DAVOS. That annual jamboree where the rich and the powerful arrive from across the globe in their private jets and their chauffeured limousines, to feast on the finest food in luxury accommodation and to lecture the plebs on the evils of international travel, owning a car, eating meat or even wanting affordable energy to keep ourselves warm.
If it were possible to reincarnate the Duke of Wellington in his pomp to enable him to attend in person, he would doubtless be moved to repeat one of his most famous quotes: ‘I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy but, by God, they frighten me.’
British observers had Sir Keir Starmer, our Prime Minister in waiting, grandly announcing that all new investment in gas and oil in the North Sea would be banned. Clearly Davos is a constituency that ranks far higher in Starmer’s priorities than hardpressed British citizens struggling to afford unprecedentedly high gas and electricity bills.
How far has political opinion shifted from the 1970s and 1980s when every politician from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Benn, via Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Denis Healey, David Owen and Michael Heseltine, regarded North Sea oil and gas as the saviour of the British economy. Indeed Henry Kissinger once joked to Jim Callaghan at a Downing Street press conference that he had to be polite to him in case one day he became the head of OPEC.
Politicians of today would far rather leave all that potential energy under the sea, import it from Saudi Arabia, the US and elsewhere, allow prices for householders and motorists to rocket and ‘rely’ on unreliable sources such as wind turbines and solar panels. It doesn’t seem to dawn on any of them that even if 100 per cent of the British countryside plus its entire coastline were plastered in wind turbines and solar panels, their combined output if the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, the very times when demand for energy supplies will be at their highest, will be zero.
One of Starmer’s predecessors as Labour leader, Sir Tony Blair, came out with an even more creepy interview at Davos. He spoke gushingly of multiple jabs and the need for international digital ID to track all the victims of those jabs.
Blair left the stage as UK Prime Minister as long ago as 2007, under somewhat of a cloud which I am content to leave to be summed up by the Chilcot Report, finally published in 2016. Unbelievably, instead of being held to account for that, he pops up at Davos, seemingly at the heart of any decision-making and networking taking place, coming up with alarming proposals never before discussed openly in a democratic forum anywhere.
Perhaps Davos and the WEF are on the wane. They are certainly on the defensive, as they should be with some of the outlandish ideas they come up with. Many of its past biggest supporters chose to stay away. Joe Biden did not attend, nor did Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau or any other G7 leader other than German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz. Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand Premier and a leading WEF protege, even announced her resignation in the same week as Davos.
However, Pfizer Chief Albert Bourla, briefly and memorably cornered by Rebel News journalists, was there. He didn’t have much to say to them and looked decidedly uncomfortable when challenged.
Once inside Davos, Bourla complained that aspects of the ‘pandemic’ such as vaccines and mask-wearing had become political. Given the arbitrary way our liberties were taken away whilst Pfizer and other Big Pharma corporations prospered (Pfizer’s recorded revenues in 2021 and 2022 were more than $81billion and $99billion respectively) one wonders what else he could have expected.
Big Pharma is getting more and more out of control by the day. Perhaps that is where the real power now lies and the political will to bring it under control looks non-existent. Perhaps all the biggest decisions, particularly draconian restrictions on our lifestyles in what should be an age of affordable abundance, have already been made. Starmer has merely been a bit late arriving and getting on board.
This article appeared in Patrick Clarke’s Column on January 27, 2023, and is republished by kind permission.
