Starmer tries – and fails – to keep up with the investment summit jargon | John Crace

When CEOs are dangling investment promises worth billions, all other promises get burned – and any ability to speak disappears

“Britain is back,” declared the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, as he opened the investment summit at Guildhall in London. But English may not be. There’s something about a business awayday that deprives normally sentient beings of the power of language.

Put a whole heap of CEOs together in the same room and you can guarantee that within seconds they will be speaking in a tongue almost no one can understand. Largely because they are asleep. It is a world of cliche and jargon where normal sentences are deprived of internal logic and meaning. Hard to believe, but you don’t become head of a multinational without first having learned to speak Pure Doggybollocks. It is the code that admits you to the club.

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