In 1975 the French president, Valéry Giscard D’Estaing, had a brainwave. The great powers of the west were reeling from their first postwar recession, which had led to both higher unemployment and rising inflation. America had just suffered the twin blows of Watergate and defeat in the Vietnam war.

Giscard thought it would be a good idea at this tricky time to invite the leaders of five other western powers – the US, the UK, West Germany, Japan and Italy – for an informal chat at Rambouillet, a chateau near Paris. And so the modern era of summitry was born. The G6 became the G7 when Canada joined, and for a while it was the G8 with the inclusion of Russia.

Countries take turns to host the annual event and this year it is once again France’s turn. Emmanuel Macron will be the host when the G7 meets in Biarritz. It is unlikely to be the sort of cosy fireside chat for like-minded leaders envisaged by Giscard all those years ago.

The French and the Germans have different views about the future of the European Union. France and Italy have fallen out in a big way. Donald Trump is threatening to open up a new phase of protectionism by attacking Germany for running an excessive current account surplus. The EU and the US are at odds over Iranian sanctions. And last but not least, it will be an opportunity for Boris Johnson to give an update on how he sees Brexit panning out.

There are some areas where there is still some G7 cooperation. The EU backed Trump’s choice, David Malpass, to run the World Bank and the US will reciprocate by swinging behind Europe’s candidate, Kristalina Georgieva, to run the International Monetary Fund.

But the smiles for the group photo will be fake. The show of unity is just for the cameras and as unreal as that shown by the Beatles when they paraded across Abbey Road for their album cover 50 years ago this month.

Within months the Beatles were no more and in an essay for the CapX website, John Hulsman says there are parallels between the sudden breakup of the world’s biggest band and the disintegration of the west.

Hulsman’s take is as follows: John Lennon is Europe, Paul McCartney is the US, George Harrison is China and Ringo Starr represents all the smaller nations. At their peak, the Beatles were kept together by the balance of power between Lennon and McCartney but over time the stable order broke down.

Harrison wanted greater recognition for his talents, Lennon became introspective and lost interest in the running of the band, McCartney ended up running things but with less and less help from the others, and was resented by them for trying to keep the show on the road. By the time of the White Album in 1968, the Beatles were a band in name only and the four members were doing their own thing, just as the members of the G7 are doing now.

There are other ways of looking at things. One would see Lennon as the US, the dominant figure in the early days of the Beatles and unable to cope when challenged for supremacy by McCartney (China). One thing is certain, though: the west currently looks a lot more like the Beatles circa Let it Be and Abbey Road than it does the Beatles in their mid-period heyday from Rubber Soul in 1965 to Sgt Pepper in 1967.

And when the split came, it was painful and protracted. There was never a Beatles reunion, merely solo albums that invariably showed that the whole was greater than the sum of the parts.

So what needs to happen to prevent the west going the way of the Beatles? For a start, the G7 meeting next weekend should be the occasion for some clear-the-air talks rather than a photo opportunity. It needs to start grappling with what the music business would call significant artistic differences.

The summiteers should deal with some of the issues that are proving corrosive to their relationship: Europe’s reluctance to pay for its own defence; Trump’s insistence on treating the EU as a hostile entity.

Next, the G7 needs to end the drift towards protectionism by resolving some tricky trade issues: Brexit, the size of Germany’s current account surplus, the willingness of countries to manipulate their currencies to boost exports, and the threat posed to the World Trade Organization.

There also needs to be an acceptance that the world has changed. The west no longer accounts for 80% of global output as it did in the aftermath of the second world war, but the continued stitch-up over the top jobs at the World Bank and the IMF suggests that the mindset of its leading nations is still that of 1969 rather than 2019.

Finally, the G7 must show it has answers to new and increasingly urgent issues: the climate crisis and the potential disruption caused by artificial intelligence. The west needs some of the creativity that made each Beatles album different from its predecessor, because for too long it has been like a heavy metal band chugging out the same tired riffs to a dwindling fanbase.

Although this currently seems a long way off, it is possible that the west will get its act together. As Hulsman notes, perhaps the band that the G7 should be seeking to emulate is the Rolling Stones rather than the Beatles.

After the death of Brian Jones in 1969, few would have imagined that the Stones would be a going concern 50 years later. But somehow or other they have survived.

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