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It’s showtime in the snow — but there’s serious purpose to Davos

Waiting game: Indian premier Narenda Modi posted this picture of himself in Davos on Instagram
Waiting game: Indian premier Narenda Modi posted this picture of himself in Davos on Instagram

It’s uphill work trying to make those ploughing through January in London feel empathy for us here on the annual liberal elite getaway amid the snowy peaks of Davos — but let me give it a go.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a heady mix of mega-names and the rest of us Davos proletarians, who have to conquer logistics such as scarce accommodation and blocked roads behind the entourages of world leaders and various celebrities.

An irate Guardian reader suggested this week that the best use of the event might be to make the erecting of the “big beautiful wall” of the high-security compound a permanent fixture, trapping the moving and shakers at altitude. If a global plan ever comes off, the cast to run it is here this week.

The citadel is fortified enough to ensure that anti-capitalist protesters remain miles away in Bern, the Swiss capital. But it also retains vestiges of its roots in the Seventies, a diligent Swiss town where the pensioner next door holds your snow boots while you fumble for keys to your over-priced chalet.

The meeting of the world economy’s superleague is the brainchild of a visionary globalist called Klaus Schwab in 1971, when the Cold War was in full frost. Schwab’s sharpest insight was that China and the Middle East would determine much of the planet’s peace and prosperity. He sought to keep channels open to the Soviet bloc — and built a gathering of the clans around the notion that open markets, open media and open societies, whatever their irritations, are better than the alternative.

Ritual envy and inverted snobbery aside, it’s hard to gainsay the appeal of the WEF to those who make the big decisions. Even Donald Trump, who stands for everything the event does not — closed minds, closed borders and economic nationalism — has opted to attend, as has Zimbabwe’s new leader, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

The most likely theory behind the US President’s volte-face is that the Great Disrupter was irked by China’s President Xi being hailed (curiously) as the advocate of free trade last year and cannot bear to be left off the list.

Trump also understands that much of the purpose of Davos lies in simply being there. An assembly of people who have many other things they could be getting on with — Angela Merkel, Theresa May, India’s Narendra Modi, Bill Gates, former Google chief Eric Schmidt, US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin — battle through the snow to make it.

An invitation to speak or even chair in the main hall is the passport to where the real business is done, in huddles amid back corridors of the congress hall in a venue that, for all the glitz, resembles a municipal sports centre.

Since my first visit seven years ago the glam dinners in Alpine settings that look like the Grand Budapest Hotel have mushroomed — so much so that dinner-gazumping is both a social crime and a badge of prestige. When, on the first night, logistics failed me and I spend the evening with a Dr Oetker pizza, watching Swiss TV, three texts pinged in to ask, “Have you got a better dinner?”

The WEF is a kind of tantalising feast, in which the feeling, whichever party or meeting you are in, is that someone is doing something more important, pleasurable or just with better wine.

Stardust counts too — one of the crafty moves of the WEF (only outsiders or first-timers mistake calling the event by the same name as the town) has been to attract big names from pop culture. This year it is Elton John for his work on HIV prevention, Stella McCartney on ethical fashion and Cate Blanchett on refugees. Last year, we shared the funicular late at night with a cheery Matt Damon, promoting clean water for developing countries.

The eye-rolling bit of me can see that this is a golden chance for fashionable figures to court seriousness and newsworthiness. It is also a powerful marketing opportunity for companies, who can show off their network to clients.

True, this spectacle appeals to shadow chancellor John McDonnell on his first outing but I don’t blame him for coming. For all its self-regard and the ironies of world savers checked into five-star hotels, “making the world a better place” is the WEF’s slogan — and that’s not such a stupid thing to strive for.

At the very least, if bosses behave poorly to minorities, harass women or get caught with their fingers in the till, then offer rousing speeches, we can point out the contradiction.

Besides Trump, who will most likely address his base over the heads of a tutting crowd of Never-Trumpers, other eminent Davosians are under pressure this year. Major tech companies used to hold court like grand panjandrums.

Lo, the wheel of fortune turns, even for the super-rich. These days, Facebook’s serene holiness, Sheryl Sandberg, and the Google-ocracy hold events that are more akin to think–tank occasions than raves, as the impact of fake news feeds and the destruction of information-based media models comes under scrutiny at last.

So whatever the vanities of the occasion, the WEF channels a desire to outdo others for bling and influence into a forum where people compete over their good works, which is better than the alternative, and its earnestness nudges the wealthy to show an interest in the plight of those left behind. Does it wash away the venal side of business and coat power politics and the pursuit of wealth in a convenient layer of snow-white Swiss morality? You bet.

Like most revered liberal institutions, Schwab’s heirs might think of adding more challenge to the “Wonderful Us” projection of good works and salved consciences, if only to sharpen arguments and create a bit more edge to its message of social and economic liberalism as the key to prosperity and international order. But the challenge for sceptics is to say what would be better if the WEF did not exist. True to the vision of its originator in a world facing different challenges five decades ago, I’m not sure anything would.

Anne McElvoy is senior editor at The Economist