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If it's June, it must be Bilderberg Conference time. Sure enough, a no-fly zone has been installed over Watford, the rather dull English town which this weekend is to be the venue for the annual gathering of puffed-up global conspirators. The Bilderberg meetings, always held in camera and attended by Europeans and North Americans who wield political or economic power, tend to provoke suspicious comment by most of us who are not invited and who wonder what they are up to. The paranoid worry about a hideous cabal of politicians, tycoons and bankers – the illuminati secretly plotting a new world order – while the cynical dismiss it as a dinner club that helps elderly politicians find their way into boardrooms. But the real objection to Bilderberg is that this meeting of money, power and influence achieves nothing at all. It is worth considering why.
Stung by the criticism and, doubtless, bowing to the political fashion for transparency, Bilderberg – which is chaired by Henri de Castries, the chairman of Axa – now publishes a list of participants. This year's guest list of 140 includes the EU's President Barroso, U.K. chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, Bilderberg stalwart Henry Kissinger, Mario Monti, former U.S. treasury secretary Robert Rubin, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall and a pantheon of bosses from industry, energy and finance. A new development is the admission of a few journalists, notably John Micklethwait, editor of The Economist.
Bilderberg came into being in the 1950s, as Cold War fears began to grip public opinion. The founders were concerned that Europe and America needed to work closer together to deal with the emerging crisis, and the agenda of the first conference, held at the eponymous hotel in the Netherlands, was short: communism and the Soviet Union topped the list followed by the economy, European integration and defence. Today, it's much longer, covering a vast range of subjects from unemployment to "big data," U.S. foreign policy, Africa, medicine and the Middle East. The last topic, and one suspects it was chosen almost in panic, is "current affairs."
There lies the problem: events. The rationale of Bilderberg is that great European men, the accent being mostly on the male, can change the world for better (or worse). This represents a rather antique view of how history is made, one I remember from school where we were taught about great meetings, the Congress of Vienna, conferences at Versailles and Yalta which changed the world. At university, I was told that economic forces and class conflict determined the course of history and, later, interesting notions about how climate and the environment could topple regimes and civilisations. But in the 21st century, global leaders have become pawns, enslaved to random public opinion, riots and the mayhem caused by financial traders.
Transparency has exposed how truly unimpressive Bilderberg people are. Consider the most profound political and economic events of the past decade: the rise of China and the financial crash in 2008. The conference agendas during the decade of the noughties contain a couple of mentions of China as a serious issue, mainly in terms of trade, but only in 2011 did they choose to focus on the country as posing a major challenge to the West. As the financial bubble expanded in 2007, Bilderberg's eye was elsewhere; the agenda contained just one item concerning private equity and hedge funds.
Of course, few spotted the Chinese and banking elephants in the room, but that is the point: these leaders are not meeting to plot and conspire. They have no more insight than the commentators on CNN. The organisation says that its purpose is to discuss "megatrends and the major issues facing the world." In fact, its purpose is to allow a group of worried and anxious people to fret about the news in private.
Carl Mortished is a contributor to ROB Insight, the business commentary service available to Globe Unlimited subscribers. Click here for more of his Insights.
Carl Mortished