From tomorrow, Watford’s finest hotel and spa will host the secretive Bilderberg conference where power brokers may include Cameron, Kissinger and even Obama. Joy Lo Dico gets a room
No minutes, no press conferences - just the world's power brokers
chewing the fat on the issues of the day. It's the Bilderberg conference
- and it's coming to a suburb near you
From tomorrow, Watford’s finest hotel and spa will host the secretive
Bilderberg conference where power brokers may include Cameron,
Kissinger and even Obama. Joy Lo Dico gets a room
As the last few diners pay the bill in a sleepy Carluccio’s in
Watford, the waiter serving me an espresso also serves the hottest piece
of town gossip for centuries. “I’ve heard President Obama is coming
too,” he says. “How do you know?” I ask. He winds me back, through what
the wife of the friend of the brother of someone told him, to the source
— a member of staff at The Grove.
Hold on? Obama at The Grove, the luxury hotel that usually hosts the England football team before games at Wembley? In Watford?
Tomorrow,
the country house style retreat and spa that soothes the brows of Hugh
Grant and the Beckhams will host this year’s Bilderberg Group
conference, in which the world’s power brokers meet under Chatham House
rules to kick around the talking points of the day. According to the
Bilderberg website, it is “an annual conference designed to foster
dialogue between Europe and North America”, with “off-the-record
discussions about mega-trends” and the major issues facing the world. If
you choose to believe the conspiracy theorists, Bilderberg is running a
shadow world government away from the eyes of the media.
This
year’s official participant list, released by Bilderberg in a new spirit
of openness, must have been put together by a Machiavellian genius to
confound the agitators. They will have expected Chancellor George
Osborne, puppeteer of the British economy, but what has his Labour
counterpart Ed Balls done accepting the invitation? Prince of Darkness
Peter Mandelson is a shoo-in but cuddly liberal Shirley Williams too?
Eric Schmidt, CEO of the all-seeing Google, clinking glasses on the
terrace with internet freedom fighter Lawrence Lessig? And why Watford?
The
secrecy of Bilderberg is also the fascination. Founded in 1954, it
takes its name from its first venue, the Hotel de Bilderberg in
Oosterbeek in the Netherlands. No minutes are taken nor press
conferences held but world leaders from Tony Blair and Bill Clinton to
Angela Merkel have all rubbed shoulders with business leaders and
academics in this private sphere.
Officially there this weekend
are the cream of the Eurocracy — Jose Barroso, president of the European
Commission, former Italian prime minister Mario Monti and present Dutch
prime minister Mark Rutte — as well as the bosses of BP, Goldman Sachs
and defence firms EADS and BAE Systems and of course the regular Henry
Kissinger.
Those are the public names. You could take a punt that
Mark Carney, the new governor of the Bank of England might also appear,
perhaps even former French president Nicolas Sarkozy who has been
padding around London this week. Boris Johnson is conveniently on
holiday but Prime Minister David Cameron inconveniently not and, with so
many bigshots in Watford, can he afford not to drop in?
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Loblaw chair Galen Weston is among those invited to this year's exclusive Bilderberg conference in Hertfordshire, England.
