That, at least, is how I saw matters when British Prime Minister Tony Blair, not so fresh from his election victory but refreshed by the thought that he had made it into the records books, embarked on a peripatetic venture that took him to New York, Moscow and westwards to Berlin and Paris, where arch enemies awaited his arrival.
His pre-G8 travels were well choreographed. President George W. Bush happily helped him by agreeing to the cancellation of £30 billion of debt to the world's 18 poorest countries. I cannot imagine what President Vladimir Putin could afford to forgive; his country trails in 75th place in the rich countries stakes.
It was clear, however, that the G-8 countries were on board even before a sound had peeped out of the Live 8 band shows that will provide a musical introduction to the meeting in Edinburgh (music and what else?). It was natural and fair that Mr Blair felt well pleased with his effort.
The blur was caused by the run-up to last week's EU summit, which did not have poor African countries on its mind but how the European Union was to survive the catastrophe caused by the French and Dutch electorate's rejection of the proposed Constitution and move forward. Actually, that is not quite correct. That is what the leaders should all have been concentrating on. Instead we witnessed Messrs Blair, Chirac and Schroeder jamming the EU works with their custom-built spanners.
As a result, the G-8 thing got a bit tangled with an EU row over finance and added to the cacophony provided by the Titanic Tussle of the Spanners. Never mind the Constitution, the titans were saying, what about the money? No, not the debt-reducing stuff but the money to keep an enlarged EU moving. Jacques and Gerhard chummed up and demonstrated their chumminess with any number of hugs, Gerhard, to go by Jacque's surprised look, occasionally overdoing the strength of his hug. With what strength remained after the hugging was over they declared that one way forward was for Tony to give up that £3 billion rebate. Just to show willingness, you understand?
Tony, who occasionally sees himself and is seen by Old Labour, as Baroness Thatcher's son and heir (move over, Mark), could neither comprehend nor verstehen. He was having none of it. For one thing he knew was that his political life would not be worth living if he gave up what the then Mrs Thatcher had batted for with a series of stunning strokes against a roomful of men more than two decades ago.
For another, perhaps manlier reason, he was damned if the rebate was going to be brought out like a skeleton from the cupboard unless at the same time his bon ami and the guter Freund of his bon amis agreed that the billions received by France to keep its farms going were also put into the kitty for reallocation.
Mr Blair had something else in mind. Forget the rebate unless we have a look at the caboodle. He had in mind the Common Agriculture Policy and the excessive generosity in that policy in favour of France. The summit ended in disaster and rancour of an uncommon kind. Pity the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, which has provided the Presidency for the past six months. Mr Blair, who is next in the chair, will also find the seat too hot for comfort. He will find that intransigence works both ways.
What about Malta?
I hear a strangled Maltese voice asking? And well may it ask. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly before the French and Dutch debacles.
Well, not quite swimmingly. The problem of agreeing to an overall spending figure already existed with the Commission quoting one figure and a batch of countries - Sweden, Germany, Austria, France, the UK and the Netherlands - another. There was a formidable difference of £123 billion in spending over the seven years (2007-2013) between the two. Were the second figure to be adopted, there would have to be quite a readjustment to many funds that a number of members, including Malta, were expecting to receive.
Once Britain did not budge over its rebate worth £3 billion plus and France stuck to its guns over CAP (French farmers receive 23.6 per cent of the €49 billion agriculture budget; the UK nine per cent) the other big fund from which savings could have been made was Regional Aid, which runs a budget in the region of €32 billion.
Had this been touched in any serious sense, it would not have been good news for Malta or any of the new member countries. Spain scoffs up 32 per cent of that aid. She was unlikely to allow inroads into that figure. Nor did Italy, Germany, France and Portugal leave their patch undefended. Before dusk had fallen over Brussels last Friday, and entrenchment on a metaphorical scale of The Great War was very clear.
In the run-up to last week's summit it seemed as if Malta would be receiving her share of funds. She had maintained her Objective One status, which at one stage she risked losing on a statistical technicality. Now things were sounding as if they were going bang in the night, like it was a Maltese festa in high season. But it is not the end of the story, more the end of what turned out to be a defining chapter.
As Mr Blair takes over the Presidency from Luxembourg, he is certain of two inter-related and contradictory facts: the personal animosity that will drive Messrs Chirac and Schroeder to make his job impossible from next month all the way to December; and the smug knowledge that both his enemies are, by and large, burnt-out cases. But it is likely that Britain's enemies in Europe are greater in number than two. Malta will have difficult diplomatic choices to make.
Whatever she does has to be guided more than ever before in her best interests. For her it has to be case that "there is neither Jew nor Gentile" but Jew and Gentile had better put forward policies and solutions that are friendly to Malta. And we have learned from our elders that they are quite prepared to wreck a Summit in what they perceive as the national interest. If they can, poorer member countries will be thinking, why can't we? We ought not to be in a hurry to say or do this; best to leave the smoke that has settled over the battlefield clear. In a few months' time it will.
There are still 18 months to go before the EU budget for 2007-2013 comes into operation and 18 months is a long time. It is highly probable that Germany will have a new government and a female Chancellor. It is as likely that the days of Mr Chirac are numbered. It is more than possible that the configurations that led to this crisis, institutional and financial, will have changed beyond recognition.
Looked at optimistically there is no reason to doubt that, at the end of the day, the poorer members of the EU will receive their dues. Malta must plan according to that assumption, even if matters do not right themselves under Mr Blair's presidency.
To suppose that Mr Blair will place the EU on a track opposed by France (a new German Government may be more amenable to British thinking) is to invest hugely in hope against experience.
Can't stop laughing
We have too often seen what we believed to be fissiparous cracks in the Malta Labour Party during the leadership of Dr Sant: the resignation of Lino Spiteri as Finance Minister in 1997 after he was humiliated into introducing CET when his heart and mind were with VAT, a fiscal measure anathema to Dr Sant; the resignation or Dr George Abela, a third of The Winning Team in the election run-up to 1996; the resignation or zapping of Alfred Mifsud, ex-boss at Mid-Med Bank and the party's guru on finance; the dramatic intervention in 1998 of Dom Mintoff, who brought the House down, so to speak, contributed to the downfall of Dr Sant's Government after it had been in office a mere 22 months and was labelled a "traitor" by an incandescent Dr Sant; the reappearance of Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici waving an anti-EU membership banner, which Dr Sant was also brandishing when he fought an election and a referendum against membership and lost both; the creation of the Mintoff-Mifsud Bonnici-Mejlaq trio; Dr Sant's readiness to step down after the 2003 defeat and his promptness in accepting to stay on, despite influential voices openly declaring their owners against this reversal.
We have seen too many ruptures during the past seven years when it was thought the Labour Party's leader was in danger of his political life to conclude that Dr Anna Mallia's brave and totally unexpected wreath-laying gesture on St George's Square, in effect the launch of another MLP (Moviment Laburista Popolari), will knock Dr Sant off his pedestal.
Dismissed as a joke, as a nonentity by the party's heavies, one wondered whether she would survive the onslaught. This included her exclusion from the General Workers' Union newspaper, to which she has been contributing for the past five years.
Not unnaturally it led people to think that the use of a sledge-hammer to crack a joke, in manner of speaking, suggested a deep fear on the part of the leadership. Unless Dr Mallia was silenced - which she will not be because there are other newspapers and television sets in and on which she can express her views - she could prove to be, as she was described elsewhere, one loose cannon too many to handle.
She was banished from the columns of l-Orizzont because, among other things, her criticism was not aimed at the policies of the Labour Party. It derived from personal ambition and had developed into personal attacks on the leadership of the Labour Party. It is more probable that Dr Mallia was silenced because she had become too much of a thorn in the side of that leadership. The thorn, no longer a joke, had to be pulled out.
In a statement issued by Moviment Laburista Popolari it thanked the Labour Party for taking the new party "seriously". So seriously, in fact, that the Board of Vigilance has been instructed to ask certain members of the party to swear that they are not associated with a joke gone stale; in effect, an oath of allegiance or, some may think, an oath too far.
Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and Mr Mintoff, Mr Spiteri and Dr Abela, Mr Mejlaq and Mr Mifsud, well, singly they were all right, could be taken on, but suppose, just suppose that all these - and their allies who are identifiable but who have not yet publicly identified themselves - suppose they coalesced into the Moviment Laburista Popolari. Now that would indeed be fissiparous. Or, to put it differently, together they would be too wildly funny a joke to crack.
Ad majorem commoditatem
The Park and Ride Project in the region of Horn's Ditch in Floriana will provide just under 1,000 spaces for vehicles and a shuttle service provided by electrically run vehicles from the car park to Valletta. Sounds like an excellent idea. The Malta and Environment and Planning Authority is contributing Lm270,000 towards the project.
When it is completed in March, next year, it is reckoned that traffic flow along St Anne Street in Floriana between seven and nine o'clock in the morning will decrease by nearly 40 per cent. For reasons I cannot understand it is claimed that traffic flow at Marsa and Msida will also fall, by 25 per cent.
Assuming both figures are correct, the boon to drivers and pedestrians will be considerable. The side walls of St Anne's are black with pollution from car emissions, as are, once I am on the subject, the lower areas of the recently restored Portes des Bombes. These can surely have six feet of protective covering placed around them.
I wonder if the scheme, which includes new road configurations at Blata l-Bajda, will be implemented with the least possible inconvenience to residents and road users. It would be a pity if it were not. For one thing, once the works are in progress, they will be very much in the public eye; for another, here is an opportunity for some good public relations for the urban and road development ministry, led by the still slim minister Jesmond Mugliett and for our man in environment, who I understand is on a slimming project.
I wonder if traffic will be rerouted professionally - we are talking of congested road areas here; if the transport running to Valletta will be reasonably priced and efficiently organised, capable of dealing with the human traffic that will offload itself from all manner of vehicles; if dust bowls will be avoided; if a sense of logic will prevail throughout construction; if works are carried out smartly.
There are brownie points to be gained as the government reaches the point of no return in its journey to the next elections.
And gold-gold points if traffic police booked drivers who still trail black clouds behind them and the penalty for this offence raised to Lm200. During the last budget it was held by the prime minister that one of the good consequences that will flow from an increase in the price of 'additive fuels' would be the abolition of the phenomenon of mix-fuel-'n-drive. No more would unseemly emissions gush forth like angels of death.
The other day I saw a demon, no, that is not correct I could not see the leisure bus for black smoke. It looked as if the unscheduled bus driver wished to hide the identity of the tourists' insides! The habit has not been broken. Amend the fine. Apply it. Publicise the application. The vice will be eradicated in a thrice.