Stop press: global trade talks fail to make progress. The world might be forgiven for regarding such tidings as somewhat less than dramatic news. A new false dawn for the so-called Doha round of trade talks generally comes around once every few months. (A useful leading indicator of disappointment is another sudden outbreak of unfounded optimism from Gordon Brown, the UK prime minister, that the talks are just about to succeed.)

But there is a little more import than usual in this month’s prudent decision by Pascal Lamy, the World Trade Organisation’s director-general, that the risk of a failed meeting was too high to make it worth summoning ministers to Geneva to push for a deal. The episode also marks a bad start for the claim that the Group of Twenty leading economies will remake the governance of the global economy as we know it. At their Washington meeting in November, the G20 heads of government instructed their ministers to reach a framework deal by the end of this year. That promise has been broken.