Ah, the World Economic Forum: that annual jamboree for plutocratic banksters, avaricious industrialists and superannuated spongers to come together in an orgiastic eulogy to global capital. Sir Keir Starmer is among those in Davos this week as part of the party’s latest enterprise initiative. For where better place for a Labour leader to demonstrate his progressive credentials?
The purpose of such schmoozing is two-fold. It is intended to show Labour as a pro-business party, which has put the bad old days of Comrade Corbyn well behind them and make Starmer seem ‘Prime Ministerial’ by having him endure the tedium of meeting various satraps, flunkeys and apparatchiks which comprise the Davos elite.
But has this initiative backfired? Mr S can’t help but notice that Sir Keir seems a little too comfortable in the warm embrace of the global elite. First, there was the glutinous praise for the London lawyer from a succession of EU panjandrums over Starmer’s plans to develop closer ties with Brussels. Arch-Eurocrat Guy Verhofstadt said that ‘the West needs to come together around the areas Starmer mentions’; fellow federalist Andreas Schieder gushed ‘I’ve met Starmer and I can see he would be much – he would be reliable.’
It culminated in today’s i front page splash which roars: ‘EU wants Starmer to become British PM’ replete with a fawning quote from a Dutch MEP who declares ‘I cannot wait for Starmer. Everyone in Brussels is aching for a new relationship and he quietly is building trust.’ All this at a time when Sadiq Khan, Stella Creasy and others within the party are urging a return to the single market.
And now the Labour leader has also given an interview to the News Agents podcast in which he told Emily Maitlis – a woman never known for her Brexit credentials – that he preferred Davos to Westminster, on the grounds that:
Westminster is too constrained… Once you get out of Westminster, whether it’s Davos or anywhere else, you actually engage with people that you can see working with in the future. Westminster is just a tribal shouting place.
Westminster-bashing may be all the rage at present but is Sir Keir really saying he prefers the company of Jared Kushner, Klaus Schwab and will.i.am to his own party’s MPs?
So much for take back control and restoring sovereignty to parliament…
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