Talk of a new anti-Western alliance changing the balance of world power and finance is everywhere. But BRICS is a long way away from a coherent ideological and geopolitical alliance, let alone a powerful economic block of nations. Russian dissident Sergei Guriev, financier and Putin’s enemy Bill Browder, and Financial Times Europe-China correspondent Yuan Yang debated the future of the global order at HowTheLightGetsIn festival, in London.

A spectre is haunting the G7, the spectre of BRICS. Or so the recent media storm over the organisation would have you believe. On the surface, this looks like a perfectly reasonable claim. The rise of the East and decline of the West is a narrative that has permeated geopolitics for at least the last 40 years and even further to the decline of Western empire. However, despite the headline figures, the BRICS do not represent that shift. As was argued in the Redrawing the Global Order debate at this year’s HowTheLightGetsIn festival in London, BRICS is a precarious business partnership without the capital, ideology, or trust to challenge the G7.