SMUGGEST SHOW ON EARTH
It’s the annual jamboree in a five-star Swiss resort for attention-seeking celebs, billionaires and the world’s political elite. ROBERT HARDMAN goes to Davos – and finds it’s as if Trump and Brexit never happened
They’re taking down their knickers on the swankiest street in the Swiss ski resort of Davos — as the real global elite get into the party spirit. Usually, the Blue Lemon boutique sells exotic lingerie here on the Promenade. But today, staff are removing all the underwear from the windows and shelves as workmen transform the shop in to a funky pop-up lounge bar-cum-nightclub.
It has been rented for the week by Californian software billionaire Marc Benioff, boss of Salesforce, as a place to entertain fellow tycoons. Last year’s guest list for his hawaiian-themed party here included U2 singer Bono, rapper Will.i.am and multi-billionaire Google boss eric Schmidt. Just over the road, Facebook has gone one further. Instead of renting a party house, the company has built one from scratch at vast expense, a huge two-storey chill-out pad where boss Sheryl Sandberg can hold court for a few days, after which the whole thing will be demolished.
Across town, a temporary heliport is being constructed so that celebs and VVIPs can get straight into town from wherever they parked their private jets in time to deliver their important speeches on climate change and carbon emissions.
Meanwhile, an entire side of a mountain will be sealed off to become the ultimate chillaxing zone. As of next week, only those with a conference badge will be allowed aboard the rinerhorn cable car which will carry them up to a converted mountain restaurant for four-hour courses on subjects such as ‘ Nurturing wisdom and wellness — discover how to personalise your lifestyle’.
Back in town, rather disconcertingly, one enterprising Kazakh oligarch has paid to have the entire local bus network repainted with the message: ‘Welcome to Kazakhstan’.
But we could only be in one place on earth — Davos. There is surely no other event quite as smug and otherworldly as the World economic Forum (WeF), a four- day, £22,000-a-head gathering of 3,000 political, corporate and academic grandees — which kicks off on Monday night.
The theme of this year’s session is ‘responsive and responsible leadership’, or as a cynic might put it: ‘rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.’
The world may have changed. Its political tectonic plates may have shifted inexorably. But you wouldn’t think so up here.
Brexit? Trump? Fear not, the old status quo will feel entirely safe and sound at an event attended by assorted heads of state, 25 prime ministers (including our own), oligarchs, bankers, a whole trolley of european Union big cheeses, industrialists, ‘thinkers’, housetrained media and, of course, celebrities (latest recruit: Jamie Oliver).
Once inside the perimeter, guarded by 4,500 Swiss troops, the uber-elite will then proceed to put the world to rights, as they have been doing for nearly half a century.
Just one problem, though: the world no longer seems to be listening.
Insulated in a bubble of five- star luxury, the invited guests will spend the day ruminating pointlessly on lofty themes like ‘Beyond The Possible’ and ‘Leadership In The Age Of Political risk’. By night, they will dine and party. Once these tended to be black tie affairs in hotel ballrooms, though the dawn of the brash internet billionaire has shaken things up a bit.
Two doors down from the Facebook house, the software giant Palentir has built a party venue with a replica front section of a private jet plonked in the middle of the room. That should help nudge the conversation along: ‘ hey, mine’s a bit like that . . .’
Back in 2004, American political scientist Samuel huntington coined the phrase ‘ Davos man’ (it’s still mainly men) to describe the new masters of globalisation. he defined them as a breed who ‘ view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations’.
Other commentators talk about the ‘Davos class’, a club whose official motto is ‘ Committed to improving the state of the world’. But while they are united in their clear sense of superiority, its members do tend to be very wrong indeed.
Despite all the collective economic brainpower and brilliance on show at the 2007 World economic Forum, almost no one (with one or two exceptions) saw the financial crash coming. The next year, the same crew resumed the party without a scintilla of shame.
After a year like 2016 — an absolute shocker for Davos Man and the Davos Class — you might imagine that a period of quiet reflection might be in order. remember last year’s summit? It was dedicated to the really Big Issue facing the world in 2016 — ‘Mastering the Fourth Industrial revolution’.
Oops. That went well. As harvard’s Professor Kenneth rogoff, former Chief economist of the IMF, joked this week: ‘ The conventional wisdom of Davos is always wrong.’
But don’t expect to hear a batsqueak of contrition next week. A few wise old birds, noting the general anti-establishment mood across the Western world, have decided to stay away. German chancellor, Angela Merkel, once a Davos fixture, is not appearing.
Theresa May is making her debut with a flying visit to deliver a speech on post-Brexit Britain, but she is unlikely to hang around. Davos Woman she is not.
When you read through the 147-page event programme, you start to realise this is now merely the world’s grandest echo chamber. No wonder they never saw the big stuff coming.
Much of the four-day programme, for example, promises erudite analysis of Britain’s Brexit vote. But I can’t spot a single Brexiteer on the programme. There doesn’t seem to be anyone who might, at least, offer a few home truths — however uncomfortable — to challenge the consensus that the Brexit vote was all a ghastly mistake by the sort of thick, misguided people one comes to Davos to avoid.
The main discussion of the subject, ‘Britain and the eU’, will take place next Friday morning, but the panel consists entirely of remain supporters, led by the Chancellor, Philip hammond. A separate event will be addressed by Mark Carney, the pro-remain governor of the Bank of england.
If I had stumped up the £22,000 entry fee which every corporate ‘ partner’ must pay to attend, I would probably want to hear a range of opinions, even if I didn’t agree with them. I would want to hear someone from the winning side of one of the biggest political upheavals of recent times.
But there will be no dissenting voices. Pro-Leave minister Liam Fox had been earmarked for an event earlier in the week, but has now fallen off the running order. Boris Johnson will be elsewhere. No invitation was
Matt Damon and Amal Clooney are on the guest list
ever extended to either Michael Gove or Nigel Farage. A WEF spokesman says there is ‘ no comment’ on invitations.
‘I would happily go to Davos and give them a speech which might upset their dinner,’ says Mr Farage. ‘But they never asked. The Davos set and the global liberal elite prefer to put their fingers in their ears and sing loudly.’
Ditto the big symposium entitled: ‘Which Europe Now?’ Given that the panel for that consists of the presi-dent of the European Parliament, the vice-president of the European Commission and the prime minister of Holland, I think we probably know which Europe that might be — the same one we’ve already got.
Not that everyone wants to hear speeches, anyway. Many of the uberclass in Davos do not come here for grandiose chin-scratching. Some don’t even bother with the forum at all. They just rent chalets around town and enjoy an unrivalled opportunity to network away from prying eyes and pesky protest groups.
There is certainly no other network quite like it. Next week’s guest list ranges from President Xi of China and the King of Jordan to the bosses of all the world’s biggest banks. Then there are rising stars, or ‘Young Global Leaders’ as they are called (‘young’ is defined as under 40). These include a nephew of former U.S. President George W. Bush ... and Amal Clooney.
And just in case anyone might imagine this is all just an evil exercise in rampant capitalism, the big names of the charity sector have been invited for free, too — Greenpeace, Oxfam and so on — plus a selection of faith leaders ( including the Archbishop of Canterbury). Every day kicks off with a 15-minute meditation led by a Buddhist monk. And you can even join in the simulation of ‘a day in the life of a refugee’ at the Hilton Garden Hotel ( reduced to a convenient 75-minute session).
Some people will happily sit for hours earnestly chewing over topics like ‘ Alternate Futures’ or — my favourite — ‘ Ending Corruption’. Others just want to luxuriate in the knowledge that they are sitting where power lies.
Except that power doesn’t necessarily lie here any more. Out-going U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, plus failed Democrat presidential candidate-turned- climate warrior Al Gore, are on their way, of course.
Al Gore is as much a part of the Davos landscape as snow and cheese fondue. If you miss his speech on ‘Business Leadership On Climate Change’, there is another one a few hours later on ‘Beyond The Anthro-poscene’ [our current geological age] and then another on ‘A New Chapter For Climate Action’.
But on Friday, a new U.S. President will be sworn in — and Donald Trump is the antithesis of ‘Davos Man’.
Announcing this year’s line-up last week, the forum’s executive chair-man, Klaus Schwab, a German-born economist, made much of this year’s trophy guest, President Xi of China, who will drop in during his state visit to Switzerland. Mr Schwab, 78, also looked forward to the appearances of Messrs Kerry and Biden.
But Mr Trump? He merely stated that there would be ‘someone from the transition team representing the new administration’. That ‘someone’, hedge funder and Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci, will have just a half-hour slot next Tuesday lunch-time when he will not be the main attraction. The big show, in the next-door conference room, will be Hollywood superstar Matt Damon talking about his water charity.
If Hillary Clinton was being inau-gurated as U.S. president next week, Davos would be near-empty because so many would be in Wash-ington. But come the day of Donald Trump’s swearing-in, all the Davos class are invited to a special three-hour session at the top of the Rinerhorn cable car to learn about ‘peak performance’ from Formula One racing drivers Mika Häkkinen and Nico Rosberg.
This vast, elitist circus started back in 1971 when Herr Schwab decided to organise a gathering of senior European businessmen in a ski resort, away from the big city lights, with European Commission support. It gradually became a global gathering and then he started inviting politicians, too, with impressive results.
During the Nineties, Davos brought together South Africa’s President F W de Klerk and Nelson Mandela. Yasser Arafat’s PLO sat down with the Israelis here.
For politicians like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, Davos was a wonderful chance for back-slapping and halo-polishing. But reading Mr Schwab’s introduction to this year’s event, you get the inescapable sense of a movement whose time has been and gone.
It is full of flabby platitudes, and concludes with a collector’s item of corporate drivel: ‘The uniqueness of the Forum’s collaborative multi-stakeholder efforts consists in integrating multiple initiatives into a systems-level approach — always with the mission to improve the state of the world.’
It’s the preaching and the piety which grate, the sense that these are the people who really know how to run the world, if only the stupid world would realise what was good for it.
‘I think the world would proba-bly be a better place without Davos,’ says Professor Philip Booth of St Mary’s University, Twickenham, and the Institute of Economic Affairs. ‘It encourages politicians and businessmen to look upwards towards elites for answers, and not downwards.’
Former Downing Street insider Steve Hilton goes further. He believes that forum-goers should be named and shamed.
‘These people have been losing moral authority for years, but 2016 made it clear they’re losing their power, too,’ says David Cameron’s former director of strategy, whose abiding memory of Davos is being threatened with arrest for walking on an empty road rather than an icy pavement. ‘We’ve now passed “peak arrogance” and let’s hope it’s downhill all the way’.
This week, the award-winning new musical La La Land is offering a wry take on life in Los Angeles. Perhaps it’s time for Da Da Land, a jolly poke at the Alp-sized egos of the Davos class.
Then again, maybe not. Because no one would believe what actually goes on here.
It’s full of flabby platitudes, piety and preaching