2005 has been touted by UK development charities as the most important year for campaigning in a decade. As the leaders of the richest nations in the world meet in Gleneagles, Scotland in early July, tens of thousands will converge on Edinburgh, under the broad coalition Make Poverty History, demanding an end to the poverty which continues to blight humanity.

The world’s leaders do have the ability to wipe out poverty. Poverty is about systematically unfair trading rules which have sent global inequality soaring; an international debt structure which keeps the Third World in hock to Western investors; and so-called aid, conditioned on Third World countries taking the ‘correct attitude’ towards economic reform. In the world today poverty is not primarily about natural disasters, it is about vested interests, imperialist finance structures and politicians promising candy with one hand in order to snatch away bread with the other.

Enthroned at the centre of this system is the corporation – the most powerful entity on earth. While governments could reign them in if they chose, they prefer to represent them, setting up institutions like the IMF, World Bank and WTO which dictate to the Third World the economic structures most beneficial to the corporation, regardless of the impact on people or the planet. The corporation is the epicentre of neo-liberalism and corporate globalisation.

While Bush does little to hide his strategy of ‘capitalism for the Third World’ and ‘socialism for western corporations’ (handing out subsidies, forcing other governments to ‘choose’ US products), Blair and Brown have a more subtle approach. But for all their promises – prioritising Africa, increasing aid, dropping the debt – the British government is no less pro-corporate or less problematic to development than other G8 members.

At the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the UK has been at the forefront of the EU’s aggressive ‘free trade’ agenda. Dismissing the pleas of developing countries that they should be allowed to defend infant industries from the onslaught of multinationals, the UK has pushed an “offensive” agenda which aims to further open developing markets to EU exports. This blatant self-interest risks the break-down of the WTO summit in Hong Kong in December, mirroring the break-down of Cancun.

Beyond the WTO, the UK and EU are signing a series of free trade deals (Economic Partnership Agreements or EPAs) intended to bilaterally force open up to 90% of the markets of African, Caribbean and Pacific countries to EU exports. Against the might of the European Union poor countries are totally unable to defend themselves. Even the European Commission’s own impact assessment has predicted that these agreements could lead to the collapse of the manufacturing sector in West Africa.

The UK has taken the lead in promoting privatisation of public services in developing countries. Scandalously the government has channelled millions of pounds of development aid money to privatisation consultants such as KPMG, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the ultra-neo-liberal Adam Smith Institute, to ‘advise’ developing country governments on how best to sell their public services to western corporations.

While making climate change a G8 priority, the UK has failed to control its own greenhouse gas emissions, backing down on its targets in the face of industry lobby groups. Global warming is already having a severe impact on the poorest people in the world.

But nowhere is the government’s pro-corporate stance more obvious than in its undermining of international calls to hold multinationals to account for their activities overseas. Instead, the UK has sided with business groups in championing voluntary ‘corporate social responsibility’, a multi-million dollar industry in its own right, which replaces progressive social policies with public relations.

Forcing countries to do as they’re told at the point of starvation has much in common with old-fashioned colonialism. And if none of this ‘carrot’ works, there’s always the ‘stick’, Iraq being an example to the rest of the world.

For the world’s richest leaders, the G8, to meet and take decisions about the future of millions of people in closed sessions is reminiscent of emperors, monarchs and sultans sitting in palaces, drawing lines on maps. To believe that positive change will come from such a body is truly unrealistic. At the same time, positive change is possible. Grassroots groups working around the world are risking their lives fighting for different forms of globalisation or de-globalisation.

That’s why coming to Edinburgh this July is so important. The size of the march on 2 July will send a clear message to the British government – that it is time to represent people rather than corporations on the world stage, to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. But our Counter-conference on 3 July is no less important, because if we are to entrench real change, we need to build democratic global structures to replace the G8, WTO, IMF and World Bank. As with the fight against poverty, environmental destruction, and corporate tyranny, so the fight for global democracy will come from below.

The World Development Movement, the NUS, People and Planet, Friends of the Earth and War on Want are organising a counter-conference in Edinburgh on Sunday 3 July. Nick Dearden is a Campaigns Officer at War on Want.