There are few things more delusional than Davos and its gathering of the self-anointed elite

One pandemic positive was meant to be the downfall of Davos after 52 long years of tendentious Alpine waffle. But no. “The good and the great” (who usually are neither and always include Dr Iqbal Survé) have once again flocked to the World Economic Forum to ponder this year’s jargon-jumble theme — Cooperation in a Fragmented World — with a prominent appearance from the 99-year-old Henry Kissinger.  

Yes, that Henry Kissinger whose worldview was outdated 40 years ago and who won the most tainted Nobel Peace Prize in history for grudgingly caving into almost all the demands made by the North Vietnamese to end the war he had played a massive and secretive role in criminally propagating (read William Shawcross’s devastating book Sideshow for all the evidence you need in this regard).

At least our president had the good sense to cancel his attendance at Davos in the face of the Eskom shambles but he clearly lacked the good sense to decline to attend in the first place. He, and anyone else who gathered there, have completely failed to read the zeitgeist. Davos is not the place to be seen. It is the place not to be seen anywhere near, precisely because it is such a monumental gathering of the establishment.

Being at Davos is not a sign that you have made it, it is a very sure sign that you don’t get it. “It” being a deep distrust of the established order in every form (and of old male talking heads in particular), and a view that a smug, self-important, financially elite, talk shop in the disconnected world of the Swiss Alps generates nothing other than big expense accounts, hot air and carbon emissions.

In the run-up to the Brexit vote in 2016, a prominent UK businessman confidently told me that Britain would remain in the EU because not one single major organisation — political party, trade union, business grouping, media house — was in favour of leaving. I remember observing that’s exactly the reason why Brexit might succeed. If ALL of the establishment says one thing, then the majority will take that as a cue to be otherwise. Ditto with Trump.

The devoted Davosians still don’t get this.

They also lack the self-awareness to see how utterly useless their musings have been in the real world. In January 2008 they all pondered “The Power of Collaborative Innovation”. Shortly after, the globe went sub-primal and collapsed in ways that no one at Davos had forewarned us of.

A year later they were back like Humpty Dumpty to put themselves together again under the umbrella of “Shaping the post-crisis world”. Just check the breathtaking arrogance in that assumption that the musings at Davos are shaping the world. Such hubris gives credence to the New World Order conspiracy whackos because 84-year-old WEF founder, Klaus Schwab, genuinely believes that like-minded heavyweights and technocrats should run things on a global scale.

Schwab reminds me of another deluded, aged Swiss resident, Sepp Blatter, in his desire to be seen as important as heads of state and his spectral Chairman-For-Life presence.  The WEF is also similar to Fifa in its curious tax-free “international body” status in Switzerland and a history of ethics scandals.