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January 22, 2024 - 10:00am
The bulk of reports percolating out of the WEF’s annual meeting have been scornful, revealing a proposed programme of enlightened elite global governance that is not going as planned. Geopolitics is back with a vengeance; the “energy transition” has turned out, so far, mostly to mean unilateral economic disarmament in favour of Russia and China. Populations are growing angry in the face of sharp rises in both mass migration and the cost of living.
And as the winds of macro-political change whistle around the (rumoured) erstwhile apostles of one world government, at least some of those apostles may be adjusting course. The New York Times reports that, off the record, the Davocracy expects Donald Trump to win — an expectation since reinforced by the concession of Ron DeSantis. And it seems that, as well as having a keen nose for the prevailing political current, at least some of these big corporate beasts are remarkably sanguine about the prospect of another Trump term.
Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the financial services titan Blackstone, mused that he didn’t think the United States was prepared for further deficits and “open borders” — the policy slate he appeared to expect under Joe Biden. This echoes the shockwaves caused by JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon last week, when he told CNBC that blanket condemnation of Trump voters — and of the ex-president himself — was a mistake. “Take a step back, be honest,” Dimon said. “He was kind of right about Nato. He was kind of right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well […] he wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues.”
Does this suggest a plutocratic pivot to Trumpism? Or — more dramatic yet — that Davos man is in retreat? Well, if we take “Davos man” as shorthand for the full-fat globalisation programme, maybe. But if it’s shorthand for the international super-elite, there is no reason to imagine that just because the programme popular with this set during the “end of history” era seems to have run aground on reality, those networks — and the power and money they represent — will somehow disappear.
It does, however, suggest that we may be seeing meaningful policy disagreements emerging among the global aristocracy. Until recently, at least from my vantage point among hoi polloi, a quiet unanimity has prevailed in this stratum on issues such as eco-modernism, mass migration and global supply chains. This consensus has, in turn, helped constrain which issues ever become topics of democratic debate — indeed, part of the reaction to Trump in 2016 stemmed from the threat his election posed to this consensus.
A lot can change in eight years. If two beasts as big as Dimon and Schwarzman, commanding financial services colossi with a combined market cap of $638 billion, are now willing break ranks on record, on the hitherto unanimous elite denunciation of Trump, that indicates a vibe shift of some magnitude among the global aristocracy. And if we already live in a post-democratic era, in which the political weather is set not by voting publics but by postmodern lords and princes, this will matter a great deal.
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SubscribeAstonishing from Dimon. A suggestion that Trump might not actually be the devil. Whatever next?!?
“He was kind of right about Nato. He was kind of right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well […] he wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues.”
This merely shows that these elites are slow learners. We’ve known this all along and could overlook Trump’s mean tweets, vulgar actions, and narcissistic comments and measure him by his actions, not his appearance.
I would add he was completely right about China.
Dimon mentioned that, as well
Steve Jolly: I am with you on that. The number one smart move that Trump made during his term as POTUS was to call out China. In this, he was well ahead of the pack. Secondly, he became very vocal about the immigration problem at the US southern border when most Americans of influence (eg: media; eg people like Gates) were too afraid to utter a peep.
Intriguingly there was an opinion piece in the Guardian at the weekend defending Davos.
They may indeed be a bunch of spectacularly rich, democratically unaccountable global plutocrats traversing the world from palace to palace on their gas-guzzling yachts and private jets, the article seemed to be arguing, but at least they say – and therefore presumably think – the right things about climate change and Nelson Mandela.
I’m not mentioning this to demonstrate either Davos hypocrisy or the naivety of certain left-wing commentators. Both of which speak for themselves.
But bearing in mind the Daily Mash t-shirt slogan, “The Guardian: Wrong about everything. All the time”, it would be interesting (and a bit funny) if what is effectively the trade-journal of the UK political Left hitched themselves to the Davos horse just as everyone else was becoming fed up with it.
Haha.
Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past them.
Starmer will be trying to pull the same trick. A furtherance of DEI, militarism and neoliberalism just when the rest of the world is seeing that all 3 have run out of road.
I just don’t get the “militarism” bit. Iraq and Libya were the high water marks of intervention. The UK’s armed forces are becoming rather pathetic, with a few good bits. Certainly nothing to alarm any significant geopolitical adversaries.
Just please hold the English Channel. All we need is a good supply base. The Russian fleet must be blocked from entering the North Atlantic or it will sever our ability to supply nato during a war. The situation would revert to the days when German u-boats were sinking liberty ships left and right.
I chanced to dirty my hands with a recent paper edition of said rag, and couldn’t help but smirk at the full-page back-cover ad for Rolex watches.
Those gritty Stockport factory workers do like to tell the time with style and pomp!
When the right-wing does stuff that favours the rich like tax cuts, deregulation, pro-capital policy: “it’s pro-aspiration. The workers like this. It gives them something to work towards.”
When the left-wing does stuff that favours the rich: “what about the workers, then?”
Are you a reincarnation of Arthur Scargill?
The ‘workers’ haven’t read the Grauniad for 30 years. They read the Sun (or the Daily Mail if they’re of an intellectual bent). The Guardian readership are mostly working part-time comfortably from home, sipping lattes at the gym or the golf club with their mates, while bemoaning the awful capitalist system that imposes such hardship on them.
It’s worse than that. I remember vaguely that 1/3 of its readership is a member of a public sector Union.
Yep, those are the ones! Their main hobby is “banging on about climate change”!
Tax cuts, deregulation, and pro-capital policy favor EVREYONE, not just the rich, or even mostly the rich, because they raise all boats. Government handouts favor government apologists and parasites of all stripes.
What position are you taking here? Anti-hypocrisy isn’t an ideology or policy. You say you’re not mentioning it for those things but why are you mentioning it?
Generally modern “leftism” has been left holding the neoliberal baby. No doubt all these people criticising the Guardian for being too Right whilst also being too Left will continue complaining when it reverts back to actual leftism.
I must admit I thought the position I am taking in my earlier post is pretty obvious. Perhaps I got this wrong?
That it is strange and amusing, in a slightly twisted way, that the Guardian (or at least someone writing in it) should be defending the richest people in the world.
Highlighting the hypocrisy of people who lecture everyone else about the environment from the comfort of their yachts is merely incidental.
The labels ‘left’ and ‘right’ don’t apply any more, except to confuse issues and keep people fighting each other.
The Guardian is really the trade journal of the state class who have a vested interest in the big government/big business paradigm. Unlike the rest of us.
Spot on!
A toxic mixture of Eurofederal neoliberalism and Washington neoconservatism is fine so long as you’re pandering to student identity politics. And that’s the Guardian in the Viner period.
What so if the Davos global elite recognise King Trump as the legitimate ruler of the American free republic they’ll suddenly become acceptable to the New Right?
Trumpies weren’t actually concerned about being exploited by an out-of-touch billionaire elite. They just wanted to be exploited in the right way.
Why not let (your “Trumpies”) them speak for themselves (since you clearly aren’t one of them) rather than trying to tell them what they think or believe ?
It’s hard to believe after 8 years of unmistakably clear feedback, but the ruling caste still aren’t listening to the “deplorables”.
My guess is most ‘Trumpies’ want the super rich to take their massive money, enjoy it, and shut the f up about politics and running the world.
Then, allow the nation state to function in a way that is in the interests of its people – controlling borders, favouring domestic production and curbing excess government spending. And not pushing social agendas on families.
You have my vote.
The Trumpies as you call them can contrast life under Orange McBadman with current conditions. Dimon is only stating what is painfully obvious to anyone not beholden to Team Biden for a paycheck. There is not enough sunshine to be blown to make Joe appear either lucid or viable. The only reason the race appears as close as it is, is due to the left’s irrational hatred of Trump. Otherwise, 2024 might well be another 1980.
Dimon was harshly critical of open borders. He also said it’s unwise to demonize millions of Americans who support Trump. If someone says something sensible, we shouldn’t oppose it just because they are Uber rich.
Exactly. A late conversion is better than none. We also should recognise that not all the Uber-rich buy into the Davosocracy view of the world. One in particular is doing his best to defend free speech at considerable personal cost.
Nice post – the trolls looking to automatically bad-mouth the individual in question will struggle to find this.
Silly comment. Deplorables want borders, stable families, security and rewarding work, not the child mutilating, race baiting globalist free for all that Davos has been promoting for the past decade. And certainly not the poverty and class division that comes with it.
Hear! Hear!
Perhaps the Davosocracy are beginning to realise their interests are best served when the ordinary citizens of the West are thriving not being suppressed.
I wouldn’t bet on it. I’d bet they’re simply recognizing that the era where they could get away with anything and the people would just accept it are over and they’d better make peace with the way things are or get left behind by history.
As Ursula Von der Leyen spent much of her speech banging on about the essential need to suppress ‘misinformation and disinformation’ in order to stop it de-railing the solutions these hubristic globalists are so convinced of, I think they are very far from any such realisation that the ordinary citizens are anything but obstacles in the way of their grand ambitions. I think we can expect a further concerted clamp down on our freedom of speech being rolled out across Western Europe. I am afraid, although cracks are appearing and more people are sitting up and taking notice, we are in for a very bumpy ride as they double down on their mission.
Dimon has recognized the obvious, about both current conditions and the Trump years. All of the things we were told that Orange McBadman would do were, in fact, not done. On the contrary, it is Biden who has acted like the petty tyrant his predecessor was supposed to be.
Still, let’s not dismiss the moneyed class just yet. They’re in it for the long game, even if that means surviving another four years of Trump, which is hardly a sure thing. Having tried everything else to keep out of the race, the left still has a few options, none of them good for the country. But that four-word phrase seems rather quaint today.
How exactly has Biden, for whom I have little time, acted as a “tyrant”? I really dislike this kind of ranting non specific name calling on all sides.
Well, democratic leaders don’t jail their opponents, for a start. And it’s not just Trump, look at the way Jan 6 demonstrators were treated, some kept in solitary confinement for weeks.
Nice one, Mary!
As Ms. Harrington says: The plutocrats (they don’t deserve to be called “elites”) will always pursue their own interests. The only politics they are genuinely afraid of is actual communism and actual fascism, both of which believe the party should be in charge and have no room for plutocrats.
But short of that, plutocrats have throughout history been perfectly fine with dictatorships; like the Church, they actually prefer them.
I see the regime media is going after Dimon now – shocker. It you can’t kill the message, kill the messenger.
Yes, and the evidence is in the actual policy of the Biden administration. Even the darling of the establishment, or his caretaker if you prefer, pivoted decisively away from more unrestricted globalism, out of fear of more Trumps and worse uprisings. I’m recalling the progressive accounts of a Paris newspaper during Napoleon’s escape from Elba and subsequent return to power. They begin by calling him a horrible ogre but by the time he gets to Paris, he’s ‘Our glorious Emperor’ once again. When the enemy enters the city, he’s not the the enemy anymore. He’s the new boss. Most people aren’t ideological zealots. They can play along with wealth based on nationalism and conflict if the globalist buffet is being taken away. As they hedge their bets towards a new reality, they’ll build up some stake in the new world that’s being built and the aristocracy will move back towards something tolerable.
I understand Mary’s skepticism for the actual return of democratic accountability, but it’s debatable how much accountability there ever was. Mary is a great writer but if she has a flaw, it’s that she gets caught up too much in the narrative and loses sight of underlying realities. We are all prisoners of the moment to some extent, but I’m not sure there ever was a ‘golden age’ of the modern nation state featuring democratic accountability and the triumph of the popular will. If there was, its true cause is debatable, but neither a benevolent aristocracy that fundamentally respects the people nor a truly democratic system without some level of corruption by elites ever really existed. It can be argued that the entire study of human history is the study of how people struggle for power with one another, individually and collectively. In that spirit, what I think is actually true is that there was a short period during the Cold War where the interests of the aristocrats and middle class happened to align so the constant push/pull between aristocrats and everybody else was momentarily laid aside. Then the Cold War ended and normality reasserted itself. The aristocrats grew complacent with a trusting, compliant population the people grew complacent after a period of relatively benign government and decent behavior from aristocrats. Neither of these things is historical normal and both were bound to fall apart at some point. We just happen to be witnessing the part where history in all it’s ugly imperfection reasserts itself.
I’m a bit more optimistic than Mary is. Whatever level of elite accountability we reach due to Trump and other populist movements, it will necessarily be better than none at all, and probably a lot closer to what history suggests they can reasonably get away with. Perhaps part of the reason for my optimism is that things aren’t quite so bad on our side of the pond. Top down governance is nigh impossible in the American system anyway. A huge amount of local and regional control is built into the system and can’t be legislated away. The current Texas border conflict is a good example. The American system basically guarantees conflicts like this will happen from time to time, and the scale of these will limit federal overreach. The only time it resulted in war was when the critical issue was slavery. I don’t see most of Wall Street being so doctrinaire about open borders that they’re willing to start a war over it.
You’re right, we’ve never had true democratic accountability – but at least, pre-Blair we were moving in that direction. Now we seem to be sleepwalking into totalitarianism.
Never mind Davos. Never mind the Rich. Never mind all the hot air and stinky fibs that pass for political policy making on our economy by Rach and Rishi. We have crashed at speed through the bridge barrier and are sailing silently through thin air… heading to a violent terminal impact with water. Why? Because the State has broken the basic social contract. It has to provide homes most workers and people can afford, and it has to provide energy to warm those homes and fuel enterprise…and it has to have more people paying taxes in than extracting that money out in benefits and endless bailouts. The UK open border mass immigration Welfarist State – post the lockdown madness and a final set of money tree splurges – has failed on all three fronts. It is a busted flush. And given you cannot solve 20 year failures to build new cities for the unplanned extra 8m ..nor pop up nuclear power stations in a matter of weeks..nor remove the entrenched new culture of me me human right entitlemen and stop the maxed out credit card state splurges, it is safe to say no one soon will have much time to worry about the progressive Davos elite who have sewn our land with salt.
Was this written by Ms. Harrington or Howard Beale?
“are now willing break ranks”
I do hope Mary dropped the word “to” by mistake and not in homage to the herd.