Given that today’s FT included a special 16 page pull-out section on the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos (in which editor Lionel Barber describes the gathering as “the ultimate schmoozefest”), you might have expected the rest of the paper to fall in behind the editorial line. But, in turns out, there are guerrilla-minded insurgents in the Lex Column:
More than 2,500 people are scheduled to attend Davos: including 1,370 business executives, 250 government officials, 250 media representatives, 180 academics, 450 others and one Bono. You’d be hard-pressed to fit all of them in a ballroom, let alone get them organised to save the world economy. Proper cabals need small numbers.
The close-mouthed Bilderberg Group seems a more promising model. It rotates annual meetings of about 100 world business, media and government leaders around Europe and the US, and announces them after they are over. Of course, Bilderberg focuses on geopolitics rather than economics, and its secrecy has inspired wild conspiracy theorists. Still, small numbers and informality are the key. Anyone who is anyone at Davos should decamp to St Moritz.
One can’t help but admire the smugness: in a single paragraph, our feisty authors note that while of course Bilderberg meetings are only announced after the fact, they know that this year’s is at St Moritz. Obviously.
Intrigued by this obviously coded message to the foreign policy Illuminati, your correspondents at Global Dashboard have undertaken a trawl of conspiracy sites, and we can tonight reveal that Bilderberg plans to rescue the world are already well underway: they’re planning to assassinate Ron Paul. We also learned that the Royal Institute of International Affairs is “the foreign policy executive arm of the British monarchy“, which raises the interesting question of which research program Prince Philip is secretly in charge of.
Never mind the fact that, as Adam Boulton says, the Conservatives’ Europe policy is a muddle. Hague’s speech in the Commons chamber yesterday – riffing on the theme of how Gordon Brown will feel if Tony Blair becomes President of Europe – is hysterical. Even David Miliband and Jim Murphy were cracking up. As Boulton puts it,
Now we no longer hear John Prescott’s Les Dawson routine (thank goodness) at the end of the Labour conference, the undisputed king of Westminster’s northern stand-up comedians is William Hague. As the Register of Members’ Interests confirms, the former Tory leader charges up to £20,000 a turn for his jokes on the after dinner speaking circuit. But as MPs in the Commons debated the Bill to ratify the Lisbon treaty, we got to hear William’s wisecracks, gags and mockery of Gordon Brown and the Government for nowt, as they say in Yorkshire.
Predictably, Hague ridiculed the Prime Minister for turning up late for the signing of the treaty last month and for not turning up at all to vote for it in Parliament. But he saved the best until last. His lampooning of Tony Blair’s apparent bid to become the new EU president, a grand new post created by the treaty, was hilarious and had MPs across the chamber howling and roaring with laughter.
The president of the European Commmission has threatened to impose carbon tariffs on imports unless the US agrees to a global climate change deal … He said foreign firms should be forced to purchase the same EU carbon allowances European firms would have to buy, thereby levelling the industrial playing field.
The threat of trade measures is the nuclear bomb of climate negotiations – and the commission president said he very much hoped it would not be used. He said his preferred option was for a comprehensive global treaty on emissions. His fall-back was a global sectoral agreement imposing uniform standards on energy-intensive export industries.
If these failed, he would either protect Europe’s industries by giving them all their carbon allowances in the European Trading System (ETS) free of charge, or charge importers at the same rate for the allowances: “I think we should be ready to continue to give the energy-intensive industries their ETS allowances free of charge – or to require importers to obtain allowances alongside European competitors, as long as this system is compatible with WTO requirements.”
Update: the Press Association is running that the UK government has already come out against Barroso’s call. Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks has said “We are against any measures which might look like trade barriers. There is always the danger that the protectionists in Europe – and they do exist – could use this as a kind of secret weapon to bring about protectionism.”
Dan Korski at ECFR has a new report out today entitled Afghanistan: Europe’s forgotten war (summary; press release; full report). The EU doesn’t come out of it very well: “EU countries have treated the common effort in Afghanistan like a pot-luck dinner where every guest is free to bring his own dish”, says Dan. Key points from the report:
Need for a ‘grand bargain’ – As part of a ‘grand bargain’, the EU should deploy more troops in Afghanistan, relax restrictions on their troops – the so-called ‘caveats’ – and reverse the decline in development aid. In exchange, the US should accept a shift from a strategy based on combat operations to one focused on overall political impact, and the protection of ordinary civilians across the country. It should also abandon its failed counter-narcotics strategy.
Political inclusion – The international coalition should include mid-ranking, moderate insurgents in the political process, and help President Hamid Karzai to eventually reach a political settlement with his opponents. Negotiations with the Taliban are now unavoidable and the current status quo untenable.
EU underperformance – So far, the majority of EU governments have only made a symbolic contribution to the military effort – with Austria, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland and Portugal at the bottom of the list. (As an example, Austria has contributed a mere 3 soldiers, Ireland only 7, while Luxembourg 9. This stands in contrast to the UK’s 7000 troops, Germany’s 3000 and The Netherlands’ 1500.)
New counter-narcotics strategy – The international coalition should design a new approach to counter-narcotics and abandon all earlier plans for aerial spraying, or schemes for buying up opium crops. Instead, they should make clear that traffickers and their protectors, not farmers, are the problem. The emphasis should be placed on arresting and prosecuting drug lords and their backers in government.
Local delivery – The international community should prioritise local governance and rule-of-law reforms. Assistance efforts need to be refocused around delivering clear benefits on the ground, through strengthening provincial administrations, and ensuring that the Afghan police contribute to, rather than undermine, the safety of civilians.
UN super envoy – The ‘grand bargain’ agenda would require leadership that cuts across military, political and development lines, as well as institutional boundaries. The new UN envoy should be a double-hatted leader, bearing responsibility for the leadership of both the UN and NATO. This super envoy should be endorsed by the European Union, and the set-up should be cemented through a new UN Security Council resolution.
Given Paddy Ashdown’s appointment last week as UN Envoy to Afghanistan, it’s doubtless worth reading the report in some detail: Dan was Ashdown’s head of political / military affairs in Bosnia.
Also: the debate between UK Ambassador to Afghanistan Sherard Cowper-Coles and author Rory Stewart in the current edition of Prospect is well worth a look. (Sadly it’s not available online unless you’re a subscriber, or willing to cough up for the article.) I assumed when I began reading it that it would all be rather consensual as Prospect debates go. Uh-uh…
When David and I wrote our Guardian piece in defence of climate sceptics a couple of weeks ago, we included a story from Stephen Sackur, host of BBC’s Hard Talk, which went like this:
The former vice president harrumphed when I cited a British high court judge who had concluded that the Gore epic An Inconvenient Truth contained a valuable message, but was marred by several exaggerations and distortions. His pallid complexion darkened even more when I mentioned the name of his long-time political foe Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician, who claims that the resources spent on curbing global emissions would be better spent on adaptation and mitigation strategies.
The rest of our encounter was marked by Mr Gore’s heavy sighs and deep frowns … But when the cameras stopped rolling the peace prize winner from Tennessee let me have it with both barrels. I’d compromised my journalistic integrity. The BBC had lost its nerve.
Since then, other victims of Al Gore’s temper have been coming out of the woodwork. One senior private sector climate change expert commented,
I meant to mention to you both that when reading your article I was struck that I had the same experience with Al Gore that Stephen Sackur did. I’d thought I was alone.
Far from it! Earlier that week, an environment correspondent at a UK broadsheet newspaper had been in touch to say that he too had “had a similar experience with Gore” – as had a friend of his in broadcast news.
It’s clearly time to inaugurate a survivors’ group for victims of Al’s temper. Help is here. Reach out.
