Has Starmer’s Davos gambit backfired?

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.