Bilderberg 2013 comes to … the Grove hotel, Watford

 

The Bilderberg group's meeting will receive greater scrutiny than usual as journalists and bloggers converge on Watford

• Charlie Skelton
• The Guardian, Sunday 2 June 2013 17.03 BST

Protesters at Bilderberg 2012. This year's meeting of the global elite is in Watford and is expected to be unusually open. Photograph: Mark Gail/The Washington Post

When you're picking a spot to hold the world's most powerful policy summit, there's really only one place that will do: Watford. I guess the Seychelles must have been booked up.

On Thursday afternoon, a heady mix of politicians, bank bosses, billionaires, chief executives and European royalty will swoop up the elegant drive of the Grove hotel, north of Watford, to begin the annual Bilderberg conference.

It's a remarkable spectacle – one of nature's wonders – and the most exciting thing to happen to Watford since that roundabout on the A412 got traffic lights. The area round the hotel is in lockdown: locals are having to show their passports to get to their homes. It's exciting too for the delegates. The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell will hop from his limo, delighted to be spending three solid days in policy talks with the head of HSBC, the president of Dow Chemical, his favourite European finance ministers and US intelligence chiefs. The conference is the highlight of every plutocrat's year and has been since 1954. The only time Bilderberg skipped a year was 1976, after the group's founding chairman,Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, was caught taking bribes from Lockheed Martin.

It may seem odd, as our own lobbying scandal unfolds, amid calls for a statutory register of lobbyists, that a bunch of our senior politicians will be holed up for three days in luxurious privacy with the chairmen and CEOs of hedge funds, tech corporations and vast multinational holding companies, with zero press oversight. "It runs contrary to [George] Osborne's public commitment in 2010 to 'the most radical transparency agenda the country has ever seen'," says Michael Meacher MP. Meacher describes the conference as "an anti-democratic cabal of the leaders of western market capitalism meeting in private to maintain their own power and influence outside the reach of public scrutiny".

But, to be fair, is "public scrutiny" really necessary when our politicians are tucked safely away with so many responsible members of JP Morgan's international advisory board? There's always the group chief executive of BP on hand to make sure they do not get unduly lobbied. And if he is not in the room, keeping an eye out, then at least one of the chairmen of Novartis, Zurich Insurance, Fiat or Goldman Sachs International will be around.

This year, there will be a great deal more "public scrutiny" of Bilderberg. Pressure from journalists and activists has won concessions from the venue: for the first time in 59 years there will be an unofficial press office, staffed by volunteers, on the grounds. Several thousand activists and bloggers are expected, along with photographers and journalists from around the world.

Back in 2009 there were barely a dozen witnesses – harassed and arrested by heavy-handed Greek police. This year there is a press zone, police liaison, portable toilets, a snack van, a speakers' corner – all the ingredients for a different Bilderberg. A "festival feel" has been promised. If you are concerned about transparency or lobbying, Watford is the place to be next weekend. Whether the delegates reach out to the press and public remains to be seen. Don't forget, they've got their hands full carrying out the good works of Bilderberg. The conference is, after all, run as a charity.

If you've been wondering who picks up the tab for this gigantic conference and security operation, the answer arrived last week, on a pdf file sent round by Anonymous. It showed that the Bilderberg conference is paid for, in the UK, by an officially registered charity: the Bilderberg Association (charity number 272706).

According to its Charity Commission accounts, the association meets the "considerable costs" of the conference when it is held in the UK, which include hospitality costs and the travel costs of some delegates. Presumably the charity is also covering the massive G4S security contract. Fortunately, the charity receives regular five-figure sums from two kindly supporters of its benevolent aims: Goldman Sachs and BP. The most recent documentary proof of this is from 2008 (pdf), since when the charity has omitted its donors' names (pdf) from its accounts.

The charity's goal is "public education". And how does it go about educating the public? "In furtherance of these objectives the International Steering Committee organises conferences and meetings in the UK and elsewhere and disseminates the results thereof by preparing and publishing reports of such conferences and meetings and by other means." Cleverly, it disseminates the results by resolutely keeping them away from the public and press.

The charity is overseen by its three trustees (pdf): Bilderberg steering committee member and serving minister Kenneth Clarke MP; Lord Kerr of Kinlochard; and Marcus Agius, the former chairman of Barclays who resigned over the Libor scandal.

Labour MP Tom Watson remarks: "If the allegations that a cabinet minister sits on the board of a charity that discreetly funds a secretive conference of elites are true then I hope the prime minister was informed. It was David Cameron who heralded the new age of transparency. I hope he asks Kenneth Clarke to adhere to these principles in future." At the very least, George Osborne and Clarke may consider adhering to the ministerial code when it comes to Bilderberg and declare it in their list of "meetings with proprietors, editors and senior media executives" as they've failed to do in the past. Of course, with the lobbying scandal in full spate it's possible our ministers will steer clear of such a major corporate lobbying event. We'll find out on Thursday.

We avoided the apocalypse – but 2013 will be no picnic

The world hasn't ended, but global leaders will still have to work hard to manage economic trials and social tensions

• 
• • Ha-Joon Chang
  • The Guardian, Sunday 30 December 2012 19.00 GMT

‘The eurozone is entering a make or break year, with the social fabric of the periphery countries stretched to the limit.' Illustration: Andrzej Krauze

 

 

The world did not end this year, as some people thought it would following a Mayan prophecy (well, at least one interpretation of it), but it seems pretty certain that next year is going to be tougher than this one.

We are entering 2013 as the Republican hardliners in the United States Congress does its utmost to weaken the federal government, using an anachronistic law on federal debt ceiling. Until the Republicans started abusing it recently, the law had been defunct in all but name. Since its enactment in 1917, the ceiling has been raised nearly a hundred times, as a ceiling set in nominal monetary terms becomes quickly obsolete in an ever-growing economy with inflation. Had the US stuck to the original ceiling of $11.5bn, its federal debt today would have been equivalent not even to 0.1% of GDP (about $15tn) – the current debt, which is supposed to hit the $16.3tn ceiling today, is about 110% of GDP.

A compromise will be struck in due course (as it was in 2011), but the debt ceiling will keep coming back to haunt the country because it is the best weapon with which the extremists in the Republican party can advance their anti-state ideology. This ideology has such a hold on American politics because it taps into the anxiety of the majority of the white population. Being squeezed from the top by greedy corporate elite and from the bottom by new immigrants, they seek solace in an ideology that harks back to the lost golden age of (idealised) 18th-century America, made up of self-defending (with guns), free-contracting (white) individuals who are independent of the central government. Unless mainstream American politicians can offer these people an alternative vision, backed up by more secure jobs and a better welfare system, they will keep voting for the extremists.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the eurozone is entering a make or break year, with the social fabric of the periphery countries stretched to the limit. With its GDP 20% lower than in 2008, with 25% unemployment rate and with the wages of most of those still in work down by 40% to 50%, it is a real touch and go whether the current Greek government can survive another round of austerity. Spain and Portugal are not yet where Greece is, but they are hurtling down that way. And even the infinitely patient Irish are beginning to vent their anger against the inequities of the austerity programme that has hit the poorest the hardest. Should any of these countries socially explode, the consequences could be dire, whether they technically stayed in the eurozone or not.

As for the UK, 2013 may become the year when it sets a dubious world record of having an unprecedented "triple-dip recession". Even if that is avoided, with high unemployment, real wages that are at best stagnant and swingeing welfare cuts, many people will struggle to make ends meet. In a letter to the Observer yesterday, the leaders of the city councils of Newcastle, Liverpool and Sheffield, have even warned of a "break-up of civil society", should the austerity programme continue.

European leaders need to work out new economic programmes with a more equitable sharing of the burden of adjustment, both within and between countries. Paradoxically, they can look towards Iceland, the canary that first died in the mine of toxic debt, for a lesson. The country has been recovering rather well, considering the scale of the banking crisis, while making spending cuts in a way that impose the least burden on the poorest: between 2008 and 2010, income of the poorest 10% fell by 9% while that of the richest 10% fell by 38%.

Things look brighter in the Asian countries, with their economies growing much faster and with even Japan ready to make a dash for growth through more relaxed monetary and fiscal policies. However, they – especially the two giants of China and India – have their own shares of social tension to manage.

Growth is slowing down in China. It is estimated to have grown by 7.5% in 2012, well below the usual rate of 9% to 10%. Some forecast that its growth rate will pick up again to above 8% in 2013, but others believe it will fall below 7%. Given the country's heavy reliance on exports to the US and the European Union, the more pessimistic scenario seems likely, as things don't look very good in those economies. With slower economic growth it will become more difficult to manage the social tension that has been bubbling up thanks to runaway inequality and high levels of corruption.

Management of social tension will be an even bigger challenge for India. Its economic growth has significantly slowed down since 2010, and few predict a major reversal of the trend in 2013. Add to this economic difficulty deepening economic, religious and cultural divisions, and you have a heady mixture, as we see in the social unrest following the recent gang rape and death of a young medical student.

If the political leaders of the major economies do not manage these social tensions well, 2013 could be a year in which the world takes a turn for the worse. It is a huge challenge, as it is like trying to fix a car while driving it. However, without fixing the malfunctioning car, we will not get out of the woods, however much extra fuel, like quantitative easing, we pour into the car.

This Coalition government won’t see out 2013

The best government for decades will be brought down by the inherent pitfalls of partnership.

Friends in need: it all started so well, but the Coalition is showing the strain Photo: AP

By Peter Oborne

8:02PM GMT 07 Mar 2012

221 Comments

Just after the general election, over breakfast at St Pancras Station, I had an electrifying political conversation with Mark Oaten, the former Liberal Democrat MP and home affairs spokesman. It clarified my thinking and its details have stayed with me ever since.

Mr Oaten was the author of a rather important book, which analysed both the past British history of coalition government as well as the far more extensive contemporary experience in continental Europe and Ireland.

We were having breakfast because I wanted to ask him what lessons could be learnt from past experience that would help me understand the Conservative/Lib Dem administration, which had been formed just a few days before. First of all, said Mr Oaten, coalitions are always disastrous for the smaller party. It gets swallowed up, blamed for the failures and only rarely credited with the successes, and then not nearly enough.

In some cases, as with the hapless Progressive Democrats, who never recovered from their alliance with Fianna Fáil and were dissolved in the wake of the 2007 Irish general election, the smaller party vanishes from history. But always it suffers heavy losses.

So I asked Mr Oaten whether there was any way to avoid this disaster. He shook his head sorrowfully. The best that could be hoped, he replied, was to mitigate the scale of the setback. “It is impossible,” he said, in a remark that Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, might do well to ponder, “to walk out of a ministerial car and into an election campaign. There must be a clear and decisive rupture between the coalition parties well before a general election, otherwise the smaller party will always be obliterated.”

And when should such a breach occur? Once again, Mr Oaten produced a precise and thought-provoking answer. “A danger moment comes approximately two years after the general election. That is when the coalition agreement tends to run out. At this point the parties often try to create a fresh coalition agreement. But such attempts normally fail.”

Just under two years have passed since our conversation, and nothing since suggests that Mr Oaten’s analysis was wrong. There has indeed been an attempt to create a new agreement to renew the Government two years in, and it has – as predicted – failed. Lib Dem support has slumped, just as Mr Oaten said it would: the party will be lucky to win more than a dozen seats next time.

Meanwhile, the original dynamism and sense of purpose has gone. It is important to remember that the Lib Dems and the Tories remain united on certain issues, above all the need to tackle the deficit. But on numerous others – Europe, tax, health, trade policy, family policy, constitutional reform – the two parties are polarised.

This week’s leaked letter from Vince Cable to David Cameron and Nick Clegg merely drives home a point that has been obvious for some time: the Coalition has two economic policies. One is being run by George Osborne at the Treasury, while the other is being articulated by Mr Cable. The letter does the Business Secretary credit. It is a mature meditation on Britain’s economic and industrial predicament. The assertion that the Coalition does not possess a vision for future growth is nothing less than God’s own truth. While the leak may be regrettable, it is thoroughly reassuring that letters of this calibre are passing between senior members of the Government.

Allies of the Chancellor are trying to diminish Mr Cable by pointing out that he has been responsible for business since the Coalition was formed, and that he is therefore highlighting his own failure. This is disingenuous. No trade policy is even remotely possible without the assent of the Treasury. Consider Mr Cable’s most concrete and thoughtful proposal: the break-up of RBS. It was Mr Osborne’s decision to leave the doomed conglomerate to its own devices, a stagnant weight on the British economic system, marooned in the hands of the investment banker Stephen Hester for the past two years. The fact is that Mr Cable has a reasonably worked-out and coherent grasp of political economy, whether one agrees with it or not, and Mr Osborne does not. A large number of Tories want Mr Cable out. They are very stupid. Few things would damage Tory re-election chances more gravely than the Business Secretary on the back benches in partnership with the increasingly impressive Labour leader, Ed Miliband.

Far more lethal to the Coalition, however, is House of Lords reform. With the Government due to unveil the shape of its Bill by the end of this month, it may well turn into the final battlefield upon which the Coalition will fail. Nick Clegg’s motives are understandable. The Deputy Prime Minister, who has suffered a series of pulverising reverses and humiliations, is a fairly intelligent man. He probably senses the scale of the impending electoral catastrophe and is desperate to extract something – anything! – from the rubble. An elected House of Lords, chosen through proportional representation, will guarantee that the Lib Dems hold the balance of power in the Upper House for the foreseeable future, and secure Mr Clegg some sort of political legacy.

But he must surely have been told that his proposals are doomed. They may well bite the dust in the Commons, where the ablest young Tories, led by the outstanding Jesse Norman, have already destroyed, with frightening ease, their intellectual basis. But they have no chance whatever in the House of Lords, where my inquiries have discovered that appointed peers will refuse point blank to countenance their own extinction.

Some weeks ago, Lord Steel, a former Liberal leader, suggested a solution to this problem: peers should receive lump sums as a way of easing the prospect of retirement. The logic behind this sordid and grossly improper proposal is faultless. Many of the peers who now occupy the Lords benches paid good money to get in: they would doubtless be swayed by a generous tip on the way out. But it is surely wholly unacceptable, even by today’s debased standards of public conduct, that legislators should have a financial interest in the outcome of such an important vote.

The failure of Mr Clegg’s House of Lords reforms will have major consequences. Furious Lib Dems are already plotting their revenge in the shape of pulling the plug on planned constituency boundary changes, seen by Conservative Party strategists as essential to a Tory victory at the next general election.

I write all this with sadness. Plenty of mistakes have been made since 2010, but this has nevertheless been the best government for a generation, led by men and women for the most part of decency and goodwill. Important steps have been taken towards addressing the financial deficit, while the reforms to welfare and education are essential to the health of Britain as a nation and will soon be irreversible.
It is only thanks to the skill and admirable personal forbearance of Mr Clegg and Mr Cameron that the project has lasted as long as it has. But the odds against its long-term survival are lengthening.
Expect the Coalition to break apart by 2013 at the latest, though a minority Conservative administration may linger on for a while longer. And expect that five-year fixed parliament, like Lords reform, to turn out to be another of Nick Clegg’s charming constitutional delusions.