Now the G7 too is having its energy sapped by Brexit

A summit crucial to the issue of climate change is instead mired in disentangling the mess of Britain's exit from the EU

There is a certain symmetry about one of the principal themes of the Carbis Bay G7 summit. The first of these meetings - at Rambouillet, outside Paris, in 1975 - was called by the French president, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, to summon a collective effort to stave off an energy crisis.

It began as the Group of Six - the US, Japan, West Germany, the UK, France and Italy. But, in the way of things, what was intended as a one-off special event took on a life of its own, with Canada joining in 1976. In the initial excitement of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the west's attempts to instruct the former USSR in the supposed wonders of western capitalism, Russia was added to the annual gathering of summiteers in 1997.

Global Britain? Pull the other one. Once the most popular European destination for inward investment, the UK has been overtaken by France for two years running