This is the first of a coming series of Risk School articles (restarting the series after about seven years).

In the early 2010s, I used to teach a course on EU Lobbying. There were always blank stares when I told my students that I could be homeless in Brussels, but if I had a good suit, I could get myself into policy events and eat well three times a day. One of my assignments was to send my students out into the Brussels Bubble to network at a chosen event. As well as writing a report on the event’s objectives, they had to meet certain criteria that included: entering for free, with a lunch included and networking to get at least three calling cards. Bonus points if they could drink a glass of champagne.

Those days are a distant memory.

Lobbying has changed significantly over the last two decades. Some would say the COVID lockdowns put an end to the daily conference menus. As online tools developed, it did not make sense to fly into a town like Brussels for eight hours of PowerPoint clicking. Costs and budgets were reorganised toward other means of making an impact.

There are fewer large conferences, public meetings and interesting and engaging events. Now we have more roundtables, closed meetings (upon invitation) and online webinars. And even when there are larger gatherings, people are exchanging glances from their phones rather than exchanging ideas and business cards. I am quite surprised now when someone presents me with their card.

Perhaps this evolution is for the better. That networking is more efficient online where I can find the people I need to meet or try to influence. I “meet” the people I need to know on LinkedIn. I can get the information I need from webinars and the podcasts I follow.

But this approach barely broadens open dialogue. With narrowing networks and restrictive algorithms comes a narrowing of minds (and mindsets). Lobbying has many objectives, but sadly, informing and brainstorming are no longer central to the process.

An NG-Ordering of Issues Under Management

Activist NGOs see policy as the implementation of their ideology and the policy process as a means to push through as much as possible. As ideologues, NGOs, particularly in the environmental-health domain, are not interested in consulting others who think differently or represent groups that may challenge their thinking. They organize events where only likeminded activists are allowed in the room (I have often been excluded, sometimes at the door) and rather than engaging and consulting with others to broaden their perspectives, these meetings have morphed into strategy sessions to see how to push their ideology as far as possible.

For activist players, policy issue management has become a matter of how to win rather than how to reach an agreement. A compromise is a temporary setback.

Policy is no longer about finding compromises that all parties can live with. The stakeholder dialogue process was killed when activist groups campaigned to isolate industry. The WHO is implementing a clear strategy of denormalising and excluding all industry engagement, isolating key health stakeholders from the dialogue process. So policymaking is becoming a game of tennis played with shackles, blindfolds and handcuffs.

In such a distorted dystopian policy arena, the best a regulator can offer is precaution, to play a pass card to move the policy process along, kicking the can down a seemingly endless road. The NGOs have built the precautionary principle into the rules of the game, leaving no other option for environmental-health policy success. And once goods, services, technologies and lifestyles are suspended with the incantation of precaution, then the NGOs play their card: someone whispers the word: “transition” and activists begin to implement their dogmatic ideology.

• It is widely argued that CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is the leading cause of climate change so we must take precaution and phase out all oil and gas. As most economies depend on these resources, we have to start the transition process to … renewables.
• We do not know the real effects of pesticides in the food chain so we must ban their use and begin a major food system transition towards … agroecology.
• As we are detecting trace elements of chemicals and plastics in humans, and we do not know the true influence on humanity and our ecosystems, we must ban all use and transition to … natural alternatives.

It does not matter that the activist solutions are inadequate and often worse for human health and the environment. The present situation is unacceptable, they tell us, and once precaution stops any further development, transition is the only solution. There is no going back.

This precaution – transition strategy is made easier if the traditional lobbying/dialogue/information sharing process is neutered. Without open engagement of stakeholders, poor solutions can be proposed to insignificant problems, and the handcuffed regulator can only pretend their decisions are for the better. They feign virtue and pretend it is progress as social goods and well-being dissipate at the hands of ignorant, elitist zealots.

Long-term Consequences

Lobbying done via social media rather than social engagement has had regrettable consequences on the policy process. What follows is a series of observations of how the evolution (mostly in the five years following the COVID outbreak) has affected the policy process.

Focus on Large Mediatic Global Events

Most policy discussions are carried out in the media (from social to mainstream media), where messages can be better controlled and strategically directed. There have been a large proliferation of international meetings on almost any subject (often hosted by UN agencies or the globalist groups they use to carry out their ambitions). The final reports are often drafted months before the conferences happen and are so vague as to mean nothing. In October to November 2024, there were three high-level UN conferences in six weeks (on biodiversity, climate and plastics) and none of them produced anything significant.

The main talking heads fly in to these usually remote locations to speak, but not to listen, keeping ideas general and devoid of specifics – sanitised stories for an audience paid to be in the room. These events have no space for the philosopher by the coffee machine that I used to seek out. A main consequence here is there is no room for radical ideas – only a generic consensus that is drawn up before the discussion is allowed to take place.

The public sees the sanitised nature of their leadership, and tolerates the virtue signalling and ineffectiveness only so long as the economy thrives and their living standards are met. If they perceive a deterioration, as they have over the last few years with food and energy inflation, then they will turn to radical alternatives – but by this time, only the populists survived.

Lack of Cross-Fertilisation of Expertise

A large number of events I have attended in the last year have been where I have either been invited or had to register my profile and await confirmation from the organisers. While it is quite pleasant to be in a room where people think like me, I can’t say it is cerebrally challenging. Not only do I miss poking the bear, I also regret not engaging or consulting with outside experts. We are more and more siloed, channelled into intellectual comfort zones and excluded from others whom the algorithms, organisers or consensus-makers deem untrustworthy or “unclean”.

Innovative ideas need to cross-fertilise with other ways of thinking, other backgrounds and other perspectives, and without the traditional lobbying process, they become sterile. I shudder at the thought of how AI will further diminish creative or disruptive thinking.

Perhaps a herd of sheep is what we deserve, but who are the shepherds?

No more White Papers or Genuine Impact Assessments

Climate change is perhaps the best example of how the shift in the lobbying process has affected the policy process.

• Large foundation investments in funding, training and controlling the media in their reporting of climate change issues (every fire or flood is now couched as “human-derived climate disasters”). Groups like Covering Climate Now or the Solutions Journalism Network make no secret that their objective is to control the narrative and ensure that all news is reported within the context of the climate emergency.
• American foundations, mostly from tech billionaires, give the European Climate Foundation €275 million a year to buy off every single NGO and a score of news outlets to push policymakers down their net-zero by 2050 rabbit hole, and leaders have no choice but to comply.
• Someone says agroecology is the best way to fight climate change, the media amplify it, billionaires then give the Agroecology Fund $100 million a year (up from a budget of one million a year in 2022) and suddenly a failed, politicised agriculture ideology similar to Steiner’s biodynamism is taken, with little reflection, as the solution.

Transition time.

With a large media, influencer and funding bias, there is no means to open up a legitimate dialogue on the best measures to address the changing climate. Marching orders (and funding) are given from  an anonymous, non-transparent foundation, broken down into a series of fiscal sponsors. Davos Man then arrives on the scene, says what the people behind the curtain expect him to say, doesn’t ask questions or listen to others.

Solutions become Politically, not Competence Driven

Whenever I hear the term “transition” today, I  cringe. Transitions (for energy, food, transportation, economy…) is a political ambition, to force change on societies based on some ideology and within some timeframe. While it is presented as a gradual evolution, these environmental transitions are seen as urgent with artificially imposed but desperately pressing timelines. 2020 used to be an urgent deadline (until it passed), then 2030, and now 2050… It also implies an unstoppable abandonment of the present practices (even if the transition is proving to be difficult and costly).

An energy mix for example is a complicated combination dependent on the region, available resources, best production returns, economic demands and industrial use. The mixes have developed over the last century by competent engineers and experts. So demanding a transition away from fossil fuels and nuclear to renewables like solar or wind in dark countries like Belgium or Germany is pure politics and is having a profound impact on their economies and consumer comfort. Building wind power in areas with abundant hydroelectricity opportunities (like Ontario or Quebec in Canada) does not recognise the competence and capacity for energy that the local resources provide.

Of course what the activists really want is a transition away from the capitalist system (via systematic degrowth policies), not to some workers’ paradise (that ideology failed), but to some environmental nirvana. A twist on the term “Champagne Socialism” given how the environmentalist elite don’t drink.

Think Tanks Lacking Leadership and Initiative

I will never forget when I had organised a conference for the European Policy Centre in 2005 and a speaker was ambling about, unproductive and uninsightful. EPC founder, Stanley Crossick, was literally pushing into my ribs trying to have me get up and get the speaker off the stage and stop wasting everyone’s time. Stanley, an important mentor in my formation, was a legend of the Brussels think-tank scene in the 1990s, a time when the European Union was emerging into a political force. When Crossick spoke, EU Commissioners took notes. Every conversation, every meeting had to be effective and challenging, and he had little patience for waffle and wordplay.

Today, the think tank scene seems to be almost only about waffle and wordplay. I don’t see leadership or initiative coming from think tanks, especially in Brussels, where organisations are more concerned about funding and networks than ideas and brainstorming. They are no longer testing grounds for policy development, but rather places where old ideas go to be endlessly repeated. With no charismatic leaders, think tanks are, sadly, where policy graduates and interns learn how to follow.

Who are the heads of these think tanks? Are they challenging policymakers and holding them to task? Hardly. The best example is when the European Commission bullied the EPC, a supposedly independent, member-funded organisation, to eject Tobacco Europe’s membership in the think tank, or risk not being able to engage with Commission officials. The last Brussels bastion of free thought sheepishly complied (and no one even took notice – only my news organisation, The Firebreak, reported it). Stanley must be turning in his grave.

As the NCD activists in the WHO advance their strategy of tobacconising all “health-harming industries” (which includes food, drinks, alcohol, pharma, chemicals and fossil fuel industries). As the EU will sheepishly sign their Commercial Determinants of Health strategy at the WHO’s autumn plenary (since there will be no dialogue), that means the EPC will be forced to kick out practically all of their corporate members. Wither dialogue.

But now that the lobbying arena has become smaller, few will notice that industry stakeholders will no longer be in the room.

Fear of Offending is a Weakness in Leadership

Long-time General Electric CEO, Jack Welch, was the epitome of leadership in the 1990s. Not afraid to take risks, stand up to defend his people and businesses and take responsibility for non-performance. Leaders spoke for their organisation, on the business and were relentless opportunists. Now we seem to have bookkeepers and administrators in charge of companies, speaking on virtue and societal concerns rather than business or trade. Success is measured by not making mistakes or having something go wrong. Outside of the tech world which still sees growth and risk-taking as a virtue, it is difficult to name more than a handful of corporate leaders.

During the last Davos World Economic Forum conference, Donald Trump attacked Bank of America for, allegedly, debanking conservatives from his MAGA movement. Its CEO, Brian Moynihan, on the panel with Trump, sheepishly replied that he looked forward to sponsoring the World Cup in the US. Two weeks later, that little virtue worm was awarded a massive pay increase. Davos itself has become the representation of a sad corporate climate of followship and passive submission to a social justice clique.

As an aside, there is no integrity among this pack of Davos thieves. They would speak from the heart on ESG policies and Net Zero by 2050 (cue the European Climate Foundation), telling industry they would have to “degrow” to meet these noble targets, until people like BlackRock’s Larry Fink discovered how much money could be made selling funds developing fossil-fuel-based powerhouses for AI data centres. Soon all Davos asset managers left their global associations to chase these new pieces of silver. I am sure the 2026 World Economic Forum will come up with some new business virtue for these leaders to proselytise upon.

The greater the action, the stronger the reaction. Polarisation of politics has seen the pendulum swing between an excessive emphasis on inclusivity over merit on the left and an outright racism on the right. As a white aging male, I am portrayed in public debates as either a patriarchal oppressor from the colonial capitalist system or a victim of the woke DEI social justice machine. I grew up in a time when neither hat was forced upon me – we were just told to work hard and try to achieve something.

Professionalization of Policy Management

20 years ago, most of the regulators at director level were coming from professional fields (industry, finance, trade, transportation…) who had a full career working every day with experts, engineers, professionals… if there were a problem, they were trained to solve it (and the sooner, the better…) and move on. Success was measured by what they could achieve – how they solved problems.

In the early 2000s, there was an explosion of university programmes releasing graduates in so-called fields like policy studies, administration, leadership… These people went straight into government as policy professionals but with no experience other than what their academic professors read to them from a textbook somebody else wrote. Now these “functionaries” are at the director level. They are not problem solvers, but rather problem managers. They would see a problem and set up a committee. Success is measured by how they can avoid problems affecting their ability to be promoted in the next cycle.

These professional problem managers have been trained to make problems go away (either by redirecting them, blaming others or spreading the responsibility). They do not consider success as anything positive they could contribute to the process but rather that nothing negative happens on their watch (ie, any problems were deflected away).

Enter the Populist

The establishment that had attempted to lead by virtue rather than competence has failed. COVID showed how incompetent they were as risk managers. They had inherited a global peace dividend following the end of the Cold War and had squandered the dividends from it on ideological cult totems. They did not provide services to the majority of their population, did not show courage in their decisions and did not engage with all stakeholders on an equal and fair manner.

In countries from Argentina to the United States to New Zealand to Italy, right-wing populists and libertarians have taken over and are busily erasing all traces of their ineffective totems. But is a radical despot better than moralising waif? Somewhere between these polar extremes should lead to good governance but that pendulum is swinging too hard.

To do that, we need to move back to the traditional lobbying practices that engage all stakeholders, allow open exchanges of information, dialogue and compromise. We need think tanks with the courage to challenge ideas, leaders willing to take risks and regulators who are not problem managers but rather problem solvers who understand they are there to serve their publics.

We no longer have the lobbying structures to enable such a healthy policy environment. In a way I am relieved to be getting too old to deal with that mess. We’ll just let AI determine a dry consensus and make us all the same.

Farewell lobbying. There were some good years.

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