Putin Left Off the Guest List as UK Prepares to Host G20

The UK's next G20 summit will run without Russia's president in the room. Prime Minister Andy Burnham told The Economist that Vladimir Putin will not be invited when Britain hosts the gathering next year, according to the interview the outlet posted Thursday.

Burnham didn't stop at the guest list. He said the deal handing ownership of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius is now in doubt, and that his government will recast the arrangement to ease Washington's concerns. He floated the US agreement with Denmark over Greenland as a possible model for settling the Diego Garcia question.

Turning to the US midterm elections, Burnham said the pendulum has swung away from populism. A day earlier he had called the heavy losses for President Donald Trump's Republican Party a possible opportunity for the world to get to grips with the cost of living.

He made that argument from the Commonwealth summit in Antigua and Barbuda, telling reporters he can't bring household cost pressures down without a resolution to the war against Iran and the Ukraine crisis. People want to see the world coming together, he said, and focusing on the things that matter to them.

The remarks land in the middle of a busy G20 stretch. Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed for secure supply chains after the foreign ministers' meeting in Atlanta, naming the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb as routes that must stay open to commerce.

Moscow's top diplomat was moving too. Sergey Lavrov met Japan's Toshimitsu Motegi on the sidelines — their first sit-down in five years — and said Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky would have to travel to Moscow if he wants a face-to-face with Putin.