As the uber-secretive Bilderberg group meets in Spain this weekend, lets cast our mind back 33 years to when they met in the fading surroundings of Torquay’s Imperial Hotel and messrs Hattersley, Thatcher, Healey, Schmit etc met over cocktails to shoot the establishment breeze.
Then, in 1977 it felt like the “fag end” of a political era. Labservatives had been failing to get to grips with the country’s ills since the war. Strikes, three day weeks…we all know the script. The ill fated Lib-Lab pact had just been announced to an underwhelmed electorate, keeping Labour in power until collapsing in 1979, ushering in Thatcher and her shock therapy for the economy. Whilst there was much to oppose, by the time the Tories left office it was unquestionable that there was a new political settlement established.
Now, we stand on the threshold of a new era with the very real prospect that the next political settlement can be Liberal Democrat inspired – every bit as permanent as Thatcher’s, but with a heart, a soul and the drumbeat of fairness at its core. Lets focus on lasting change – that’s what makes 99% of Lib Dems get up in the morning.
The tail (us) has got to wag the (Tory) dog. We must make sure that day by day, hour by hour, we extract our concessions. There is no let up in the fight for fairness. This is true in as true in Westminster as it is in town halls up and down the land.
We ‘re not passing the odd law here and there. We’re all about building a consensus that will last – fundamental reform that makes it into the history eg deliver fair votes changes the rules of the political game – for good. Let’s shoot for the moon in terms of what we are aiming for– we’ll find we get the next 5 years thrown in for free.
Be proud of our record – we’re going to need it. Labour is very ill right now but whoever emerges– be it a grinning Milliband or Balls – is going to come after us. We’d better be ready. We need to make sure we put our key reforms beyond the reach of an incoming Labour administration so they can’t turn the clock back to 2010.
Become experts in collaboration – with a steely focus on the ends we want (fairness, our political reform agenda, rebuilding society, liberty) but agnostic about the means. This drives us into different partnerships – with Labour in some town halls, Tories in Westminster, maybe the Nationalists in Scotland – because the outcomes we want are worth fighting for.
I didn’t get a gilded invite to the Bilderberg gathering. Instead I’ll pop into the Imperial this weekend and have a beer on the terrace and imagine those heady times 33 years ago. But rather than toast Thatcher, Healey, Hattersley and the other Bilderbergers, I’ll be toasting the ghosts of Liberal’s past – Grimond, Gladstone, Thomas Paine – you’ve passed the torch to us alive and well and now we are in a position to make an indelible mark on this country in the name of fairness and freedom.
Hamish Renton is a new Liberal Democrat member from Torbay.
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“The tail (us) has got to wag the (Tory) dog. We must make sure that day by day, hour by hour, we extract our concessions. There is no let up in the fight for fairness.”
This will either be the testament or the gravestone-epitaph on this coalition from the Lib Dem perspective. Or rather it will be that which the voters ascribe it.
Whatever the results of this coalition- and whether much or any of it ends up being ‘grounded in (genuine) fairness’- I presume that the majority of LD members and those on places like this will define the whole enterprise as a massive success. That is partisan politics and Lib Dems are as lacking in immunity from that as any other party organisation. But the voters are a much harder bunch to convince. Whether they (currently) work in the public sector or the private sector not; whether their school is underperforming and they think this government will solve that by administrative changes but no extra money or the health service treatment that they feel is not attuned to their personal-individual demands is all going to change in the next months and years. Will the gap between the asset-rich and the asset-poor or the lowest income decile and the upper income decile have narrowed by 2015? The Labour Party knows only too well- in the globalised neoliberal economy- just how difficult these types of inequalities are to tackle.
I sincerely hope you are not emasculated within this coalition though the early signs are not that promising (an honest perception though some will say ‘predictable’ no doubt). By that I mean in actual policy outturns- not the press releases and policy waffle that precedes implementation and often bears little relation to what actually gets done on-the-ground (remember TB was good at that and saying what was going to be achieved in a great fanfare: Nick and Dave appear to have a similar dubious skill….in spades).
Any policies that are genuinely about fairness and do get to the point of implementation unscathed and undiluted will have the wholehearted backing of the new labour leadership and the parliamentary party. That which does not- such as the type that will be argued for by the majority of the parliamentary Conservative Party and its media commentators- will be roundly condemned.
YES: Labour WILL “go after” unfair, regressive and anti-state-for-the-ideological-sake-of-it dogma. Whether it is introduced and championed by a Lib Dem minister or not.
PS if you want some early evidence of conservative media commentators views on having thier tail wagged by the Lib Dems tomorrows Fraser Nelson spiel is worth a paste-in:
“WHAT is Vince Cable up to? The ballroom dancing, book- flogging, Tory-loathing Lib Dem is on manoeuvres.
Last week, Saint Vince made an audacious power grab, declaring he is running a “department for economic affairs”. He isn’t. But he’d like to. And his game seems to be pushing his luck with a kind of soft, low-level warfare against the coalition. Cam and Nick Clegg may be still enjoying some kind of love-in at 10 Downing Street. But it’s not contagious. The Lib Dem left think it’s dangerous — and doomed. And St Vince wants to be seen as unofficial leader of the anti-Tory resistance. He did not want this coalition. He tried everything to stop it, calling Gordon Brown in a desperate bid to do a Lib-Lab deal. Plenty of Lib Dems agree.
But what can they do if their leader, Clegg, is wandering around like a triumphant teenager who just scored the 31st notch on his bedpost?
The answer: Rally behind St Vince. Aged 67 and a former Chief Economist at Shell, he resents being bossed about by the 39-year-old George Osborne. Now that David Laws is gone, he sees himself as the new Alpha Male of the Lib Dems (not, I admit, a hotly-contested category). Osborne, who yesterday triumphed at the G20 summit by winning blessing for his cuts, isn’t rising to the bait. When Cable tried to make out HE is in charge of regulating the banks, Osborne quietly ignored him. Then Vince tried again last week, saying his business department somehow shared economic responsibility with the Treasury. “Two departments working in parallel,” he claimed.
In his dreams. His non-job is to run the pretty pointless Dept for Business, Innovation & Skills. Until recently, Vince himself argued the department was so useless it could be abolished and no one would notice. Hard for him, now, to make it a power base. But he can use his Cabinet perch to argue for harder taxes, and softer cuts.
Neither Clegg nor Cameron quite trust Cable. That is why, for all his popularity, he remains caged in an obscure department. It hasn’t taken him long to start rattling this cage. He might do so again when the cuts are announced in next month’s emergency budget. The question is: how many Lib Dems will join him? “The Lib Dems are far more divided than we are,” a Tory Cabinet member tells me. “They always split over coalition.”
This is what many Tories hope. That the Lib Dems will split — so the Tories gobble up the right-wing Lib Dem MPs.
The title of Cable’s latest book — his memoir — is Free Radical. That’s how he sees himself. Not as a bloke taking orders from a Tory. I reckon that he’s writing an updated version inside his head. One with an explosive ending. If he does try to split the Lib Dems, he will make history. By playing straight into the Tories’ hands.
Nooooo, you mentioned the Bilderberg Group! You do realise that the nutters will crawl out of the woodwork, and put Lib Dem Voice somewhere between the Elders of Zion and Lehman Brothers on their big conspiracy chart?
Foregone Conclusion:
Here we go. Anyone who says anything vaguely critical about the Bilderberg Group (indeed, who even mentions that it exists) is anti-Semitic. Rather an odd inference to draw, considering that the Bilderberg Group’s chairman from 1954-1976 was the former SS officer, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.
Are you “Rob Sheffield” in disguise, by any chance?
BTW, the Imperial Hotel, Torquay, was also the scene of the 1985 SDP Conference.
Perhaps you misunderstand me. I don’t believe that criticism of the Bilderberg is itself anti-semitic. I do, however, think that 99% of it is completely nutty, based on nothing but wild innuendo and speculation. That’s why I put in in the same bracket as the other huge massive conspiracy theories, like the Federal-Reserve-is-the-tool-of-the-devil people in America, the Masons-rule-everything conspirators, and the Jews-control-world-finance-and-politics theories. Some are more malignant than others, each is, to my mind, equally ridiculous. If ‘influential people’ want to feel self-important and chit-chat about Important Topics, then good for them. The idea that this has more than a minimal effect on what actually happens in the world, however, seems very unlikely to me.
For the record, I am completely unrelated to the Bilderberg Group and hold no brief for them. I’m a humble rank-and-file member of the party, I generally use this tag on the Internet, and I’m certainly not Rob Sheffield. I also apologise to the author of this article for my original comment, which may very quickly drag this entirely off topic.
@ROB SHEFFIELD
Why should anyone here take Fraser Nelson, the Barclay brothers’ little attack puppy seriously? So they are spitting rivets that the electors forgot to choose an ideologically pure right wing government, why do we care? This Telegraph/Spectator characterisation of Vince Cable as a left-winger is amusing given that the Guardian has taken to calling him a “neo-liberal democrat”. So, just talking heads, mouthing inanities. Like anyone cares. 5 years of government, that really will p.ss them off – and I;m glad.
Foregone Conclusion:
So you think it is perfectly OK for politicians to hold secret international summits whose agendas and communiques are never published? On what basis do you consider it unlikely that the discussions at Bilderberg meetings have no more than a minimal effect on what actually happens in the world? Is this not an example of the kind of speculation you excoriate? If the meetings have no purpose, why hold them? And why hold them in secret?
Your tactic, it seems to me, is to highlight the most outlandish claims made about world politics and associate them with serious inquiries into political and economic power structures. We are all familiar with it.
The author of this thread is very brave to mention the Bilderberg Group, given the likelihood that he will be smeared as anti-Semitic and denounced as a lunatic, by neocons and lazy thinkers alike. I congratulate him.
Labour trolls may be surprised to discover where I first learned about the Bilderberg Group. It was in a publicaton called “Clause 4 Journal”, an occasional newsletter sympathetic to what was then known as the Tribune Group. The article (and it was the lead story) was accompanied by a picture of Dr Henry Kissinger (focus of numerous conspiracy theories, some of them well-founded).
Who are the “devil people in America”? Have you just made this one up?
“So you think it is perfectly OK for politicians to hold secret international summits whose agendas and communiques are never published?”
As far as I know, there are no communiques, and only some sort of informal agenda. The value of the Bilderberg group, it seems, is by building informal contacts between various individuals in the public eye. Now you may regard this as somewhat corrupt – I personally see it as an inevitable and necessary part of international relations – but I see no evidence whatsoever for the grander claims made about the group, that they collectively decide policy or manipulate existing institutions. The countless disagreements between various members of the group demonstrates this – Enoch Powell, Denis Healey and Paddy Ashdown all went to these meetings at one time or another, and yet we are expected to believe that they all share some sort of grand collective aim, despite their very different opinions on internal and external politics.
As regards the conspiracy theories surrounding the Federal Reserve, there are a number: you only need to search “Federal Reserve conspiracy” to find that out.
Foregone Conclusion,
Surely politicians should be debating their differences in public, not at secret conferences?
I am shocked, shocked that politicians don’t tell us about every single conversation they have with other politicians.
I never understood the fascination.
A rich gentleman’s club. Yawn.
Let’s all freak out about what all the tories are plotting in White’s! Or are they in Boodle’s?
The tinfoil hat nonsense has to stop.
Ryan M,
So you, and your fellow necon trolls, are COMMANDING us to stop talking about the Bilderberg Group, or be deluged with playground ridicule?
An odd way to respond to people calling for more openness in international relations.
Edward,
Bilderberg meetings are INTERNATIONAL SUMMITS, as you well know.
Ah, I guess if Neville Chamberlain had met Hitler in secret, away from the prying eyes of people in tinfoil hats, history would have turned out differently.
I’m with Forgotten Conclusion we all need time to have private chats with other people to formulate what we are going to say to most people. These people think without telling anybody what is on there mind. Grow up! Either that or we better bring in thought crime.
Gosh! The Necon trolls of the world have been busy Googling this morning!
Sesenco
No, Sesenco, what people are doing is ridiculing you. (Whether the level of ridicule in your playground ever reached such heights I don’t know – perhaps there were a lot of Private Eye readers where you went to school, in which case I envy you.) No one is commanding (or should I say COMMANDING, as if that makes it more scary and sinister) anyone to stop talking about anything. Nor is anyone obliged to listen to silly conspiracy theories just because their adherents accuse anyone who mocks their silliness of being part of the great conspiracy themselves.
[Was that all right, Masters? Have I pleased you now?]
Malcolm Todd,
So I take it you are in favour of international summits being held in secret?
Oh, and has no-one ever told you that ridicule can be used as a weapon to silence people?
But I don’t think it will work in this case, because there are people out there who are wondering, as I am, why international summits have to be held in secret, and are not satisfied with the spin we are getting from the neocon trolls.
Now, please do us the courtesy of explaining why international summits should be held in secret and why people who question this are worthy of ridicule.
Or is that too much to ask?
(Of course, if someone would explain how to do bold and Italics on this site you would be deprived of your cheap shot about all caps.)
Ryan M,
It’s the Carlton Club where senior Tories meet, but I don’t suppose familiarity with the layout of W1 goes very far in Hickville, USA.
“your fellow necon trolls…”
I’ve already told you, I’m not a neoconservative, or any kind of conservative (I was against our action against Iraq, very unhappy with Israel’s actions at the moment). Nor am I a member of the Labour fraternity, as you implied above. I am a member of the Lib Dems, and I occasionally comment here and elsewhere (just do a quick Google search if you doubt my word), almost never on foreign policy either. But perhaps I’m under deep, deep cover, ya know, so deep that I don’t know I’m a neocon troll myself. The CIA can do wonderful things with mind-bending drugs, I hear.
P.S. You can do italics by putting something like this
And bold like this
Just delete the spaces.
Sorry, make that this, and this, deleting the dashes.
One last try: italics
Sesenco —
For italics put “” before the word(s) you want in italics, and put “” at the end.
For bold, do the same with “b” instead of “i” both times.
For grip on reality, keep taking the tablets.
You can make anything sound terribly sinister if you want – “ridicule is a weapon to silence people”, is it? And yet, how strangely unsilenced you are. Of course, argument, logic, and evidence are all weapons used to silence people as well – and equally ineffective in the face of blind faith. The ridiculousness of describing the Bilderberg group as an international summit or conspiracy has been well explained by my fellow Neocon troll Foregone Conclusion above, so there’s no reason to think that you’d pay any more attention to any argument of mine than you have to his/hers.
Wow, totally weird, this site really won’t let anyone explain how to do bold and italics in plain prose, will it?
Italics: [angle-bracket]i[close-angle-bracket]words in italics[angle-bracket]/i[close-angle-bracket]
“angle-brackets” are the things you’ll see in the “HTML” instructions underneath the comment box around “b”, “cite”, “code”, etc. Should be SHIFT+, and SHIFT+. on your keyboard.
If this doesn’t work, I give up trying and submit to the dark forces.
Foregone Conclusion,
There are people, mostly in the USA, who trawl the internet on a daily basis looking for comments that are unhelpful to US foreign policy interests, and who use a combination of ridicule, guilt by association and misinformation to influence public opinion. I think I am entitled to call these people neocon trolls. Look at some of the names and ask how many of them have posted on Lib Dem Voice before. You may not be one of them, but you have thus far in this thread posted a total of three comments that have the characteristics I describe.
Now let’s look at the Bilderberg Group:
(1) It is a shadowy group that holds annual international summits, in secret, and involving not just elected politicians, but business and military leaders. What is the justification for the secrecy?
(2) It is not in dispute that the original motivation behind the founding of the Bilderberg Group was to increase the influence of the United States in Europe. That might have been understandable while the Soviet Union existed. What is its justification today?
(4) Why are Japan, China, India, Brazil and Australia excluded from Bilderberg meetings, even though they are major economic powers?
The issue is about democracy and accountability. Do you or do you not believe in them?
Malcolm Todd,
“argument, logic, and evidence are all weapons used to silence people as well”
Good. Let’s have some, shall we?
“The ridiculousness of describing the Bilderberg group as an international summit or conspiracy”
Please be so kind as to point to where it is that I described the Bilderberg Group as a “conspiracy”.
Oh, and while you are at it, you might like to tell us what is ridiculous about calling a meeting taking place in a hotel in Sitges involving international politicians, business and military leaders an international summit. If it looks like an elephant…
We’ve dived off topic a bit, but hey lets run with it.
I’m not “anti” the Bildersberg grouping per se – freedom of association and all that. In principle, getting influential people together to talk about some of the world’s problems feels like a good thing. {If the existing set of multilateral institutions don’t give them that forum}. So, being charitable, it feels like a slightly odd networking forum for the American-European senior movers and shakers….
Yet, if these guys are a force for good in some way, it looks on the face of it a funny way to go about it. I hope I’ve not been watching to much of the X Files, but it sees a “”little”” iffy in for some of the world’s most influential people to meet with no formal agendas, minutes, invites or records of what went on. We’re used to transparency in our politics and usually where there isn’t transparency there are unanswered questions, which if left to fester, all sorts of things spring up in the vacuum.
Plus what is Peter Mandelson up to ? Will we get an account of this in his £1m memoirs – or will amnesia strike on his jaunt to the Iberian peninsular….
PS Blink and you missed my italics.
Dear me, how times change.
sensco. its spelyt neo-con.
shirley williams is attending the bilderberg meeting
David Thorpe,
Perhaps we can have a report of the event in the UK press. Or is that too much to hope for?