So. This is power. I’m
attending a conference organised by ...I can’t say... in ...I can’t say... to
discuss the cultural, political and economic future of mid-revolutionary Middle
Eastern states. I’m travelling with the rulers of the world, Sirs and
Baronesses, trustees, consultants, thinktankers, lobbyists, doers of good
works, vested interests, diplomats, patrons and all that secret population of
people who realise that fame and power are not the same thing, shun the former,
shore up the latter and occasionally parcel it out to carefully chosen allies. These
people are a breed apart. They’re not good looking. They’re not well dressed.
They’re not witty. They’re not even that interesting. But they’re super crunchy
hardcore power players, world-rulers and society-changers and no mistake. They
are vigorously of-this-earth. They talk politics, economics and brute facts.
They’re weird, but I like them, and since I’m doing a lot of this kind of stuff
– it’s called cultural diplomacy, which always sounds faintly sinister – I’ll
have to get up to speed, fast.
These are the
people who, at school, were on every committee, put themselves forward to be
the captain or prefect of everything and did it really well, got all A*s at
GCSE without trying, involved themselves in every campaign, rose in their
universities’ student unions and have been involved in politicking and
improving the world (or bending it to their advantage), in some way, all their
lives. They wield incredible influence, but downplay themselves. After a while
I stop asking anyone what they do, especially after a slippery, handsome Hugh
Grantish chap blibbers to me, “I’m hopeless really, don’t listen to a word I
say, I have no culture at all. Everything I say is rubbish. I’ve only just
taught myself how to use the Internet.” I later find out he’s written countless
highly regarded books about international affairs, is a much-garlanded academic
and been involved at the sharp end of US politics for fifteen years. I’ve
learned that when someone tells me their Arabic is “absolutely terrible”, it
means they’ve got a PhD in it, and that if they say they know the Arab world “a
little bit” it means they’ve spent the last 30 years being posted everywhere
from Libya to Iran to Yemen and have at least 20 half-brown children helping to
populate the Arab League.
“What are the
Chatham House Rules?” I ask a passing Peer. “Is it that you can only tell a
secret to one person at a time?”
“When a discussion
takes place,” she tells me, “you can’t report the person who said it. You can
report what was discussed, but do not attribute it to anyone, because it’s
politically dicey and it might go against the official line. At this stage we’re
just trying out different ideas.”
I meet a posh chap from one of a youth
advocacy group. He looks very clean. I ask him what his group is all about.
“It’s quite odd, it
was set up by the Foreign Office originally, but now it’s more youth-led. It
sent a delegation to the World Youth Forum in 1948. Trustees must be under
twenty-six but the average age for the British Youth Parliament is teens.”
“That’s
disgustingly wholesome,” I tell him.
There are nearly a hundred speakers
at the event.
“Are we really
making a difference or just pissing in the wind?” I ask another nearby chap.
“I think, the
latter,” he carefully replies, “I think it’s something They’re doing to say
They’ve done it.”
“Do you think,
afterwards, the information travels upwards to the ones who make the
decisions?”
He doesn’t know.
I overhear two
people complaining that thinktanks “bend with the wind” and “throw out bits of
research and hope it goes along with the flavour of the times.” I still can’t
work out what most of the politicos, consultants, trustees and thinktankers actually
do in their daily lives and nobody I ask directly will give me a straight
answer.
“Who’s here?” I ask
someone, looking around at everyone talking in English, Arabic and French. The
very big wigs all know each other, obviously.
“The great and the
good,” he replies.
“And the low and
the bad?” I ask.
This is what Barack Obama does all
day long: summit meetings all over the world, all day, every day, talking and
talking, without a break, and for real, not pretend.
“Have you been on
many Unmentionable Events before?” a woman asks me.
“No, when I wrote
fiction I went on lots of cultural things, tours. And I have a lot of contacts
within Unmentionable. But I’m so political, I prefer this.”
“By political, are
you affiliated with any particular group?” she asks warily.
“No, no. Small p
political. Whenever I’ve met a party politician or process politician I’ve been
chilled by them regardless of where they are on the political spectrum,” I say.
“I completely agree
with you. I’m in the [REDACTED] but as a [REDACTED].”
“It’s that steely
ambition politicians have,” I say, “and whenever you talk to them you can sense
them wanting to know what you want. But you might not want anything. You might
just want to make friends.”
“I’m with you,”
says my new friend. “They judge you according to their own standards.”
So, what is the
idle chatter of the great and the good? I eavesdrop. They’re talking about the
weather, the mansion tax and a US political sex scandal involving the FBI.
“There have been
some quite serious communication failures, I think, at the BBC,” says someone.
Then there’s some amazing insider gossip
which goes like this:
“So... what’s
happening with Russia?”
“It’s
extraordinary! They’ve suddenly decided they love us.”
“David Miliband
really fell out badly with [REDACTED].”
“I’m sorry, I have
to say [REDACTED] really didn’t deserve those threats from NATO.”
“Well, I’ve had
lots of very uncomfortable conversations with [REDACTED] that the Foreign
Office...”
They move on and I then hear someone
boasting loudly,
“It’s so funny –
I’m reading two books, neither of which have been published yet. Talk about
being ahead of the game!”
“Do you read
Prospect mag?” someone asks her.
“Yes I do. Yup.”
The man she’s talking to seems to be
some kind of expert on China. He complains,
“The thing that
really pisses me off is that most people or many people these days think they
have a book about China in them and most of it is extraordinarily naive. Part
of the problem is the sheer level of ignorance about China. There are some
Chinese academics willing to talk about matters as they really are... illegal
appropriation of land from peasants... the level of corruption....”
“Do you know
Bigwig? Peter Bigwig?” the woman interrupts. “He was chair of Bigballs Willey,
now Vice Chair of Important Big-Big...”
The man goes on,
“I just went out to
[REDACTED], worked with [REDACTED] for five years, went over to the [REDACTED]
in Beijing. I speak Mandarin. Books on China are so superficial.”
“I tend to
concentrate on US foreign policy towards the East, the Middle East, towards
China. I was coming back this Sunday and they asked me to go to the Gulf States
and then to go to Saudi. I don’t like to do that, two trips in six weeks,” says
the woman.
“I’m actually
going. I’m going. I’m flying directly from [REDACTED] on Sunday to [REDACTED],”
says the man.
“What I like to do
is the big powers, because if anything happened to them...”
“Traditionally,
people in my position, they want to be everywhere, visit all the Unmentionables...”
“Yes – also – and
I, I read a lot so I find it much more useful to read books instead of sitting
in airports, travelling, meeting people.”
The woman behind me on the plane is
reading the FT. Actually reading it.
In the airport we
arrive at is an advert showing a boy tugging at his father’s trouser leg,
looking up at him accusingly. The strapline goes,
“What would you
tell your child if they asked you why you never invested in Eastern Poland?”
The conversation around me is about
a very famous politician.
“He has quite a lot
of dinners around security and defence issues. I’m frequently the only woman in
the room, so I make up the gender allowance. He’s having an event on Syria and
I definitely want to go to that. He denied it but I heard him say the
[REDACTED] Trust is going to keep him on for another few years.” The
conversation goes out of focus and then sharpens again. “House of Lords, House
of Commons Committee... and they did an enquiry into expenses.... absolutely
shocking stuff. There was a link from the web site to his consultancy! I tell
you, the politics of it got absolutely filthy.”
“There is an
adviser to the government here,” someone tells me.
“Is he a
nondescript man, in a grey raincoat, called Mr X?” I ask him.
“No. We have a
name,” he says, sinisterly.
“There was supposed
to be a women’s panel but it was dropped because of ‘cultural sensitivities’,
apparently,” someone else tells me.
“What, the [REDACTED]
couldn’t stand women daring to talk amongst themselves?” I ask.
I can’t get anyone to verify whether the
detail about the women’s panel is true or not. What I can confirm is that at
the conference is one table of extremely surly Middle Eastern men with closed,
thick, dissatisfied faces, who speak to no-one but each other and visibly look furious
whenever any woman speaks about anything and any man speaks about ‘progress’,
‘pluralism’, ‘diversity’, ‘equality’ or anything of that nature.
The few instances of outright
misogyny I hear come – saddeningly – from women. At some point I’m talking to a
nice man and it occurs to me that I wrote an article about the organisation he
works for, after a staff member of his contacted me blowing the whistle on a
major conference they were organising about the economic future of Europe. They
had invited 12 men to speak at it, and 0 women. The man tells me defensively that
they did get a few women in the end, that “we were very happy with the panel
and how it went, and then there’s my wonderful colleague Fiona (not her real
name) who’s just enormously clever and [blah
blah blah].” This, verbatim, with no editorialisation, is the very first
thing Fiona says to me when I meet her at breakfast the next day:
“Oh, you work for
the BBC? I want to ask you something. I want to ask you: why is [revered woman
broadcaster] so fat? Why is she so fat? What is that about? She can barely
move. And who’s that other one, that woman from the charity? [Camila
Batmanghelidjh]. I know they’ve got their theory: they swan in like that and
everyone goes, Ooh, they’re here, but what is that about?” She then namedrops
several other people to try and scope me out. Then she drops the name of a
respected veteran female newspaper editor. “She’s a good girl.”
There are
individuals from all points on the political spectrum including those with
extremely right wing views who, for some reason, are always the liveliest,
wittiest company. Here we go:
“Have you read
Peter X’s book? Former editor in chief of [REDACTED]? His book’s out this week
and it is fantastic. It attacks that ultra-liberal idea of, hey, let’s have
open borders, everyone can come in, let’s all live together.” A sour pause. As
someone who works with asylum seekers and displaced people and knows both the
laws and the reality of these people’s lives – as well as the many pejorative
myths surrounding asylum - I’m almost coming out in hives. “I don’t know. Maybe
that’s your attitude,” the person goes on. “I’m worried about the students.
Students coming in – what is this ‘acquired right to remain’? My cousin did it.
Came here to do a PhD and never came back. Came here with a husband and baby.
Never went back. One of the things he does take on in this book is the asylum
and refugee system. And in certain circles you’re just not allowed to criticise
the asylum system, the court system. The first leakage happens through work;
the second leakage happens through family reunions.”
“It really bothers
me the way the Home Office leaks really bogus figures,” says a guy,
mysteriously.
