Good morning. Every year, politicians, corporate grandees, civil society figures and celebrities head to Davos for the annual summit of the World Economic Forum. As this year’s version – the first at full scale since the coronavirus pandemic - begins tonight, First Edition is going to make the wild assumption that you’re not one of them. (Apologies to Idris Elba.)
Over the next four days, attendees will put their heads together in public and private forums with no less a purpose than “solving the biggest issues facing our world”. But in an era of global polycrisis, many argue that Davos is no longer fit for purpose – and instead acts as a reminder of how ill-equipped capitalist orthodoxy is to figure out a better future. One measure of its waning influence: neither Rishi Sunak nor Jeremy Hunt will be attending this year. But there will be more than 100 billionaires.
Today’s newsletter – with the help of Larry Elliott, the Guardian’s economics editor and a sceptical veteran of around 30 previous summits – will tell you what you need to know about the world’s biggest talking shop. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
Protest | Police are to be given the power to shut down protests before any disruption begins under a new public order crackdown in England and Wales. Civil liberties campaigners have expressed outrage at a plan to counter “guerilla” tactics used by environmental protesters such as “slow marching”.
Nepal | At least 68 people were confirmed dead as hope faded for any survivors after a plane with 72 onboard crashed in Nepal, the Himalayan country’s deadliest aviation disaster in three decades.
Euston shooting | A man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a drive-by shooting outside a church on Saturday left a seven-year-old girl in a life-threatening condition. A 22-year-old man was arrested after a car was stopped in Barnet, shortly before 4pm on Sunday.
NHS | Keir Starmer has said Labour is prepared to reform the NHS to prevent it dying, as he said the current system of GP visits “isn’t working”. The Labour leader said his party was going to tackle “bureaucratic nonsense” in the NHS and argued for an increase in self-referral in some cases.
UK politics | A man in his 60s has been arrested on suspicion of a terror offence after traces of uranium were found at Heathrow airport at the end of December, Scotland Yard has said. Border Force officers found the radioactive material with a shipment of scrap metal, reportedly on a flight from Oman, on 29 December.
In depth: ‘There is an argument we’ve reached peak Davos’
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What is Davos?
It’s a Swiss ski resort town of 11,000 people. It’s also the shorthand for the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum (WEF): an assembly of (this year) 2,700 A-listers who come together – often by way of private jet – with the opaque goal of holding “constructive, forward-looking dialogues and [helping] find solutions through public-private cooperation”.
Another way to view it as the world’s grandest networking event. In 2012, French writers Emmanuel Carrère and Hélène Devynck described it (PDF) as “a place where there is an enormous concentration of very famous people, with very real power”, who navigate the event without the usual impenetrable entourage because of
the almost total absence of a general public, of gaping onlookers, of ordinary men and women. Apart from the local people, who almost all work for the Forum either as chauffeurs, waiters or police officers, the only people with whom you come into contact are also participants, so anyone you meet will, reliably, be one of us.
Larry Elliott – who has attended since the 90s – says that things are less free-flowing than they used to be. “When I first went, it really was completely unspun,” he said. “Now there are PRs all over the place. People have badges allowing them different levels of access.” (Larry gets into the conference centre, but not IGWEL meetings – or “Informal Gatherings of World Economic Leaders”.)
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What’s on the agenda this year?
In 2023, WEF says that it will focus on how “the current crises, as serious as they are, are manifestations of larger systemic deficiencies accrued over time”. With a nod to the impact of the war in Ukraine and the ongoing ripples from the coronavirus crisis, this year’s slogan is “cooperation in a fragmented world”.
If that sounds like a less confident assertion of global capitalism’s successes than you are used to, you’re onto something. Last year, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz wrote for the Guardian that at the slimmed-down 2022 event, “a forum traditionally committed to championing globalisation was primarily concerned with globalisation’s failures”.
“There is a particular Davos worldview: globalisation offers more solutions than problems, but it needs to be managed.” Larry said. “It is a more difficult environment for that now. Countries are more inward-looking, they’re shortening their supply chains, they’re making sure they’re not so vulnerable to global events. There is an argument that we’ve had peak globalisation, and we’ve had peak Davos, as well.”
Only one leader of a G7 country – German chancellor Olaf Scholz – is attending this year, and Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are also missing. There will be no Russian oligarchs because of sanctions against Moscow. But Bloomberg calculates (£) there will be 40 per cent more billionaires than attended a decade ago. As Larry wrote yesterday: “As the risks to peace, prosperity and the future of the planet have increased so the willingness to cooperate – the spirit of Davos, as [WEF founder Klaus] Schwab likes to put it – has ebbed.”
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What’s the argument for Davos as a force for good?
The best case for its value is that it provides a unique venue for world leaders and thinkers to work on big problems in an unfettered way.
Those who still see global capitalism as the best engine of economic growth for all naturally agree – but the WEF can also point to outcomes that might seem to cut against that worldview, like the 2011 genesis of the New Development Bank, designed to provide funding for major infrastructure projects in emerging economies. Gavi, founded as the “Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation”, has led calls for poorer countries to be given access to coronavirus vaccines, and was launched at the forum in 2000.
Some critics of the existing system view a presence at Davos as important. Participants last year included representatives of Amnesty, the International Trade Union Confederation, Oxfam and the WWF.
There have been some real changes to the composition of the summit, Larry said. “There never used to be trade unionists or the likes of Greta Thunberg.” And while it’s hard to measure concrete outcomes, “it does tend to set the tone for other gatherings with more executive power. The leaders of the IMF and the WTO are there, so are central bankers, and to some extent what they hear shapes the direction of the year ahead.”
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Why is it criticised?
The likes of Oxfam and Amnesty will always be in the minority. Davos is frequently attacked for exactly the features that it claims as its virtues: its status as an elite forum which seeks to change the world through informal conversations.
Most attendees are still rich white “Davos men”, and the idea that they are best placed to solve global problems rankles with many observers; instead, they argue, the Davos elite tinkers at the margins of a broken system and heads off demands for more radical change.
“It has a massive blind spot,” Larry said. “There’s nothing quite as nauseating as seeing a bunch of billionaires banging on about doing something about global inequality but refusing to accept that they need to pay a bit more tax. There is a gap between the Davos analysis and the willingness among most participants to do anything about it.”
Those extremely plausible arguments can sometimes curdle into a more conspiratorial view. In 2020, Klaus Schwab and the then Prince Charles proposed a “Great Reset” – a call for a new, more sustainable economic model coming out of the coronavirus crisis. While there are legitimate criticisms of that idea, it has also proved a breeding ground for muddled claims that Davos attendees perpetrated a “plandemic” to bring about a global socialist government run for the benefit of a mysterious cabal of billionaires.
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So what are the chances that it can produce something positive in 2023?
“We have clearly moved towards a more fractured global polity in the last few years,” Larry said. Asked for measures of success by the end of the year, he said: “Some serious attempt to push forward with net zero, some attempt to introduce a global tax regime which taxes more equitably, a sense that the global economy is through the worst and co-operation rather than division is back.” He rates the chances of those successes at 10%-20%.
He is also cautious about over-interpreting what Davos can do. “Despite what people might think, it has no executive power,” he said. “It really is just a talking shop, albeit an elite one. No doubt deals are being done behind the scenes, CEOs in hotels, but there’s no hollowed-out volcano where the future of the world is being decided. It’s very long on rhetoric, and short on action.”
What else we’ve been reading
“At certain points over the last 30 years our house has resembled a menagerie”, writes Tim Dowling (above), in his lovely piece for Saturday magazine about his life in pets. Features dogs, cats, a tortoise, Ray the budgie, several small mammals and fish, and a snake, as well as some really unbeatable pictures. Archie
As horror stories of populist politicians across Europe seizing power continue to mount, Yolanda Díaz offers a hopeful alternative. Stephen Burgen charts how the Spanish deputy prime minister has managed to galvanise the left in the country. Nimo
Politicians of all stripes are assuming strikes are unpopular, writes Nesrine Malik - “and maybe in normal times they are. But these are not normal times.” She makes a compelling case for why unions’ ability to command broad solidarity will determine what happens next. Archie
Calling all Succession fans: if you are impatiently waiting for the new season I’ve got a stellar recommendation that will fill the hole in the meantime. Bernard Arnault, the co-founder, chairman and chief executive of LVMH and the world’s richest man, may be starting to choose which of his children will take over, and Edward Helmore takes us through the drama. Nimo
Janet Malcolm was an intimidating journalistic legend; she also brought her profession’s moral complexities front and centre. Max Abelson’s appraisal for n+1 is a nuanced, fascinating examination of her work. As he writes: “Whether her shortcomings bring her journalism to life or do something more like undermine it is the kind of thing you would want to ask her, right before running out of the room.” Archie
Sport
Premier league | Arsenal took advantage of Manchester City’s defeat to Manchester United, beating Tottenham Hotspur 2-0 in the north London derby to open up an eight-point gap at the top of the table. Meanwhile, Chelsea beat Crystal Palace 1-0 and Newcastle beat Fulham 1-0.
Women’s super league | A late header from Chelsea’s Sam Kerr denied Arsenal all three points in the Women’s Super League, maintaining a three-point gap over their London rivals at the top of the table with a 1-1 draw. Kerr’s 89th-minute equaliser cancelled out a 57-minute penalty for Arsenal from Kim Little.
Tennis | Emma Raducanu eased into the second round of the Australian Open with a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Tamara Korpatsch of Germany. Raducanu moved cautiously on her injured left ankle but her movement improved throughout the match. Meanwhile, Britain’s Jack Draper was 2-1 down against Rafael Nadal shortly before this email was sent – follow it here.
The front pages
The Guardian leads with plans to give police the power to shut down protests before they cause disruption. The Telegraph mentions that story on its front, but leads on the uranium arrest at Heathrow. The Times has a poll it says show a majority of people think the NHS is in decline, while the Daily Mail carries criticism of Keir Starmer’s suggested improvements to the NHS. The Express says the countryside is at risk from large housing developments. The Mirror has an interview with the mother of murdered child James Bulger, and the Sun has spoken to Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell about the Harry/William dynamic. The i says school lessons could go back online during a planned teachers’ strike. The FT leads with a gloomy assessment of the global economic outlook as Davos begins.
Today in Focus
Will the UK’s strict new voter ID laws damage democracy?
For the first time, voters in May’s local elections will be required to show photo ID before casting their ballot. But as Peter Walker reports, the new rules risk damaging the integrity of elections, not enhancing it.
Cartoon of the day | Edith Pritchett
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The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Professor Tim Entwisle had always been immersed in the plant world growing up, but started taking it more seriously at university and realised he wanted to dedicate his life to botany. His colleagues recall Entwisle’s fascination with unique and obscure groups of plants that people “didn’t take any notice of”. In the following decades, his career has grown, having had stints at Kew Gardens in London and Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden.
Since 2013, Entwisle has been at the helm of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic, using innovative techniques to attract more people to the gardens while still centring science-based conservation. He has expanded its programs and boosted visitor numbers significantly during his tenure, which was an important part of his mission when he joined the gardens: “People wanted to come back into their garden and perhaps we almost needed that to remind us how important they were,” Entwisle said.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords are here to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
This article was amended on 17 January 2023, as Bernard Arnault has not announced he is stepping down.
