First, we have the Politburo, the working name for the United Nations Commission which will supervise the magic bullet. I propose Mr. Blair for chairman and Mr. Brown for general secretary: keeping the two of them in harness will ensure a proper degree of dialectic at meetings of the commission, will stop things from getting too cosy. Accommodation could be provided in a stately home - perhaps the French could be persuaded to vacate the palace at Versailles. I think Tony would like that. Then, given that they will be participating in the end games in various troubled parts of the world, they will need protection. Incoming chairmen will be allowed to choose whether they would like the black leather and plastic favoured by own SAS or the pageantry of yesteryear favoured by the French Republican Guard.
Second, we need to think about the procedures governing the granting of membership to the proposed gilded cage and the terms to be offered.
On the first point, we only want to let in the truly needy, There will be people out there, for example nerdy mathematicians who might think that being shut up in a gilded cage with a good supply of pencils and paper would be fine. They need to be excluded somehow. Then there are the miscellaneous middle sized criminals from troubled parts who want a bolt hole on the cheap; too mean to go through regular channels. Buying false passports, touch of plastic surgery, shipping money out to the British Virgin Islands, buying a suitable villa in some not too respectable part of the world. They also need to be excluded. And we are not running a care home for retired politicans from member countries of the OECD, however troubled they or their countries might be.
Members would normally be expected to make a substantial contribution to both administration and programme costs of the Politburo and to this end the Politburo would be empowered to take no-questions-asked transfers from dodgy banks in Switzerland, Liechtenstein or elsewhere. Bullion would also be acceptable, but not other commodities. We have considered the point that this is taking money out of the mouths of the starving millions in the trouble spot in question but have decided that they have to take a bit more pain: they let the candidate member take them over after all. They have to take their share of the blame.
But we will allow the Politburo discretion. They will process all applications, with one or more sifts if numbers warrant it. They will have to make do without assessment centres, which are unlikely to be practical in these particular circumstances, and make do with the sort of psychological profiling that can be done by email, or possibly online. Drones would be made available for on-the-spot inspection of the trouble spot in question and sundry more or less furtive communications agencies would provide translated transcripts of relevant traffic. Professor Google would provide additional background material; a modest contribution to public welfare, in lieu of tax.
Duly documented decisions of the Politburo would be sent upstairs to the Secretary General for ratification and the expectation will be that ratification will usually be forthcoming, following informal soundings of the members (both permanent and rotational) of the Security Council. Probably best to avoid formal meetings of and votes in the Council, let alone the General Assembly. In the case that membership was granted, a crack team drawn from the Politburo Guard would be sent to fetch the candidate member. This would, inter alia, provide them with a break from their more ceremonial duties.
Having got this far, perhaps Sacha Baron Cohen should be invited to make it all into a film, a film by means of which the scheme can be aired to the discerning public.
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