Boris Johnson Puts Focus on Nurses After Turning Back on Davos

(Bloomberg) -- Boris Johnson is turning his back on bankers. After triggering a slump in the pound with his Brexit strategy and announcing his boycott of the World Economic Forum at Davos, the prime minister will spend Wednesday trying to reinforce his “people’s government” message.

A meeting in his Downing Street residence on Wednesday is intended to show his domestic focus. Staff from the National Health Service have been invited to a reception to hear about Johnson’s plan to give grants to student nurses. Having faced repeated criticism during the just-finished election campaign that his Conservative Party didn’t care about Britain’s beloved state-run NHS, the premier is determined to prove otherwise.

“Our focus is on delivering for the people, not champagne with billionaires,” an official said, on condition of anonymity, to explain why neither Johnson nor anyone else from the British government would be going to Davos.

It’s a somewhat different tone to the one the prime minister took last month when he addressed business leaders and asked them for their support. Then, the message was that he valued wealth creation.

But on Tuesday, the pound wiped out all the gains it made in the days following his election victory, after the prime minister signaled he’s committed to severing the U.K.’s relationship with the European Union -- with or without a trade deal -- by the end of 2020. That undermined the idea that Johnson might use his considerable parliamentary majority to cut ties with Brexit hard-liners in his party and deliver a soft divorce.

New Backers

The prime minister suspects that the voters who won him the election still have their doubts about him -- that, as he’s said several times, they were “lending” the Conservatives their support. Having secured victory by winning a string of working class, pro-Brexit districts in northern England and the Midlands, the sight of him or his team brushing shoulders with the global elite at a Swiss ski resort risks bolstering those concerns.

Even so, markets are less likely to be troubled by Johnson’s attempt to present himself as a man of the people than by his Brexit strategy. In a further warning that businesses will need to brace themselves for Brexit, Johnson’s spokesman, James Slack, told reporters “in all circumstances we will be leaving the single market and the customs union and the EU regime associated with that.”

EU leaders have warned it’s highly unlikely that negotiators will be able to complete the kind of trade deal Johnson wants -- which he’s modeled on Canada’s agreement with the EU -- in the 11 months between Brexit day on Jan. 31 and the December deadline. Committing to leaving come-what-may at the end of 2020 sets up a fresh cliff-edge for a no-deal split.

Brexit Certainty

Johnson’s approach did win the backing of the Confederation of British industry, which said in a statement that “business has had enough of uncertainty and shares the prime minister’s ambition for a fast EU trade deal.” The City of London, though, warned against a hasty Brexit agreement that could damage the services sector, which accounts for 80% of the U.K. economy.

Conservatives argue that enshrining the December 2020 deadline into law will help focus European minds. And the Davos boycott fits the narrative that the prime minister won’t be distracted.

Johnson hasn’t always been against attending Davos. As Mayor of London he went at least twice, to urge attendees to invest in the U.K. capital.

“You just have to chuck a snowball into a cocktail party at Davos and you’d hit someone with a sovereign wealth fund who would fund a piece of infrastructure,” he told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper in 2013.

Global Face

Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, used Davos to promote Britain’s international face as it negotiated its withdrawal from the EU, while chancellors of the exchequer have often addressed a lunch of British business leaders.

Domestic demands meant May didn’t go this year and nor did French President Emmanuel Macron -- though both sent representatives. President Donald Trump canceled the U.S. delegation’s trip this year hours after he announced he was denying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a government plane to visit troops in Afghanistan.

But Rupert Harrison, an adviser to David Cameron’s government and now a portfolio manager at BlackRock Inc., said on Twitter the decision not to attend is “ridiculous” because there’s no other forum where the case for inward investment can be made “more efficiently.”

“Are they campaigning or governing?” he asked in another tweet.

While Johnson was feted at Davos when he attended as mayor, it’s possible that in his new guise -- as someone who’s been accused of putting up trade barriers as a result of Brexit -- he might be less welcome.

It’s even possible some attendees might remember Johnson’s 2014 assurance to the Wall Street Journal, while attending Davos, that the chances of Britain leaving the EU were “vanishingly unlikely.”

--With assistance from Jessica Shankleman, Simon Kennedy and Charlotte Ryan.

To contact the reporter on this story: Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Stuart Biggs, Thomas Penny

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