For years he has derided the annual gathering at Davos as a smug and conspiratorial meeting of enemies of the nation state. But this week, Nigel Farage will himself be rubbing shoulders with the “globalists” he has so reviled.
Farage’s itinerary at the Swiss ski resort remains unclear, although his Reform UK deputy, Richard Tice, said on Sunday he hoped Farage would get a chance to speak to Donald Trump, who is also attending the event run by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
In many ways it makes sense for a politician whose party is tipped to form the next UK government to go to Davos, given the wealth of networking opportunities at an event frequented by world leaders – Rachel Reeves among them this year – bankers, financiers and others.
Tice told the BBC that the intention was for Farage, who presents Trump as being his friend, to use the event as a chance to tell the president about his worries over the US threatening tariffs against the UK and other European nations as part of efforts to annex Greenland.
“Let’s hope they have an opportunity to have some words; both will have very busy schedules for sure, but in a sense that’s where real friendship can come in, to say: ‘Look, we understand what you’re trying to achieve; this is the wrong way to go about it,’” Tice said.
It is nonetheless an unlikely stage for Farage, who has across his career singled out the WEF and its glitzy annual gala as epitomising what he sees as the elite capture of politics by a class intent on obliterating nation states in the name of “globalism”.
Farage’s rhetoric on such subjects has in the past prompted criticism from groups including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who said his discussion of supposed plots by bankers to create a global government at times veered into territory associated with antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Farage rejects any such intent, but has even very recently been scathing about Davos attenders. In 2023 he called Keir Starmer a “full-on globalist, hanging out with his mates at the WEF”.
Three years earlier in a video about Davos, Farage described it as a place where decisions are made that “bow down to the European Union”, calling the attenders “people deciding our futures in Swiss ski resorts”.
“All the arguments for globalism have been there at Davos for the last 50 years or more,” he said, adding that there was “no space for the little man, no space for the nation state”.
There is an exception to Farage’s ire about Davos attenders: the US president. “Trump superb at Davos. If only we had a leader that could inspire confidence,” he wrote in 2018, during Trump’s first term, after the president addressed the WEF with a speech packed with braggadocio and media-bashing.
Only one other attender has seemingly brought praise from the Reform leader for attending Davos, based on a January 2012 tweet: “Congratulations to Prince Andrew for his comments at the reception he hosted in Davos. Supporting Britain!”
