By KD Tait
Every year the global elite assemble for the World Economic Forum meeting in the Swiss resort town of Davos. Every year the meeting coincides with the annual Oxfam report showing that the rich are getting richer.
This year’s meeting takes place against a backdrop of Trump’s re-election, which will accelerate the climate disaster, intensify imperialist rivalries and dampen world trade via tariffs and taxes.
But like the COP conferences on climate change, the WEF meeting isn’t a forum for addressing systemic crises. Instead, it’s a venue for the world’s super rich to rub shoulders with the politicians and policymakers who keep the profit system running.
The presence of a Labour chancellor used to be one of the main events. But despite the best efforts of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to present the UK as a good place to do business, the money men (and occasional woman) remain unconvinced.
Labour’s response to this is to double down on their promise to take the ‘difficult decisions’ that will lead to ‘economic growth’. Addressing the business elite in Davos, Reeves put this in terms both workers and employers can understand: in exchange for investment a Labour government will roll back regulation, push through privatisation and ‘crack down’ on welfare benefits.
Take up thy bed and work
We are left with no doubt as to what this means in practice. While the chaos of social care can be postponed into yet another commission that will not report until 2028, airports are to be expanded and developers given free rein to throw up housing, solar farms and warehouses with no plan.
Labour’s commitments to net zero are set to be abandoned as it plans to reform planning laws and override environmental protections. Climate activists were denounced by Keir Starmer as ‘zealots’, as he plans a major power grab by central government to override local objections.
As the government passes its six-month mark with a stagnant economy and little progress towards its promise of 1.5 million new homes, Reeves has placed all her hopes in allowing market forces to let rip.
Meanwhile the ‘Iron’ Chancellor intends to cut Universal Credit payments by £1.5bn and sickness benefits by £3bn as part of a plan to shave £8.6bn off the welfare bill. In an attempt reduce the UC bill, Labour wants state access to individual bank accounts so it can claw back DWP overpayments, which ministers misleadingly label ‘benefit fraud’.
They also aim to attack the 3.7 million long-term sick by overhauling the notoriously unfair Work Capacity Assessment, so it is made even harder to claim sickness benefits. Also on Reeves’ radar are personal independence payments (PIPs). Labour wants to reduce the amount paid out with stiffer criteria or even replace them with humiliating vouchers for specific items, increasing the stigma of disability.
Rather than making work less stressful, for example by introducing a four-day week with no loss of pay, Labour wants to increase the number of exploited workers by making the sick take unsuitable jobs and slashing benefits.
Far right threat
Waiting in the wings is Nigel Farage’s Reform party, which hopes to capitalise on the rapid disaffection with Labour’s lacklustre programme by posing as an anti-establishment opposition to the mainstream parties and the political consensus that commits governments to making progress towards net zero.
In fact, Reform is the party backed by a section of capital that is most clear about handing over the NHS to private health firms, clearing obstacles to profit by ripping up environmental and planning protections, and intensifying labour exploitation by weakening trade union and employment rights.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House will give the most reactionary forces in British society a confidence boost, and Labour has shown no sign of a backbone in standing up to him and his outriders. With foreign secretary David Lammy leading the way, cabinet members have been frantically swallowing their words in a pathetic attempt to ingratiate themselves with the new president and the US tech barons who they hope will invest in Britain.
For Musk and co., support for Trump and the far right is about protecting their business interests from the threat of Chinese competition on one hand, and from pressure to regulate the tech and AI industries on the other. Making provocative interventions backing far right challengers is one way to put pressure on governments; a more effective way is to have the ear of a president who threatens to torpedo the economies of whole countries if they don’t fall into line.
The rich have always used the power that their vast wealth gives them to bend laws and politics to their whim. But not since the days of the robber barons has this wealth and associated power been so openly flaunted and exercised.
Labour came into office promising to tackle the problems caused by an economy rigged in favour of the rich; Davos shows that they never had any strategy for doing so. Only a revolutionary workers government, democratically accountable to a strong, organised labour movement, could take the measures necessary to defend our class against these capitalist vultures.
