Davos’s guilty secret

Somehow I had managed more than a quarter of a century in journalism without ever going to Davos. It had become almost a badge of honour, the one gathering of global nabobs I had been able to dodge year after year. But here I am in the mountains of Switzerland, a new boy amid the pilgrims come to worship at the altar of globalisation. I am international by profession and inclination — could a diplomatic correspondent be anything else? — but I can report that this annual meeting of the world’s great and good makes itself easy to lampoon. One friend, also on his first Davos tour, says it is like a party conference for the guilty rich, a chance for elite business-folk to take time out from maximising shareholder value to worry about the world in which they make their profits. So here they are, flying in on thousands of private jets to express their concerns about climate change, agonising about social inequality after a morning on the slopes, fretting about populism before trying to catch a glimpse of Bono at a late-night party.