Davos is famously the setting for Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. It tells the story of a young German who travels to a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps to recover from a deathly illness. The rarefied mountain air and time away from the stresses of daily life eventually help to nurture the man back to health.

If yesterday was anything to go by, Davos proved to be a Magic Mountain for Gordon Brown, too. The run-up to his one-day stop at this year’s World Economic Forum hasn’t been ideal. The besieged PM has had to grapple with the resignation of Peter Hain, an embarrassing climbdown on capital gains tax and the botched rescue of Northern Rock.

But rather than looking subdued, Mr Brown was in his element, and unquestionably the PM was the star of the show. Appearing in no fewer than three plenary sessions, on “global citizenship”, “civic duty” and “business-government partnerships to meet the Millennium Development Goals”, Mr Brown was unrecognisable to those who had grown accustomed to his miserable Westminster mien. He even slipped in a surprise visit to a lunch of Britain’s top businessmen where he cracked jokes and stole the limelight from the energetic Foreign Secretary, David Miliband.

Mr Brown’s good humour was hardly surprising, considering the introduction he received from the Forum founder, Professor Claus Schwab, saying: “The purpose of Davos is to promote entrepreneurship in the global public interest. But you, Mr Brown, are the finest example I know of Prime Ministership in the global public interest. You have led global initiatives to cure disease in Africa, to promote education, to end global poverty — and I could go on and on!”

Delegates who witnessed the transformed Mr Brown here said Davos had been the tonic the Prime Minister needed. One chief executive, who asked not to be named, said: “He’s very comfortable in this domain. He’s got the background to understand it all, he’s got ten years worth of relationships and back home is trouble. It’s more engaging for him to be here than to stay at home and be attacked by [David] Cameron.”

When he spoke, Mr Brown described how much better the world economy would work with all sorts of new institutions. He pledged that the world would not stand by while one in seven women in Sierra Leone died in childbirth for want of trained medical staff. He then declared with evident satisfaction that many more children in Africa were now being educated.

Lord Winston, the retired fertility scientist and Labour peer, said: “What we have seen in Davos is a rather reasonable performance that was listened to with respect and appreciation. Last year Tony Blair was going through a very bad patch at home and he was marvellous in Davos. Gordon has shown those same sort of characteristics.”

Explore World Economic Forum

• Davos 2007

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