Inside the world of Davos where elites quaff champagne and leaders gossip
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What’s happening here, then?
The world’s elite is gathering at Davos in Switzerland this week to clink champagne glasses at the annual World Economic Forum meeting.
This event has long been catnip to conspiracy theorists, who believe it’s an opportunity for billionaires and malevolent government figures to plot the subjugation of populations.
But this time around, the headlines around Davos are quite seriously contemplating the start of a new world order – one in which the old rules-based system no longer applies, thanks to the brazen actions of leaders like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
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Sounds serious. What are we doing about it?
At time of writing, there were no plans for Sir Keir Starmer to jump on a plane to Zurich and deliver a spine-chilling speech about this new epoch, like Canadian PM Mark Carney and French President Emmanual Macron did yesterday.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, Business Secretary Peter Kyle and National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell have all gone along, but the most senior UK political figure in Switzerland is Rachel Reeves.
From what we’ve seen so far, it seems like the Chancellor is treating this year’s Davos meeting much like she would any other, with chat about big deals.
A press release from the Treasury that landed in my inbox this morning touted private investments of £1 billion from pension fund M&G and £500 million from biopharmaceutical firm UCB.
Instead, the hardest talk we got came from Starmer at PMQs this afternoon, where he told MPs he ‘will not yield’ to pressure from President Trump on Greenland – it may not have been Carney’s ‘rupture’ speech, but in the room it felt like a significant moment in the UK-US relationship.
Mind if we go back to Davos?
Not at all. The World Economic Forum has met annually in the little Alpine town since it was founded in 1971.
Over the past 50 years, it’s developed a reputation as a place where the wealthy share trays of canapes with the powerful and influential, then trade ideas for how they can stay wealthy, powerful and influential.
As a result, it’s also attracted protesters who want to get their message right to the heart of the action.
What kind of thing do they get up to?
Yesterday, I spoke to one of them – a man who wanted me to call him Jason.
His group – named Everyone Hates Elon – unfurled a 400 square metre banner on a field directly below the flightpath taken by helicopters on their way to Davos.
Featuring pictures of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, the banner read: ‘Hey Davos billionaires: shut up and pay your tax.’
Jason told me: ‘We wanted them to realise that they’re going to be kind of quaffing champagne and spending a few days talking about solutions, when the real solution is staring them in the face.
‘If they actually just go up and pay their tax, then, you know, that is the solution.
‘That’s how we counter poverty around the world. That’s how we solve some of our biggest challenges. That’s how we tackle climate change.’
The group has also ‘hacked’ a bus stop ad in the town to read ‘Know your parasites: ticks, worms, billionaires’.
That one, of course, is more for the locals rather than the private jet class.
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