PM tried to belong by speaking the meaningless lingo - but this was no meeting of equals

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.

- John Crace

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. 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 the head of a multinational without first having learned to speak Pure Doggybollocks. It is the code that admits you to the club.

It's also a club that all politicians want to join. They go weak in the presence of money. Not just to secure investment for the country. Though that's the principal excuse. It's the proximity to wealth. The global elite.

It's a rarefied world where everyone knows their place. The politicians may be in government, but it is the business leaders who hold the real power. This is not a meeting of equals. When CEOs are dangling the promise of billions of pounds of investment, all former promises get burned.