Our philosophy and newsletters

Have you ever considered that there may be a link between love and politics?

At the Simultaneous Policy (Simpol) campaign, we believe a global politics of love is needed more than ever in this divided world. In an ideal sense, the way a large-scale society ensures all its members are cared for and benignly governed, could be considered a kind of love. 

Since its original inception in 1998, Simpol has always struck me as the embodiment of world-scale love. It is love on a global scale. Yet for nearly 25 years, I’ve hesitated to express it in those terms because I was afraid of not being taken seriously about an idea that, by any measure, is already unparalleled in scope and ambition. Now, however, the time is ripe for love to come to the fore and for Simpol to be articulated in the love-infused way it arrived. Thus the title of this series; ‘A Global Politics of Love; for People of All Faiths and None’. 

Love is universal. And as I’ll demonstrate, Simpol is not only consistent with a logical, secular, scientific view of evolution and its trajectory towards expanding scales of cooperation, but also with the main teachings of all religious faiths. In bridging worlds and cultures, Simpol offers a global politics of love that people of all religious persuasions and none can, I hope, feel drawn to and motivated to support. 

Did you know that love and politics are historic bedfellows – from Tolstoy to Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. and long before? In this special series of newsletters over the coming months, I’ll demonstrate this odd coupling at the global level – and how, with your help, it can actually encompass all of humanity. 

The religious traditions state that love means ‘willing the good of the other.’  Writing on love’s role in politics, Prof. Liane Hartnett suggests that its connection to politics ‘…dates back to Homer where love—variously understood as eros, philia or agape — is implicated in political thought and action.’ It is, she says, ‘ … a theological tradition built on a commandment to love God and neighbour, which goes so far as to proclaim, ‘God is love’.’  All religious faiths take love to be universal. ‘Loving our neighbours’ must, therefore, include not just our family or members of our nation, but our entire global family. 

In ancient times when the world’s great religions came into being, life for the vast majority of people was local in scale. For most, ‘loving thy neighbour’ meant those in your family and locality. But in today’s large-scale, multicultural societies, the only way we can collectively love all our neighbours – to ensure that we and they are protected, helped when sick, subject to fair and beneficial laws, and so on – is through politics and governance. But while God’s love is universal, the politics of love on planet Earth has never achieved a global scale. It needs to.

Just as love can be perverted by becoming overweening, so can governance. It’s therefore vital, especially at the global level, that it is properly designed to approximate as closely as possible, the healthiest love imaginable. In fact, we don’t need to look far for good models. The way loving parents in a healthy family nurture and bring up children would be one. The way governance of your body’s cells and organs ensures that they all cooperate harmoniously would be another. These models show that loving our neighbours globally is not only perfectly possible but natural – and crucial if humanity is to survive the many global threats we face.

How, then, is Simpol synonymous with love? How consistent is it with the key teachings of all the religious faiths? How closely does its design for global cooperative governance approximate healthy love? How closely does it obey the Golden Rule: to do unto others as we would have others do unto us? And how do we even conceive of making the leap from our current world of rage, mistrust, fake facts and war … to love?

Many compelling questions are ripe for addressing – and I invite you to join me in our next newsletter as we begin to delve into the global politics of love. Meanwhile, please send us your thoughts, reactions and insights to newsletter(at)simpol.org  Because above all, Simpol is about cooperation. It’s about you, me and all of us in conversation.

Until next time.

John Bunzl – International Simultaneous Policy Organisation – April. 2025

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Free Trade or Protectionism? Is that the right question?

U.S. President Trump has completely up-ended the world free-trade order that has subsisted for decades via the World Trade Organisation (WTO). He has pivoted quite dramatically towards protectionist policies and, in doing so, raises the old but fundamental question of which mode of trade is best? For us at Simpol, this question merely perpetuates the problem because, as I’ll explain, it’s the wrong question to ask. It merely diverts us from the real issue.

It's wrong because both modes of trade have serious shortcomings which ultimately become unsustainable. The problem with free-trade and the ability of capital and corporations to direct their investments to wherever in the world will secure the highest profit is that governments must compete to attract them. This results in a competitive down-levelling of taxes and regulations as each country competes to keep its economy attractive to inward investors and the jobs they bring. This dynamic is what we at Simpol call Destructive Global Competition (DGC). It’s the basis for every nation’s goal to stay “internationally competitive”, a term repeated by politicians around the world because that, indeed, is the destructive game they are playing. 

But as taxes on the rich and the corporations are reduced, the inevitable losers are the poor, the middle classes, public services and the environment. And as investment has inevitably moved to lower-cost countries in the Far-East, those in the West have lost their jobs too. These serious downsides of free-trade are, indeed, exactly why citizens across the West are rebelling by voting for Brexit and for right-wing political parties. The rise of the Right is, in large part, a consequence of the inadequacies of the free-trade paradigm.

But is protectionism – the raising of import tariffs in a bid to protect domestic industries – the solution? Unfortunately, not. Because protectionism merely unleashes a different kind of destructive global competition: a tit-for-tat raising of tariff barriers, such as we see presently, as nations retaliate against each other in an endless destructive spiral that raises prices, de-stabilizes markets, raises inflation, causes unemployment, and threatens a deep global recession. 

Protectionism might have been a viable option in the days when world trade consisted of simple commodities such as sugar and molasses. But today, with even relatively simple products being composed of myriad components sourced from multiple countries across the planet, it’s a recipe for a huge mess of unintended consequences. 

Protectionism and free-trade, then, are just two sides of the same destructive coin. Both are just different sides of Destructive Global Competition (DGC). On the whole, free-trade is, I think, preferable because it is at least grounded in a rules-based system embodied in the WTO. So, there is at least some measure of cooperation. What’s missing from that economic cooperation is its political counterpart; that is, global agreements on taxes, regulations and re-distributions that take into account the social and environmental impacts of free-trade, permitting each nation to adequately protect the poor, middle-classes and the environment. These, indeed, are the very agreements that Simpol is designed to deliver.

Why, then, do national governments not see this? Because, despite political cooperation being in every nation’s self-interest, any acknowledgement of a need for it would be to acknowledge that their autonomy as national governments must in some sense be curtailed and bound within the broader global agreements I refer to. But that is something their pride, let alone their nation-centric consciousness, would hardly allow. If we leave our politicians to their own devices, we are unlikely to see any exit from the destructive, pointless back-and-forth between free-trade and protectionism, nor from deepening global instability. The responsibility for change, whether we like it or not, lies with us. 

Only we, citizens, can compel our politicians and governments to recognise that full global cooperation – economic and political – is the answer. Simpol not only offers a practical blue-print for the multi-polar cooperative world that’s struggling to emerge, it allows us to use our votes to make it happen. 

Let us know what you think at newsletter(at)simpol.org 

****

First Simpol-pledged Canadian MPs

During the Federal election just concluded, Simpol-Canada succeeded in getting two pledged MPs, the first ever in Canada!

Elizabeth May, co-leader of the Canadian Green Party, and Jessica Fancy-Landry of the Canadian Liberal Party were among nearly 90 candidates to sign the pledge. They came from five different parties, Greens, New Democrats, Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and People’s Party. Big thanks to all our Canadian supporters who contacted their candidates encouraging them to sign. It gives us a great basis from which to build.

That’s it for this newsletter. If you found it helpful, please share it with your networks. We’ve also created a new webpage for our newsletters https://simpol.org/who-we-are/global-politics-of-love/newsletters where you’ll find both our recent newsletters and the Global Politics of Love series as they’re released.

Until next time…

John and the Simpol Team

The times they are a changin'....

… though probably not in a way many of us would like.


Dear Simpol Supporter,
 
We think you'll find the following short article on the dramatic changes following Donald Trump's election as U.S. President. If you like it, please feel free to share it with others. Do also let us know your thoughts by emailing news@simpol.org  Also in this newsletter, a report on Simpol's results in the recent German Federal election.

The war in Ukraine and the new, unstable context for international relations that U.S. President Trump has set in train will have left many feeling very unsettled and fearing for the future. As citizens, however, there’s little we can do about these events. After all, if the world descends into World War 3, we are lost anyway, so no point in worrying about it!
 
Instead, let’s look at the situation more closely. Observing what’s happening in countries across the Western world, we see a splitting of the political Right into the ‘Traditional Right’ and what might be called the ‘Strong-man Right’. In some countries, such as the U.S, the latter has completely absorbed the former, leaving traditional conservatives mute and unable to resist forces they feel deeply uneasy about and deeply contrary to their faith. They may not like the strong men, but there’s no way they’ll ever vote for the Left, absorbed as it is in gender ideology and other postmodern concerns.
 
Meanwhile, the Left has been emasculated by globalisation and Destructive Global Competition (DGC). That is, by the paramount need of all governments to keep their national economy internationally competitive and attractive to inward investors and corporations, which makes it impossible for any government of the Left to attend to its core constituencies: the poor and the environment. The Right, too, whether Traditional or Strong-man, is equally DGC’s unwitting puppet. It, too, can offer no better life to globalization’s losers. But the Strong-man Right, unlike other political factions, can still thrive thanks to its use of divisive rhetoric to attract millions of voters who would normally support the Traditional Right or the Left but who, sensing their lack of solutions, see no other option.
 
With the political centre-ground now thoroughly hollowed out by DGC in multiple countries, both the entire political Left and the Traditional Right are left helpless, incapable of cutting through, and carried along by transnational forces they neither understand nor control. This trajectory, let us be clear, is taking us in one single direction: global authoritarianism. For the underlying aim of the Strong-man Right and the authoritarian oligarchs of both East and West is to undermine global cooperation. To them, any form of international cooperation, whether NATO, the EU or any other, is anathema. Since they believe yet more competition to be the solution, any cooperation is to them at best suspicious, at worst to be eliminated. The only way those of us who reject such a future can now rescue the situation is to cooperate electorally and, most importantly, transnationally. Simpol, the Simultaneous Policy campaign, is now, I suggest, perhaps the only way that can happen.
 
Instead of bemoaning these dire circumstances then, let us focus on what we can do: that is, on using Simpol’s powerful voting methodology to build global cooperation. To those unfamiliar with Simpol, that suggestion may sound fanciful. But to those who understand the novel and uncommonly powerful way it allows us to use our votes, and have seen it in action, it’s not fanciful at all. It’s a great opportunity!
 
Not only is building global cooperation a good in and of itself, if we work consistently and steadily there’s a good chance the downward spiral on which the world now seems set can be arrested, reversed and overcome. Simpol offers us the ability to pull the rug out from under the vicious circle of Destructive Global Competition (DGC) and from under those who, wittingly or not, exacerbate it.
 
My suggestion, then, is that we keep our eyes on the prize. Ignore the world’s descent into chaos and instead stay true to Simpol’s aim of global cooperation. Indeed, as I hope to demonstrate in a series of about 10 short articles, each to be published in forthcoming monthly newsletters, cooperation is a kind of love. And love conquers all. It’s the only thing capable of restoring the world to health, fairness, and peace.

Simpol Germany successfully recruited candidates to support Simpol in the German federal election 2025 despite the short lead time. 71 candidates signed the Simpol pledge.
 
With their commitment, they are sending a clear signal for international cooperation and an innovative policy approach that addresses pressing global challenges - such as climate protection, pandemics, mass migration, international crime, extreme inequality, arms control, tax avoidance, financial market stabilisation, space use, sustainability and AI risk management.
 
“The good response to the invitation to support the Simpol approach for better global governance shows that more and more candidates are recognising the importance of binding international cooperation. This joint initiative is committed to rules-based win-win solutions in a modern, globally networked policy approach which can give the signatories a strategic advantage in the election campaign,” explains Dirk Weller, National Coordinator for Simpol Germany.
 
Particularly in view of the current trend towards international relations based on the law of the jungle, Simpol takes on the role of a counter-proposal for rule-based and consensus-orientated coexistence and is gaining in importance. Artificial intelligence could prove to be another important new factor for participatory global governance. It offers new opportunities to map the complex interests of a large number of nations through suitable multi-layered and dynamic treaties.
 
Despite the overall high level of willingness to sign up to support Simpol, the number of Simpol-pledged Members of the Bundestag fell significantly from 40 to 24. This was primarily due to the poorer election results of the parties with a high proportion of support for Simpol and illustrates how important it is to emphasise the enormous importance of good global governance to all democratic parties.
 
Further information on the new and old Simpol-pledged German politicians can be found here:
 
https://de.simpol.org/grundlagen/unsere-politikerinnen 

The transnational shift to the Right
– why, how, and what we can do about it

Dear Simpol Supporter,

Few presidential elections attract as much attention on a global scale as the US elections. This also has an impact on the Simpol campaign, and we would like to share with you our take on the recent Trump victory and what it means for politics and global cooperation. Do let us know your views by sending them to newsletter(at)simpol.org 

Important though Donald Trump’s victory in the recent Presidential election is, we at Simpol feel it’s important to view this in the context of a broader shift towards the political Right that is happening across multiple countries, especially in the Western world.

Some readers may object that the reverse has been the case in the UK with Labour winning the General election earlier this year. Win they did, but only because the right-wing Reform UK drew support away from the Conservatives, so splitting the Right and consequently letting Labour in. Despite Labour being in government, the shift to the Right is as marked in the UK as elsewhere.

But why and how is this happening?

For those familiar with Simpol and its analysis, this shift shouldn’t come as any surprise. It’s a shift that is transnational, so clearly indicating an international cause. Indeed, it has arisen principally because left-of-centre parties have, because of globalisation, become unable to implement their traditional policies.

Globalisation has emasculated the Left because policies to protect working people and the environment necessarily mean increasing taxes on the rich and the corporations. But, of course, any government that tried to do so would only see business, investment and thousands of jobs move to other countries to avoid those costs. So, it doesn’t happen. That’s why centre-left parties across the West have, under the cover of ‘Third Way’ or other rhetoric, effectively become business-friendly parties and why working people are no longer catered to, feel betrayed, and protest by voting for the populist Right.

Instead of listening to those such as Simpol who offer a transnational solution to what is manifestly a transnational problem, centre-left parties compensated for their impotence by becoming concerned with issues that it seems working people do not rate as highly as their economic wellbeing, such as DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and identity politics. Having so egregiously ignored their core constituency, it’s little wonder they are now paying the price. We can only hope that Trump’s decisive victory has made it clear to the Left, not only that bypassing your constituents’ most vital concern is electorally suicidal, but that its only hope of regaining some potency is through some form of transnational cooperation.

Paradoxically, this is also true for the Right. By pandering to big business and ignoring global problems such as climate change, increasing numbers of people will become displaced. The mass immigration that the Right so vehemently detests, is exactly what it will get.

Thus, by ignoring global solutions such as Simpol, both sides of the political divide keep their heads firmly in the sand and are making matters worse. We – all of us – will suffer the dire consequences unless we make it clear to politicians, Right and Left, that global cooperation, difficult though it may be to achieve, is the only solution.

Whether in the form of Simpol or some other, it’s our only hope.

Dear Simpol Supporter,

With wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East, and with the world’s major powers in economic or political crisis, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the world is on its way to collapse. As is often said, things will have to get worse before they can get better. But that’s why it’s more important than ever for us, Simpol supporters, to show the world a viable way through; a practical route to fruitful global cooperation.

Below are two ways you can help. One is to join one of our election campaign teams. The other is to play and share our new online game, Global Justice for Grown Ups. Better still, do both! Here are the detail:

European, U.S. and UK elections

With important elections coming up very soon, why not join one of our election campaign teams and help to get more candidates and MEPs, UK MPs and U.S. Representatives to sign the Simpol pledge. As current structures for international cooperation fail, politicians need to know that Simpol offers an alternative. There’s lots to be done and we need your help! Interested and have a little time to spare in the coming weeks/months? Find out more by contacting John Bunzl at elections(at)simpol.org

Online Game: Play It and Share It

Simpol is excited to announce  Global Justice for Grown Upsour new Microlearning Game. It’s designed to raise awareness about Simpol and to change the public’s perspective on the need for global cooperation

We worked with Focus Games, a UK company with 20 years of experience in game development, to develop a game that is available wherever you are. Play it on your phone or other mobile device and most importantly share Global Justice for Grown Upswith as many folks as you can. The game is free to the user, no app charge. 

Our small but mighty team of volunteers know that the Simpol strategy for global cooperation is unique. Our challenge is sharing the concepts and principles of Simpol in a digestible way and sharing them broadly enough to elicit a response of the magnitude required to shift the perspective of voters across the globe.

Global Justice for Grown Upswill not solve all our marketing and communication problems but we hope it will bring the message of Simpol to a new and broader citizenship and help Simpol to move along the path to greater recognition and then to even greater political support.

So, our new mantra is Play It and Share It

Global Justice for Grown Ups

That’s all for this newsletter. As always, thank you for your support for Simpol, stay safe and well, and you’ll be hearing again from us soon.

All good wishes,

The Simpol Team

Dear Simpol Supporter,

At this time of increasing global instability, we hope you’re coping and still managing to thrive!
 
In this newsletter, we offer something to think about as well as some campaign news.

• Putting Simpol forward to the Great Transition Initiative

In a recent canvassing of its members, the Great Transition Initiative (GTI) invited participants to outline their proposals for a great transition to a sustainable world.  You can find Simpol founder John Bunzl’s contribution to that discussion at the bottom of this email. Feel free to forward it to anyone you know who’s looking for global solutions!

• General elections in New Zealand and Luxembourg

Simpol will be campaigning to recruit more Members of Parliament in the general elections up-coming in New Zealand and Luxembourg in October. Two sitting MPs in Luxembourg have already signed up. If you’re based in either of those countries and want to help out, please let us know.

• What is Big History?

 This new academic discipline offers a broader perspective on history, helping us to better see the past to better inform the future. John Bunzl engages with Prof. David Christian, one of its leading proponents. See his essay and John Bunzl’s response at https://greattransition.org/gti-forum/big-history-bunzl

• Artificial Intelligence is fast becoming a huge potential threat to humanity.

 Does it need global regulation? World-renowned AI specialist Prof. Yoshua Bengio and John Bunzl discuss it on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07c1ZRUQOeY&t=9s
 
That’s it for this newsletter. Stay well and thank you for your continuing support for Simpol!
 
John and the Simpol Team

Dear Simpol Supporter,

With no end in sight to the war in Ukraine, the global economy heading into recession and climate change and other global problems falling further down the agenda, perhaps like me you’re finding it difficult to see much positive to look forward to as we embark on 2023. At times like this I find it helpful to acknowledge my sadness and then to begin finding my way to action, to the next step along the path. Because, no matter how dim today may seem, tomorrow will come. As sure as your next breath, the next day will arise.
The journey to action begins with understanding what’s happening now at a deeper level so that when that next day comes we’ll have a good idea of where to focus our efforts.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reminds us that western Enlightenment values not only fail to be shared by Russia or China, but will be actively resisted, if necessary by force. Enlightenment values are antithetical to the authoritarianism that Russia, China and some other countries still cling to. The authoritarians, I believe, will ultimately be shown to be on the wrong side of history. But for that to become clear, the West will have to hold together and, given the energy and cost-of-living crises it faces, along with higher defence expenditure, it is far from clear that it will. We can only hope that, somehow, a brighter future can eventually be reached.

In order for that to happen, it’s vital that we’re clear about the past if we’re to construct a better future. For the last 40 years until Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, globalisation gave us a mixed bag. On the one hand, we witnessed rising standards of living for many, especially in the developing world. That was globalisation’s good news. But the bad news was that we experienced stagnant or falling living standards in the West and a generalised inability of all governments to combat climate change and other global threats – an inability I’ve elsewhere explained is driven by the need of every government to keep its economy ‘internationally competitive’ and attractive to corporations and inward investors. My overall assessment of Globalisation 1.0, then, would be that, economically, it was successful. But politically, socially and environmentally, it failed.

To see its economic success, we need only compare the hugely increased prices we are having to pay since Putin’s invasion with the relatively cheap cost of living prior to the war and Globalisation 1.0’s demise. And how beneficial it could be again if the war could end and that cooperation could be re-established. But if the war does end, global economic cooperation must be accompanied by global political and environmental cooperation too if Globalisation 1.0’s down-sides are to be avoided. With climate change demonstrably worsening and other global threats still unresolved, going back to Globalisation 1.0 simply isn’t an option.

At this point, some will no doubt insist that capitalism itself has to change or even be discarded; that what we need is Doughnut Economics, ‘de-growth’, some version of Winston Churchill’s ‘Wartime Economy’, a ‘Steady State economy’, or similar. But don’t all these suggestions miss the point? Because, most if not all of them presuppose some kind of curtailment or restriction of capitalistic expansion – in other words, they entail regulation. But the point is that such regulation needs to be global and simultaneously implemented because, unless it is, any country attempting to regulate alone would only make its economy uncompetitive. And no country alone can or will do that.

For us at Simpol, then, it’s not that global capitalism is destructive, but that it is not adequately regulated. That is, it is not complemented by laws, regulations and transnational re-distributions on the same global scale. And it is precisely that omission that Simpol is designed to rectify. Simpol, or something very like it, then, is a pre-requisite if any of those proposals are to come to widespread fruition. A truly successful globalisation that both retains the benefits of economic globalisation while avoiding its negative fall-outs – lets call it Globalisation 2.0 – needs Simpol or something very, very similar, to achieve it.

With that in mind, all of us at Simpol wish you a happy and hopefully more peaceful New Year! 

Best wishes,

The Simpol Team

Down or Out. Where are we after 30 years of climate negotiations?

In 2019 the UK were confirmed as hosts for COP 26, the United Nations annual climate change conference. Alok Sharma, who was appointed following the sacking of the previous COP President, hailed the nomination as “testimony to the UK’s leading role in the fight against climate change”. Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the conference would be a “turning point for humanity”. And yet, on the final day of the conference, as the ink dried on the Glasgow Climate Pact, Alok Sharma “fought back the tears” and apologised to delegates after a late amendment to a single word. From phasing out, to phasing down coal.

Egypt is currently hosting COP 27 where almost 40,000 people will attend the two-week conference with the shared aim of moving from ‘ambition to action’. It is the latest milestone in a 30-year process since countries adopted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its major headline agreements have been the Kyoto Protocol, last year's Glasgow Climate Pact and most notably the 2015 Paris Agreement, a legally binding international? treaty on climate action. The conferences provide the platform for ambitious climate commitments from countries and companies. It seeks to provide a framework for collective participation and has grown over the years to include a festival of events with businesses, billionaires, philanthropists, celebrities and civil society alongside government negotiations. However, the conference is just the tip of the iceberg. The machinery of the UN, participating countries and thousands of civil society and multi-stakeholder groups are involved in a year-round calendar of meetings and negotiations all while seeking to respond to the latest science on climate change.

The science tells us there is a safe temperate level for our civilisation to survive on earth. Limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5^oC above pre-industrial levels, is a safe enough temperate level for civilisation to survive on Earth. We are at 1.2^oC already. The collective plans of countries resulting from the COP process only stand to limit warming to 2.7 degrees by the year 2100 which is not nearly enough. 1^oC may not seem a lot, but the difference in impact is catastrophic for people and nature. Many argue that limiting the average rise to 1.5^oC doesn’t go far enough but it is the best there is in terms of a global target. And when time is not an option, we must not underestimate seemingly small differences. Whether those differences be 1 degree in temperature or changing a word from “phase out” to “phase down”, the impact will be significant.

So what do we do? Coal and fossil fuels account for most of the world’s emissions. But diverting the global economy away from these energy sources is complicated and requires an equitable transition for all nations. In 2015 developed countries committed to a $100 billion annual pledge for climate finance to developing nations but so far have not fulfilled this promise. Plugging the gap in climate finance is going to be vital if we are to move countries from fossil fuel dependency towards renewable energy security. Right now, developing countries must remain competitive on the global stage and for many fossil fuels are the only viable option. This is why we are seeing a lot of talk about reparations. Developed nations took the fossil fuels out of the ground, now they are telling others to leave them where they are.

One might be tempted to think we are in a lose/lose situation, but that need not be the case. The UN has the science, resources and global platform to deliver solutions at the speeds required, yet frustratingly have so far failed to do so. With Simpol, nations should aim to/need to approach issues like climate change as a multi-issue framework and simultaneously introduce a united policy, and in that way allow nations to focus less on bureaucracy and more on actionable policy. Simultaneous policy requires governments in all jurisdictions, worldwide, to implement policy shifts at once, so that no one country or group of countries gains at the expense of others. By tackling climate change along with tax avoidance and migration, we would be able to achieve the necessary trade-offs with less industrialised countries so that they can transition away from fossil fuels.

As for COP 27, what can we expect? It is another essential milestone in the race to address climate challenges but when every nation, business and individual has a different vision of how to overcome them, a unified and cohesive response is essential. And yet, leadership in the global climate fight is still not consistent.

As an example, despite the UK’s ongoing Presidency role until COP 27, the new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak only confirmed attending Egypt at the last minute, and the UK government blocked life-long environmentalist King Charles III from attending the event. The UK’s delegation is led by Alok Sharma, who will hand over his presidency during the conference. Sharma is currently not attending cabinet meetings with the UK government, having not been given a cabinet position in the latest government reshuffle. It doesn't feel like a country leading the fight on climate change in the long term.

The Simpol Team