Labour has confirmed that Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell will be attending the World Economic Forum in Davos.Labour said that Mr McDonnell had been invited to attend the annual meeting.The conference, held in a Swiss mountain village, attracts some of the richest and most powerful people in the world.Mr McDonnell intends to set out why “the rules of the global economy” should be rewritten, the party said.Donald Trump is also planning to attend the conference, becoming the first US President in almost two decades to do so. A Labour spokesman said: “[John McDonnell will] explain Labour’s vision for an alternative economic approach to replace the current model of capitalism that has failed the many; and led to an unsustainable concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few.” “In addition, he will raise many of the issues facing working people in our country, and across the world.”The conference is attended by central bankers and the chiefs of some of the world’s largest companies.This year’s theme is “creating a shared future in a fractured world”.
Former Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have attended the conference in the past. Mr Brown took on an unpaid advisory role with the forum in 2011.During the 2017 general election, Labour promised in its manifesto to nationalise railways and England’s water companies, scrap university tuition fees, increase corporation taxes and raise income tax for high earners. The party also wanted to review council tax and business rates, end zero hour contracts, and build 100,000 affordable homes a year.In his 2018 new year message, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “We are being held back by a self-serving elite, who look after themselves and their friends and a failed system which delivers staggering wealth at the top, while more and more people struggle to simply make ends meet.”We are a government in waiting, while the Conservatives are weak and divided and stuck in an outdated rut with no new ideas.”
Source: BBC News