Davos and the demise of the global politician

I have a confession to make. I once attended Davos. I was only obeying orders but, I suppose, no experience is wasted. 

There’s little new to add to its lofty sense of superiority, sealed within a security-ringed village, high on a mountain. Its attendees veer between considered casualness and the wide-eyed wonder of a Victorian urchin, fed on a charitable whim in the kitchens of a grand hotel.

On that subject, I was billeted at the Schatzalp, a former sanatorium immortalised in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and boasting a belle époque restaurant. To reach it, you took a funicular. To leave it, well, let’s leave that just for a moment. 

Being, as it was, snowbound, delegates were obliged to stomp from one venue to the next doing that New York thing of sloughing puffer jackets, bobble hats and so on to reveal suits and passes.  

Divesting themselves for public scrutiny were, among others, Gordon Brown and François Fillon, respective PMs of Britain and France at the time. Not that the scrutiny was intense. As they’re wont to chant at football matches for a favoured son, “He’s one of our own, he’s one of our own..”

The financial crisis was imminent, though neither knew, and it went on to put one amidships both for Gordon Brown and the Davos class. “Why did no-one see it coming?” as the Queen asked. 

Fillon, meanwhile, went down with the Sarkozy government and then scuppered his own lifeboat in a corruption scandal known as “Penelopegate“. Down he went along with the French centre-right. Born near Le Mans, his race was run. 

It hardly needs pointing out that such are the prophets whose mountain we ascended in search of tablets of wisdom. 

And yet back they still come, hoping for that Davos-branded executive bag to casually sling on the desk back at Global Management Consultant HQ or Megabank Incorporated. 

This year, the theme is restoring trust. I can only refer you to the above to see why this is both literally and figuratively an uphill task. And since then, of course, we’ve had Eurocrises, Brexit, pandemics, immigration crises, energy shocks, inflation and wars current and, mayhap, imminent. 

The global übermensch have not turned in a convincing performance. 

Though he’s had the good sense to swerve a quick flight out to Zürich and the tricky limo ride up the hill to enlightenment, one always feels that Rishi Sunak belongs among them. Global, business school, a meritocrat in the literal sense and a man who renders politics less a matter of passion and conviction than an exercise in management.   

Now they’re coming for him. The electorate, his own party, posterity, God help us, the man brought down by Keir Starmer. “Savaged”, to quote another politician, “by a dead sheep”.

Like Brown and Fillon before him, Merkel and Macron, they seem set up to prove the adage that all political careers must end in failure. And the truth is he was set up to be so. 

Elected by nobody, Sunak seems to embody that worst reason for arriving in office. Not being the other fella. The blight that has long infected French politics whereby people vote against and not for in such a way that conviction, passion and obvious cause are muted and the dead hand of centrist managerialism is all that’s left, while reform never carries a mandate. 

We can see the upshot worldwide. We don’t like mad Donald, we get gerontocrat Biden, you will get mad Donald. We don’t like Hollande, we get arrogant Macron and for which you will now almost certainly get Le Pen. A constant overcorrection.

Meanwhile, for those below the cloud base, far from the belle époque restaurants, the private meetings and cloud nine, the world doubles, doubles, toils and troubles.   

So how do you get down from the Schatzalp? It has its own toboggan run and, so the local story goes, it was used to discreetly move the bodies of those for whom the Magic Mountain had proved less than magic.

I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere. I wonder if Gordon and François ever tried it. I’m sure Rishi will. Incurable, you see?

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