by Charlie Edwards | Mar 31, 2009 | London Summit, UK
While Alex blogs live from inside I will be doing my best to follow events outside – via Twitter, Flickr and SMS. But is it safe to go outside?
The ‘experts’ expect anarchy on the streets of London and even the possibility of a terrorist attack. For example:
Michael Clarke, the head of London’s Royal United Services Institute think-tank, said small terrorist groups may use the cover of planned protests by environmentalists, anti-war protesters and labor unions to mount an attack.
“The protests will cause uncertainty and chaos, and if they turn violent could complicate the lives of those police and security service staff who are looking for terrorists,” said Clarke, who sits on British government’s National Security Forum, an advisory panel of security experts.
So to be clear. Terrorists may use the cover of legitimate protests to stage an attack while the protests themselves are going to cause uncertainty and chaos. As Professor Clarke sits on the National Security Forum I wonder if he and the forum have been briefed by the intelligence agencies – or is this a personal opinion?
If ‘chaos’ is going to happen and there is the potential for a terrorist attack why hasn’t the Security Service (MI5) raised the threat level to CRITICAL – meaning an attack is expected imminently. From what I can gather the Security Service is trying to play down such a threat – concious that legitimate protest is important in this country but keeping a watching brief as events unfold. As has been proven in the past millions of people can walk the streets of London without causing large scale rioting. My concern is that talk of anarchy and rioting by securocrats, ‘experts’, and the Met Police turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The aim of Government and the Met Police must surely be to reduce the potential for rioting and attempt to diffuse an already volatile situation – rather than fuelling speculation in the media on what nightmare scenario might happen. This could have been done through dialogue (better briefing on what is going on (Operation Glencoe)) while reiterating key messages about their role to police a largely peaceful protest, rather than the drip drip of banal information by mid level police officers which sub-editors happily snap up. Hardly the most constructive, mature and sensible way to police an event.
Hundreds of hours have been spent designing the route and security requirements for the demonstrations tomorrow but there will always be the potential for smashed windows and cuts and bruises – the important thing is to limit those opportunities – to take the sting out of the tail. Designated routes have been identified and signposted and security folk at banks and major buildings in the city will also have been planning for months: Executive boards will have been briefed on what to expect. The last thing politicians, protesters and the public need are police officers, and experts speculating on the potential for massive violence.
Of course there will be idiots who want to be violent – and the security services and the Met Police will have been collaborating with national police forces to ensure those violent protesters are identified and their conversations and plans monitored. But more work should have been done trying to diffuse the situation.
In the next couple of days the key will be to nip the potential for violence in the bud – allowing the demonstrations to continue but diffusing the protesters energy so that it doesn’t spill over into other parts of the crowd. The Met Police, experts and the mainstream media could have approached the security of the G20 in a more mature fashion – at least it would have meant we could focus on the meat of the G20 discussions rather than the armour protecting them.
Update: Editors and sub-editors are at it already. From the New Zealand Herald: Fear terrorists will use G20 protests
by Alex Evans | Mar 31, 2009 | London Summit
With a summit close at hand, one thing we can be sure of is that pointless ‘initiatives’ can’t be far behind. The criteria for such ‘announceables’ are simple: they must grab headlines and create the impression that something is happening, while avoiding any domestic implementation commitments or – horror! – funding obligations.
So while you’re getting ready to play G20 bingo (SDR issue? tick! tax haven rules? tick!), it’s also a good moment to launch the hunt for the pointless initiative of the week. One strong candidate has already emerged: DFID has proposed
a new ‘Global Poverty Alert’ system that would link international organisations, aid agencies and research groups into a single network that would provide instant updates on the impact of the economic crisis on the poor. This would include ‘real-time’ updates using text messaging and emails. The proposal will be put forward at next month’s G20 meeting in London.
Excellent work! Really visionary stuff. Now, how might it work? Hm. Well, what if we designed something that allowed lots of users to join, and post updates on poverty? We could let them post links to stuff on the web, too. And to keep it punchy and accessible, we could limit posts to 140 characters or less. I … um … oh.
Er… perhaps if we built a… large wooden badger?
by Alex Evans | Mar 31, 2009 | Global system, London Summit
Evening Standard, this afternoon:
France today laughed off a claim that Nicolas Sarkozy had threatened to “walk out” of the G20 summit. They said a report that the French President could “wreck” the event as “unfounded, and like some kind of April Fool’s joke”.
The copy of Le Figaro that I found outside my hotel room this morning:
«Rien ne serait pire qu’un G20 a minima. Je préfère le clash au consensus mou … Si ça n’avance pas à Londres, ce sera la chaise vide ! Je me lèverai et je partirai»
Now I admit my French may only by GCSE standard (and pretty rusty at that) – but I’m fairly confident that this translates more or less as follows:
Nothing would be worse than a minimal G20. I prefer the clash to the soft consensus. If things don’t move forward in London, it will be the empty chair! I’ll get up and I’ll leave.
by Alex Evans | Mar 31, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Global system, London Summit
Two days to go, and it’s probably time to start thinking through what to expect from the London Summit. (If you haven’t already seen it, check out our special page on the Summit – I’ll be there as one of the G20 Voice bloggers, so we’ll have updates throughout the day from the scene of the action).
By and large, expectations seem to be being managed downwards by the commentariat as well as in off the record briefings from officials. That’s what you’d expect at this stage, as then even modest progress looks like a triumph (in much the same way that Labour Party officials always brief journalists to expect an apocalyptic showdown with the unions in the days running up to the Party Conference every September). As the Wall Street Journal puts it,
It was supposed to be the inauguration of a Global New Deal, in the hopes of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a comprehensive policy response to the world economic crisis, a root-and-branch effort to reorder the way capitalism itself works. But by the time the much-heralded Group of 20 meeting of heads of government ends Thursday, it may be difficult to spot a new world order. It is already clear that the summit will mostly fall short of Mr. Brown’s original lofty goals.
Interestingly, though, one relatively upbeat note comes from Alastair Newton, who’s just published a Nomura briefing note on the summit – and who can claim rather more expertise on summits than most banker, having been head of G8 policy at 10 Downing Street from 1998 to 2000. Newton’s bottom line: while he doesn’t expect a ‘miracle cure’ turnaround in markets or the real economy, it’s nonetheless
“just possible that we may look back on the 2 April 2009 G20 Summit in due course and see it as ‘the end of the beginning’ of the current crisis.”
(more…)
by Alex Evans | Mar 29, 2009 | London Summit
Dani Rodrik has found the following quote from HG Wells, writing in 1933. From the text, you might wonder whether Wells’ writing on time machines was altogether fictitious – actually, he’s writing about the other London Summit: the one held 75 years ago. Deja vu? Mmm hmm…
[For] some months at least before and after his election as American President and the holding of the London Conference there was again a whispering hope in the world that a real “Man” had arisen, who would see simply and clearly, who would speak plainly to all mankind and liberate the world from the dire obsessions and ineptitudes under which it suffered and to which it seemed magically enslaved. …
Everywhere as the Conference drew near men were enquiring about this possible new leader for them. “Is this at last the Messiah we seek, or shall we look for another?” Every bookshop in Europe proffered his newly published book of utterances, Looking Forward, to gauge what manner of mind they had to deal with. It proved rather disconcerting reading for their anxious minds. Plainly the man was firm, honest and amiable, as the frontispiece portrait with its clear frank eyes and large resolute face showed, but the text of the book was a politician’s text, saturated indeed with good will, seasoned with much vague modernity, but vague and wanting in intellectual grip. “He’s good,” they said, “but is this good enough?”
Read the whole post. H/t Duncan Green.
