The tie-less G8

"They look like middle management who are on an away day and about to go paintballing." Peter York

Someone else said they look more like the poster for Reservoir Dogs and I agree.

They do not look good and not wearing a tie is very ageing. Mr. Obama looks least uncomfortable without his tie, but we still know he is not really cool but a clever nerd. 

On the one hand, for years now it has been, apart from me, mostly dodgy people who want to sell you insurance who wear ties. On the other hand, however old I get, I still feel young because there are still plenty of Romanian men (I suppose they are no older than 65 or at most 70) who wear ties at the weekend and hats too in cold weather. They wear them while drinking cheap cognac type drink at the terrace downstairs on a Saturday morning. They gives me hope and restores my faith in human nature.

As far as I know, the first appearance of tielessness as a statement in political history was the 1948 Progressive Party Convention which nominated Henry Wallace (Roosevelt's left-wing Vice-President from 1941 to 1945) for president. This is not a good precedent since Wallace was convinced of Stalin's benign intentions. Since the turn of the century tielessness has spread, like some plague bacillus.

For psychological reasons I wanted as a very small boy to be a Victorian. Perhaps I wanted to be my grandfather (a bad-tempered man who wore a bow-tie and owned a bowler hat) and this take seniority over my nostalgic conservative parents. Whatever the reason i wanted to wear striped trousers and a stiff collar and this was one of the things that made the Bar appeal. Anyhow it is just too hot in Romania for stiff collars and there are no laundries but I shall settle for being the last man to wear a tie. 

My left-of-centre, rock music loving contemporaries from Cambridge all went into jobs in the City and tried to be cool, but it always pleased me to know they were really their tall-hatted late 19th century counterparts, surrounded by clerks on tall stools.

What would Lord Curzon have said about the leaders of the Great Powers meeting without ties? Would he have said it was 'Ghastly', with his short Derbyshire 'a'? Or would he have thought ties were middle class anyway?