30 Britain The EconomistNovember 16th 2019
T
his electionis the most unpredictable in years. Tribal loyal-
ties are weakening. Party chiefs are campaigning all over the
map—Conservatives in Labour heartlands in the north and
Labourites in Tory bastions in the south. The Liberal Democrats are
a wild card. But one thing is certain in all this confusion. Whoever
wins the election, the Party of Davos will lose. This is nothing less
than a revolution in British politics.
The Party of Davos refers to the 3,000 or so people who attend
the World Economic Forum in Switzerland each year, and their
more numerous ideological bag-carriers. (This columnist admits
to attending the forum on several occasions and to carrying a good
deal of ideological baggage.) Davosites are defined by their ada-
mantine belief in economic and social liberalism and their posi-
tion at the top of various global organisations. They support glo-
balisation and multilateral institutions and disdain parochialism
and nationalism. They idealise business and loathe nimbyism and
restraints on trade. Michael Oakeshott, a philosopher, said that po-
litical rationalists place no value on the tried-and-true, and believe
that “nothing is to be left standing for want of scrutiny”. Davosites
are rationalists par excellence.
The Party of Davos achieved its greatest success in Britain from
1997 to 2016. Tony Blair and David Cameron may have worn differ-
ent-coloured rosettes, but they were both paid-up members of the
party. Ditto their various comrades-in-arms, such as George Os-
borne on the right, Peter Mandelson on the left and Nick Clegg in
the middle. Under Mr Blair the Labour Party made its peace with
Margaret Thatcher’s pro-business philosophy by fawning over
businesspeople. Under Mr Cameron the Conservatives made their
peace with social liberalism by supporting gay marriage.
The great purge of the Davosites started on the left, with Jeremy
Corbyn’s election to the leadership of the Labour Party in 2015. Out
went the likes of Mr Mandelson (who had once declared that “we
are intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich”). In came
hard-leftists who had learned their craft on picket lines rather than
ski slopes. Mr Corbyn even advocated putting one of Davos’s he-
roes, Mr Blair, on trial for war crimes. The purge spread to the Con-
servative Party this year with the election of Boris Johnson as
leader, who expelled 21 senior Tories for disloyalty over Europe.Davosites such as Rupert Harrison, a protégé of Mr Osborne, have
been weeded from the Conservative candidates list.
The Davosites have made several ill-starred attempts to re-
group. They briefly supported the idea of a “government of nation-
al unity”, only to see the idea fizzle. They invested high hopes in a
second referendum, but the “people’s vote” movement collapsed
in turmoil when Roland Rudd, the prentrepreneur who helps to
fund it, tried to sack two of its leaders and staff responded by walk-
ing out. Exasperated Davosites are now backing the Lib Dems, but
so far the polls are moving against them.
There is no doubt that the Davosites deserve much of what has
been hurled at them. They overpromised and underdelivered. Gor-
don Brown boasted that Britain had abolished the cycle of boom-
and-bust under his leadership, only to see the global economy
plunged into the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Mr Blair
championed the war in Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein
possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that toppling a dicta-
tor might bring democracy to the Middle East. They engaged in a
pattern of self-dealing that destroyed the bond of trust between
the political elites and the masses. Since the financial crisis the
likes of Messrs Blair and Osborne have grown “stinking rich” by
selling their advice to global companies, while ordinary British
workers have seen their wages stagnate. And they failed to learn
the lessons of history. Too many Davosites think they need only
make corporations a bit more woke and all will be forgiven.
But even when all that is conceded, British politics is paying a
heavy price for the collapse of the Party of Davos. The average iqof
the political class is deteriorating. When Mr Clegg lost his seat in
Sheffield Hallam in 2015, he was replaced by Jared O’Mara, a local
bar owner who once called for Jamie Cullum, a jazz musician, to be
“sodomised with his own piano”. The quality of governance is col-
lapsing. Brexit has distracted attention from urgent problems such
as the obesity epidemic and the dismal state of vocational educa-
tion. The Davosites may have made a bad job of running the coun-
try, but the populists on both the left and the right look as if they
are going to make an even worse one.The long climb back
The Party of Davos needs to apply Oakeshott’s principle of scrutiny
to itself if it is to have any chance of regaining its place at the sum-
mit of British politics. The Davosites must learn to see themselves
as others see them. Appearing on the slopes to make the case for a
second referendum, as Mr Rudd once did, or tweeting that Aspen is
a great place to hold a discussion on refugees, like David Miliband,
a Blairite ex-minister, guarantees political oblivion. They need to
recognise that they are the beneficiaries of all sorts of hidden privi-
leges. Davosites have relentlessly championed creative destruc-
tion without recognising that the costs of such policies fall dispro-
portionately on people other than themselves. They need to see
that they are on a hiding to nothing if they think they can win pop-
ular support by advocating a pure diet of economic and social lib-
eralism. If anything, majorities want the opposite.
This will require a lot of rethinking of lazy verities. Davosites
need to think much harder about the importance of things like be-
longing, dignity and nationalism. It will also require a lot of self-
policing. Davosites need to be as hard on self-dealing on their own
side, particularly among company bosses who pay themselves
ever more for mediocre performance, as they are on that of others.
Unless the Party of Davos can reform itself, it will remain on the pe-
riphery of British politics—and rightly so. 7Bagehot The Party of Davos
Britain’s most powerful political alliance is heading for a deserved tumble