'You do not achieve everything you want to achieve'

Flanked by George Bush, Jacques Chirac and Junichiro Koizumi, Tony Blair
announces the G8 agreements on Africa and climate change. Photograph: AP/Susan Walsh

The final communique was supposed to come at 2.15pm. In the event it was delayed by more than half an hour. The expectations of the previous week and months of campaigning were riding on this statement, so what would the G8 leaders deliver?

It was not - as campaigners wanted - a deal to make poverty history. Gordon Brown, a politician who has supported the campaign more than most, said this week that, as far as campaigners are concerned, "what [the government] can achieve is perhaps not good enough". As leaks and drafts of the communique on aid, trade and debt filtered out of Gleneagles this morning, NGOs said it was less than they wanted - especially on trade, and the scheduling of increases in aid to 2010 instead of right now.

Here's Mr Blair ...

Africa It is in the nature of politics "you do not achieve everything you want to achieve," he says. He adds that the communique will not make poverty history, but it shows how it can be done.