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 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 will, I hope, feel drawn to and motivated to support. 

In these articles you’ll see that I invoke some of the teachings and sayings of the leaders of those faiths. This is not because I hold any strong religious conviction, but rather because all faiths and spiritual traditions call upon us to ‘love our neighbours’ – which must mean all of humanity – and yet they offer no practical political means to achieve it. My purpose, then, is simply to show how Simpol is consistent with their teachings and may therefore fill that gap. So, here we go…

Did you know that love and politics are historic bedfellows – from Tolstoy to Gandhi to Martin Luther King Jr. and long before? In our 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.

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.’ Eros is romantic love, philia brotherly love or friendship, but it is agape that concerns us here: the injunction to love all humanity; to will the good of the other. Love in the sense of agape is, Hartnett says, ‘ … a theological tradition built on a commandment to love God and neighbour, which goes so far as to proclaim, ‘God is love’.’  ‘Loving our neighbours’ must, therefore, include not just our family or members of our nation, but the entire global human 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 being smothering, so can governance. It’s therefore vital, especially at the global level, that it is properly designed to best approximate 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 to 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 love and politics at the global level and why Simpol is so relevant. Meanwhile, please send us your thoughts, reactions, 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 and the Simpol team

June 2025

Yes, anger! It arises when we start to understand that ‘to love all our neighbours as ourselves’ our love has to be global. It’s not just that all people of the world deserve love, protection and good governance, it’s that cooperative global governance is now the only way they, and we, can give or receive it.

Such a bold statement may provoke ridicule, frustration and yes … anger. ‘You mean to tell me we have to wait for global cooperation before we’ll ever see global justice?’

The objections will be plenty; especially from those who’ve long campaigned against problems like extreme wealth inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, nuclear weapons and so on. For decades, many have invested their lives in protesting against rapacious corporations and complacent governments in the belief that, if only their protests are loud enough and long enough, their demands will be met. So the “outlandish” notion that only global cooperation can bring solutions will just further activate the activists!

That is … until they understand or experience how a global economy actually works.

In fact, globalisation has completely changed the game both for governments and corporations – indeed for all of us. Hardly surprising given how accustomed we’ve become to a centuries-old modern nation-state system (from 1648 till the 1980’s) where national governments were relatively autonomous; able to act independently and decisively. Now, under globalisation where capital, investment and corporations move easily across national borders, any government’s ability to act on problems activists and campaigners try to combat is drastically curtailed. Far from being autonomous actors, governments today find themselves confined to a narrow policy straight-jacket. In Simpol terms: Destructive Global Competition (DGC).

For those unfamiliar with DGC, here’s how it works:

To assure a healthy national economy and economic growth, every government on earth must keep their country relatively attractive to global investors, corporations and the jobs they bring; by remaining ‘internationally competitive’. It’s like dating – you want to present your best self. But here’s the problem: for global investors and corporations, laws and taxes that protect society and the environment tend to make a country less attractive and less competitive, forcing them into tighter regulations and higher taxes – which means higher costs and lower profits. Thus, any government trying to raise taxes or tighten regulations much in advance of other governments risks losing investors, corporations and jobs to a more competitive country. That’s why global problems remain largely unaddressed. 

Clearly, DGC is a vicious circle. It locks governments in, preventing them from acting on imperatives affecting us all. And so the world steadily turns toward disaster as the activists’  strategies of protest, blame and shame fall on deaf ears. Activists please realise: it’s not that governments don’t want to act on global problems. It’s that thanks to DGC, they can’t.

True: sometimes governments and corporations do accede to activists’ demands, which seems to negate the reality of DGC. An example: for many years protests delayed the building of a third runway at London’s Heathrow airport, a development seen to enhance Heathrow’s competitiveness vis-a-vis other main European airports. However, these ‘victories’ inevitably turn out to be mere delays. Sooner or later, like it or not, the demands of economic growth and international competitiveness – in other words, DGC - override everything.

That’s not to say governments can’t do anything at all to protect society and the environment, nor that the work of countless NGOs to ameliorate suffering is futile. It’s merely to say that they aren‘t enough and can never be enough while DGC runs the show. Yes, we’re angry at social injustices! Yes, we’re frustrated by a world that’s suffering! And yes, it’s hard to swallow the bitter truth: that as long as DGC reigns supreme, we can expect nothing to truly change. Which means that the governance needed for us to ‘love all our neighbours globally’ remains out of reach.

Worldwide we are therefore invited on a ‘Hero’s Journey’, to unite in overcoming DGC and, in doing so, to reach our specie’s maturity: a globally cooperative human society. As Sukhil Gupta points out, ‘Stories in all the three Abrahamic religions are, in large part, about the grand goal of bringing disparate communities of humanity together under the same God. Indeed, the goal is to understand that we all come from the same God, and are simply on a journey to return home….. We were separated so that we might undergo the journey of reuniting with one another.’ Simpol offers us a novel and powerful way to navigate that Hero’s Journey.

But before we can hear Simpol’s message of global love, we have to go through a kind of grieving process, much like Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s ‘5 Stages of Grief’. We have to move through the difficult stages of Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance to see that we are all DGC’s prisoners, all in the same boat. When we do, we’ll see that what the world most needs now is forgiveness.

Join me next time as we embrace forgiveness, our first step on that transformative Hero’s Journey.

Meanwhile, please share these newsletters with colleagues, friends and family. And as ever, do send us your thoughts and feedback to newsletter(at)simpol.org  We appreciate hearing from you.

With all good wishes,

John and the Simpol Team

John Bunzl – International Simultaneous Policy Organisation – https://simpol.org -  July 2025

Recognising that we are all in the same boat, as we did in the previous part of this series, is a necessary starting point for transformative collective action. But we are still all different. We come from different cultures, countries, speak different languages, see the world differently, and so on. We are diverse, yet all in the same boat too.

All faith and spiritual traditions recognise this paradox and seek to transcend it. The Koran, for example, appeals to us: "O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise each other)." The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, too, recognises the unity-diversity paradox: "As all the spokes are held together in the hub and felly of a wheel, just so in this Soul all things, all Gods, all worlds, all breathing things, all selves are held together."

God - or just life itself - seems to be reminding us that we are both part and whole, both diverse and unified, simultaneously. And this paradox is reflected in Simpol’s central aim of bringing all or sufficient nations together to implement global solutions, simultaneously. That is, it seeks to include all nations, whatever their level of development, culture, politics or language (i.e. their diversity) and bring them toimplement Simpol’s policies together, simultaneously (i.e. in unity).

In fact, simultaneity itself reconciles unity and diversity.

Even though we are and always will be independent, diverse individuals, we can still be united through acting together simultaneously. Simultaneity is unity and diversity … simultaneously!  Simpol’s ability to reconcile opposites in this way is a mark of its love; of its capacity to transcend opposites and resolve conflicts. That reconciling love, as I hope you’ll see, is the underlying theme that runs through A Global Politics of Love for People of All Faiths and None.

Another example is how Simpol’s concept of simultaneous implementation offers a solution to humanity’s timeless struggle to reconcile national self-interest with global common interest.Let me explain: The need for simultaneous implementation only arises because now, under globalisation, we’re faced with a whole new category of problem; problems which no nation alone can address without suffering a first-mover competitive disadvantage like climate change, extreme wealth inequality, nuclear weapons, regulating A.I, and so on.

This new category of problems gives rise to two distinct types of policy: those policies that need simultaneous implementation and those that don’t. Those that do, we call ‘simultaneous policies’. Those that don’t, we call ‘unilateral policies’. The former simultaneous category represents global unity. The latter unilateral category, national diversity. Differentiating between the two allows them to be reconciled and healthily integrated; the latter, being implemented by nations independently; the former, through Simpol simultaneously. In that way, both can be harmoniously pursued in parallel and brought together in productive union.

This critical differentiation between unilateral and simultaneous policies is also an act of loving respect for all nations and their cultural and political differences. That’s because Simpol expresses the principle of subsidiarity; the idea that only what cannot be done nationally is taken up for action globally. Indeed, by restricting Simpol only to those policies requiring simultaneous implementation, it is prevented from interfering in any nation’s domestic affairs.

Whereas the United Nations often imposes progressive Western values on developing countries in various domains, Simpol would not and cannot. While projecting such values may be the aim of other organisations, Simpol avoids this by focusing purely on productive cooperation. Indeed, the need for simultaneous implementation itself prevents Simpol from telling nations what to do or what not to do. Rather, it invites them to cooperate only on issues where simultaneous action is necessary, thereby solving global problems while respecting their sovereignty, individuality and cultural distinctiveness.

In the first part of the Global Politics of Love series, I suggested that a healthy family offers us a good model for overcoming such differences. As Baha’i leader ‘Abdu’l-Bahá suggests, "A family is a nation in miniature. Simply enlarge the circle of the household, and you have the nation. Enlarge the circle of nations, and you have all humanity." All parents know that their children are, like nations, at different ages and stages of development, so their needs and characters are bound to differ. A certain amount of freedom is therefore needed, including the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. But order and unity are, of course, also needed. Here again, unity/order and diversity/freedom have to be reconciled.

At the global level, Simpol invites international unity and cooperation where it is needed, but respects individuality and diversity where it is not. That, as Buddhists might recognise, is ‘the Middle Way’.

That, again, is love.

What do you think? How do you see unity and diversity being reconciled in the world? Drop us a line!

Until next time.

John and the Simpol team.

John Bunzl – International Simultaneous Policy Organisation – September 2025

According to many religious perspectives, God gives us free will so we can choose whether or not to love and follow God. God allows us to make our own decisions, experience the consequences of our actions, and develop a meaningful relationship to God through our own choices … because forced love wouldn’t be true love. God’s love, it seems, is invitational.

Similarly, so is Simpol. It invites nations to adopt its win-win framework for solving global problems; a framework, crucially, that doesn’t compromise their national interests. It also invites we, citizens, to use our votes to incentivise governments towards that goal. Just when we thought our votes had become pretty meaningless, Simpol transforms them into the most powerful tool for global solutions. But how is this done? How does Simpol engage our votes without being a political party? And how can our national  votes also be global? How can they make a difference? Here again, Simpol bears similarities not only to the principles of transformative evolutionary change, but to all the world’s religious faiths and spiritual traditions: the loving capacity to transform and transcend.

As a citizen you liberate and transform your vote simply by signing on to the Simpol campaign. By doing so, you’re informing politicians that you will give strong preference at all future elections to politicians or parties that have signed the pledge to implement Simpol’s policies alongside other governments. In that way, politicians and parties who fail to sign the pledge risk losing votes to those who do. The larger Simpol’s bloc of supporters becomes – and it’s growing all the time - the more it becomes in the vital electoral interests of all politicians and parties to sign the pledge.

Simpol itself, then, is neither aligned to any political party and nor does it force governments to act. It only allows we citizens to harness our collective voting power to make it in the interests of governments to do so. Simpol itself only invites,illuminates, liberates, and by providing a framework for win-win cooperation … loves.

Too good to be true? Not once you realise that Simpol’s relatively small number of supporters have already caused over 100 UK Members of Parliament to sign the pledge.  Significant numbers of MPs in some other countries have signed it too. And they come from right across the party-political spectrum. These are the signs of Simpol’s globally liberating power and potential; its potential to reconcile, transform and transcend.

No other campaign, to my knowledge, offers us such a uniquely promising opportunity to use our votes to solve global problems. Citizenship, after all, means nothing without a legally binding vote.Yet Simpol recognises that not everyone lives in a country with voting privileges. So, for those citizens from non-democratic nations,Simpol invites their governments to participate instead.

Note, however, that unlike a political party Simpol doesn’t demand your electoral loyalty. Signing on to Simpol doesn’t mean you can only vote for politicians or parties who’ve signed the Pledge. It simply means you give them strong preference. That’s critical because it means we each  retain the ultimate right to vote as we  please while still signalling to politicians that they’re much more likely to receive our votes if they sign the Pledge. That’s how Simpol transforms our votes from sterile to fertile and extends their power from national  to global. And it’s working!

This capacity to reconcile national self-interests with the global common interest and the ability to transcend party-political divisions are signs of how Simpol embodies the brotherly love of Agape; that we are all in this together. In that vein, Simpol offers a benevolent playbook by which to reclaim said love and respect; for self, other and as the citizens we all are. It’s a grand responsibility made manifest  by employing our right to vote within Simpol’s accommodating context.Moreover, Simpol  not only confers upon us the new right of global citizenship, it reclaims what we’ve lost nationally, enabling us to see how both national and global are  inextricably linked.

Simpol’s invitation replaces force with choice and invites each of us - whether citizens, politicians, parties or governments - to a transformative  politics that’s in all our interests. It invites us to a global politics of love.

How do you feel about your vote? Does this help you reconsider your relationship to it?  Let us know what you think!

Until next time,

John and the Simpol team

John Bunzl – International Simultaneous Policy Organisation – October 2025

In the previous newsletter, we saw how simultaneity liberates our right to vote. This time let’s talk about another way that simultaneity opens new doors for us, breaks down barriers, and creates new worlds.

Currently we are far from the new world we yearn for. As I’ve demonstrated elsewhere, today’s global economy is driven by the vicious circle of destructive global competition (DGC), a force engendered by the ability of capital and corporations to move their investments or operations to wherever in the world they can make the highest profits. Always needing inward investment to maintain employment and growth, governments are therefore forced to compete destructively with each other to keep their economies internationally competitive; as attractive as possible to investors and corporations. The result: global investors and corporations win, while ordinary citizens and the environment lose. Under DGC, then, there’s simply no way to ‘love all our neighbours’ globally, only a way to compete destructively which, ultimately, will ruin us all. That’s why I characterise DGC as a vicious circle. Because, vicious it is.

The most vicious thing, however, is the confining, straight-jacketing effect DGC has on our minds. The harder we all compete, the more blind we become to any other possibility. Because, in any competition, no one can give up without foregoing the potential spoils. Continuing and intensifying the competition seems the only way to win. Our minds cannot see anything else.

We see this mental confinement today in how politicians try to reconcile global interests, such as drastically cutting carbon emissions, with national interests like keeping their economies internationally competitive. But since DGC makes these two objectives fundamentally incompatible, all politicians can do is try to persuade citizens (and perhaps themselves) that they are compatible; to have us swallow the lie that in the age of globalisation environmental sustainability and social justice can somehow be reconciled with economic growth and competitiveness when, in fact, they can’t. All the while that we remain wholly submerged in the current context of DGC (which obstructs our ability to see any other viable context), we are forced, in effect, to lie to ourselves. Our minds consequently remain closed, seeing yet more competition as the only answer. In religious terms, we might say that this mental confinement confines us to a world of sin.

How do we resolve this? How can we put up with having to play DGC’s sinful game while at the same time break out of it? That seems like a contradiction in terms; a question with no answer. Here, we might recall the Bible story in Matthew 22 when the Pharisees sought to trick Jesus into incriminating himself by posing a similarly impossible question: ‘Is it lawful to pay taxes unto Caesar?’. Impossible, because had Jesus answered no, he’d have incriminated himself. Had he said yes, he would have betrayed everything he believed in. Taking from his pocket a coin with Caesar’s head on it, Jesus’s answer was ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and what is God’s unto God.’

For us with DGC, it’s a similar dilemma because nations cannot stay competitive and solve global problems. But this is where Simpol’s understanding of DGC and its articulation of simultaneity allow us to escape DGC’s straight-jacket. That’s because the very idea of simultaneity – all or sufficient nations implementing policies simultaneously - means no nation would suffer a competitive disadvantage. What was once impossible suddenly becomes possible. Our minds are thus opened to the radical new possibilities and solutions that become available to us if we cooperate. Simultaneous implementation, together with the powerful way that Simpol invites us to use our votes, combine to produce a powerful process potentially capable of achieving binding, cooperative global governance; the governance needed for us to “love” all our neighbours globally and stay competitive.

This, then, is how Simpol releases us from mental confinement, transforming sterile policies into fertile ones that enable them – and the new world we yearn for - to be brought within humanity’s collective grasp. Just as Jesus found an answer to a seemingly impossible dilemma, Simpol does the same.

For perhaps the first time in human history we citizens now have, in the form of Simpol, a way using our votes in national elections to ensure beneficial global outcomes – a way, we might say, of voting globally; of making ourselves genuine world citizens. Supporting Simpol, then, is a way we can each make a very personal statement; by electorally “taking sides” in a way that shows all humanity that we are, in fact, all on the same side.

Ask yourself: is there any valid excuse not to support Simpol? And by supporting it do we really have anything to lose?’

Give us your thoughts – they’re important to us!

Until then…

John Bunzl – International Simultaneous Policy Organisation – https://simpol.org - Nov. 2025

In this instalment I thought it might be useful to show how Simpol’s love transcends and reconciles a very thorny and highly divisive topic: mass-migration. After all, no point in paddling in the shallows. Time to dive in at the deep end!

Regardless of which side of this debate you’re on – pro- or anti-immigration - I see both sides as informed by love, but each emphasises a different aspect of love, both of which are valid and true, but both are also, I suggest, partial and incomplete. 

Generally speaking, the liberal Left – those who author David Goodhart described as the ‘anywheres’ - tend towards ‘open borders’, globalism and multi-culturalism, seeing all humans as similar and equally deserving of love, respect and care. The Right - the ‘somewheres’ - conversely feel this too but, in seeing that cultures have very different value-sets which often conflict, tend towards national identities and ‘closed borders’. They understand cultures as deep, distinct and different. They recognise the value of their own culture and want to preserve it. 

Both these opposing philosophies express love but at different scales and depths. The Left’s love, we might say, is broad but too shallow. The Right’s, deep but too narrow.

How to reconcile them?

If we see mass-migration as a systemic response to instability and insecurity, we can see it as connected to the present lack of global cooperation and, indeed, to the present destructively competitive global geo-political and economic system.  This global and systemic view leads us to realise that any intervention at any level lower than that of the whole system is likely to prove futile. Try as the Right does to love and protect its own culture by closing borders, the migrants still come. Try as the Left does to love all cultures by welcoming and trying to integrate large numbers of migrants, those efforts fail too, sometimes with disastrous local consequences. The Left also ignores that mass-migration often deprives developing countries of their youngest and brightest. It saps those countries of a viable future. 

Being partial and incomplete, both loves fail and leave politics increasingly polarised. As each side looks ever-harder for solutions at a national level where none are to be found, it’s not surprising that destructive polarisation, unrest and fear result.

For both Right and Left, a full and complete, broad and deep love is only to be found at the global level through global cooperation. Why? Because, only at that level could global markets and transnational corporations be properly taxed and regulated, thereby raising the necessary funds to support developing countries in building viable national economies – ones their people no longer feel a need to migrate from. Not only would that stem mass-migration, it would support the development of good governance and viable national cultures everywhere. It would, as the Right desires, protect cultures in developed countries from dilution while also, as the Left desires, support the growth of strong, vibrant national cultures in developing countries. What was, at the national level, an irreconcilable either-or proposition can thus become, through global cooperation, a fully reconciled both-and proposition at the global level. 

However, as previous newsletters have shown, global cooperation is only likely to be achieved through the simultaneous implementation of the policies the world so desperately needs. Those policies are, indeed, the same ones that will stabilize and bring a lasting global peace and security; the same ones that will stem mass-migration so people everywhere can make a decent living in their home country. After all, isn’t that what most people want? 

Beyond closed-off national cultures or the failed concept of multi-culturalism, Simpol invites us towards to what I’ve elsewhere described as simul-culturalism; a form of global cooperation that simultaneously honours each and every national culture in its own context and at its own particular level of development because each is supported by a global economy that is genuinely fair to all. 

That, I suggest, is a love both broad and deep; a love that’s national and global; a love that is both somewhere and anywhere. A love that’s Simpol … and an echo, I like to think, of God’s love. Of course, none of this means that Right and Left should cease their efforts, partial though they may be. Simply, they should add to them by supporting Simpol, thereby bridging us toward a more complete, broad and deep, authentic, global love.

Let us know your thoughts!

Until next time,
John and the Simpol team.
 

Today we see two worldviews in conflict. The Modern worldview, including nationalism, meritocracy, competitiveness, hierarchy, closed borders, etc, tends to coalesce in the political Right and generally represents a more masculine way of perceiving the world. It emphasises autonomy and self-reliance. Set against it is the Postmodern worldview, including globalism, multi-culturalism, open borders, equality, common interest, international cooperation, etc, which tends to coalesce in the political Left and represents a more feminine perspective. It emphasises interdependence and cooperation.

This divide is reflected in a widening voting gap across the world with women voting increasingly Left, and men somewhat more Right.[i]  This split is, of course, only a tendency and doesn’t apply to all men or women. However, it is a very worrying trend. The two worldviews – Male/Modern and Female/Postmodern – represent very different ways of perceiving the world: women and Postmodernism tending to prioritise feelings over facts; men and Modernism, the reverse.

But neither worldview, can get any further alone. Both are stuck, and the world is disintegrating as a result. Male/Modernism is failing with masculine global market competition leading to heightened international tensions and a widening gap between the globally mobile rich and the nationally rooted poor. Meanwhile, its ‘market failures’ such as climate change are left to worsen. Female/Postmodernism, however, fares no better: it has only critique to offer but no solutions.  

The Left has no solutions because, in our globalized economy, policies to protect working people and the environment require increased taxes on the rich and the corporations. But any government that tried would only see business, investment and thousands of jobs move to other countries to avoid those taxes. So, it doesn’t happen. No government dares. Feeling no longer catered to by Left parties, citizens increasingly protest by voting for the populist Right.

Right-of-centre parties hoover up these voters and yet the reality is that these parties, too, must bow to global markets. When in government, they too must keep their national economies ‘internationally competitive’ and attractive to global investors and corporations. Their promises of a better life for globalisation’s losers hold no more water than the promises of the Left. That may not be obvious yet, but as parties of the Right increasingly become governments, it will be soon.

In short, both Male/Modernism and Female/Postmodernism are boxed in by global markets; both are boxed in by globalization’s key underlying force: the vicious circle of DGC – Destructive Global Competition.

Here, Simpol offers a bridge that promises, potentially, a new, more harmonious world at a new higher level: a higher synthesis that transcends and includes both worldviews. But how?

Before answering that, lets acknowledge three facts: first, that we need both national autonomy (the male principle) and we need global cooperation (the female principle). National autonomy alone – the male principle - no longer suffices because globalization has severely weakened the autonomy of nation-states by strengthening forces and entities that lie beyond national control. The chief driver of this dynamic is, of course, globalization and, in particular, our old friend DGC - Destructive Global Competition.

Second, much as nations try to isolate themselves and regain autonomy through ‘my nation first’ policies, they are doomed to fail because neither global economic interconnectedness nor the internet nor mass migration are going to stop. Globalization, whether we like it or not, is here to stay. The paradoxical reality then, is that global cooperation  – the feminine principle – is what’s needed to rein in DGC and so restore an appropriate level of autonomy and stability – the masculine principle - to nation-states. It is the lack of feminine global cooperation that’s causing masculine national autonomy to fail.

Third, existing global institutions which are supposed to provide that cooperation are no longer fit for purpose. Created after World War 2 in circumstances which no longer apply, they’re simply not configured to deliver the cooperation that globalization and its many problems demand.

Now, recognising that we need to include both male and female principles, our first task is to differentiate between them in terms of policy and politics. Which policies are ‘male’ and which ‘female’?

Differentiating between them is easy when we acknowledge that ‘male’ policies are those that any nation can freely implement unilaterally because they would have no significant adverse impact on a nation’s economic competitiveness. As we saw in previous newsletters, we call these policies ‘unilateral policies’. Being unilateral, they express national autonomy and independence – the masculine principle. ‘Female’ policies, by contrast, are those that nations cannot implement alone because they would have a significant adverse impact on the nation’s competitiveness; policies like drastically cutting carbon emissions, combatting extreme wealth inequality, regulating A.I., and so on. These policies we call ‘simultaneous policies’ because the only way they can be safely implemented is if all or sufficient nations do so simultaneously. They express cooperation and inter-dependence - the feminine principle.

Having successfully differentiated between them, we see that ‘male/unilateral policies’ can be implemented by individual governments independently, as they are today. The mechanism for implementing them – national governance - already exists. For ‘female/simultaneous’ policies, on the other hand, no established mechanism exists, which is why we need Simpol or something very similar. With the cooperation Simpol would provide, a greater measure of stability and autonomy would be restored to nations, putting masculine and feminine back into productive balance in a way that truly suits our globalized world. If Simpol were successful, masculine national self-interest and feminine global common interest would at last become integrated: a higher synthesis.

In this process, and recalling the importance of humility and surrender, Masculine Modernity comes to see that it is not, after all, all-powerful: some things can only be done through global cooperation (the feminine). Feminine Postmodernity, conversely, comes to see that critique and trying to enforce globalist equality doesn’t work and that masculine order in the form of a healthy differentiation between national and global levels is essential. Masculine and feminine each acknowledge their limitations; each humbles itself and, in doing so, acknowledges its need for the other.

In that humility, masculine Modernity and feminine Postmodernity could, we hope, join together in Simpol. With Simpol, all or sufficient nations in all their diversity (the inclusive feminine) would be brought to implement agreed policies together, simultaneously (the ordered masculine). This, in a spiritual-political sense, would be the consummation of their union and would be ‘made flesh’ in simultaneous policy implementation and the renewed stability it would bring to nations individually and to the world as a whole. Simpol, then, could be said to represent an aspect of both the divine masculine and divine feminine, together in productive union. Global love and complementarity in action!

As we start the New Year of 2026, let’s all of us - men and women – join together in renewing our efforts to realise Simpol’s potential. All that’s required is your support and to spread the word!

Happy New Year!

John and the Simpol Team

In a previous newsletter I acknowledged that, while governance can be an instrument of love, if poorly conceived it can equally be an instrument of oppression. I also suggested that a healthy family gives us a good model for how a healthy form of multipolar cooperative governance might look. In a world of diverse cultures, nations and political systems, the task of designing a form of global cooperation acceptable and beneficial to all may seem an impossible task – until, that is, we take a closer look. 

As ever with Simpol, simultaneity is the golden key that opens many critical doors. 

Doorway 1: 
If all or sufficient nations implement agreed policies simultaneously, a basis for cooperation is established which avoids any nation suffering a first-mover  competitive disadvantage. Policies that were once impossible become both possible and advantageous. This is fundamental for making global problem-solving policies feasible. Simultaneity embodies reconciliation, fairness, equality, security and reciprocity. It opens a door - a crucial escape-hatch - from the vicious circle of destructive global competition (DGC) that currently grips all nations, and us all by default.

Doorway 2: 
Once through that door, others then open. If nations can agree to implement policies simultaneously, there’s no need for an over-arching world government nor for any other top-down bureaucracy. Agreement also ensures that, whether a nation is democratic or not, all nations can be included. Moreover, by negotiating two or more complementary global issues at a time instead of just one, a nation’s loss on one issue can be compensated with a win on another. This creates opportunities for fruitful trade-offs and a strong likelihood of achieving robust agreements whereby every nation gains. As discussed in a previous newsletter, strategic parenting necessarily includes all family members, so increasing the chances of fruitful cooperation. So, too with the global family of nations.

Doorway 3: 
The very concept of simultaneous implementation implies the principle of subsidiarity. Only policies requiring a global and simultaneous approach are included in Simpol, thereby leaving all other policies to independent national self-determination. This distinction – what Simpol calls the ‘Subsidiarity Criterion’ - establishes two distinct categories of policy: simultaneous policies and unilateral policies. Again like a strategic parent, Simpol calls for conformity and unity where needed for the whole family’s best interests, while also respecting, maintaining and safeguarding each child’s autonomy and individuality to the greatest extent possible. 

Doorway 4:
This crucial policy differentiation opens yet another door; a vehicle for enhancing national sovereignty for both policy categories! By leaving nations to independently decide / implement all unilateral policies as they currently do, Simpol fully respects every nation’s cultural distinctiveness and autonomy. At the same time, by offering a fruitful basis for implementing simultaneous policies, Simpol enhances national sovereignty by providing a framework that allows nations to solve the global problems they cannot solve today. By appropriately differentiating between unilateral and simultaneous policies, national sovereignty is fortified.

Doorway 5:
When a multi-issue agreement is reached that’s in every nation’s self-interest, it will inevitably be in their common interest to establish agreed-upon measures to enforce, verify and protect it. By designing cooperation in everyone’s interests, everyone will want to uphold it.

Doorway 6:
A global, simultaneously implemented agreement need not - nor should it - be a one-size-fits-all proposition. Just as national measures such as income tax are usually graduated (the rich pay more and the poor pay less), so the same can and should apply at the global level. Like each child in a family, every nation in the global family is different, has differing needs and abilities. Its strategic parenting, therefore, must ensure that global cooperative governance is tailored to suit each and all.

The Gateway:
As I’ve pointed out before, Simpol remains an invitation; not only to nations, political parties and politicians, but crucially to each of us as citizens.  It’s a loving invitation to those in democratic nations, to use our votes to make ourselves genuine world citizens … and to the governments of non-democratic nations to join with us in solving global problems.

This is what win-win global governance can pragmatically look like for our multi-polar world, and it rests in the palm of our voting hands. This is a rare moment in history when the gateway is now open. Simpol welcomes us through it.

John Bunzl – International Simultaneous Policy Organisation – Feb. 2026
 

In this final instalment in this Global Politics of Love series, I wanted to end by proposing a piece of music which, if supporters like it, might be adopted as Simpol’s anthem. Music is the language of the soul and there’s a particular piece which, as soon as I heard it, seemed to express Simpol perfectly. It spoke to the simplicity and majesty of humanity finally standing up and taking responsibility for our common future.

That piece is the gospel-influenced song People Get Ready by Curtis Mayfield[i]. When I first heard it on the radio driving to work a few weeks after the idea for Simpol first arrived, I nearly drove off the road! It just seemed to say it all! There are a number of versions, but the one I heard and still feel to be the most powerful is Aretha Franklin’s[ii]. Here are the lyrics:

People get ready

There’s a train a’comin.

Don’t need no baggage

You just get on board.

All you need is faith

To hear the diesels hummin

Don’t need no ticket

We’ll just thank the Lord.

I believe, I believe

I believe, I do believe.

People get ready

For the train to Jordan.

It’s pickin up passengers

From coast to coast.

Faith is the key

Open the doors and board ‘em.

There’s hope for all

Among those loved the most.

There ain’t no room for the hopeless sinner

Who would hurt all mankind

Just to save his own.

Have pity on those

Whose chances grow thinner.

For there’s no hiding place

Against the Kingdom’s throne.

So, people get ready
For the train a-comin'
You don't need no baggage
You just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear the diesels humming
Don't need no ticket
You just thank, you just thank the Lord

Yeah
Oh
Yeah
Oh

I'm getting ready
I'm getting ready
This time I'm ready
This time I'm ready

Allow me explain how those lyrics relate to Simpol and why they spoke to me so powerfully. The first line, ‘People get ready’, calls on us to realise there is something important we have to get ready for. Global cooperation is vital, urgent, and the Simpol train is coming which, if we board it by signing on, can grow and lead us to a better, more harmonious world.

‘You don’t need no baggage’ signifies that anyone and everyone is welcome. Indeed, ‘all you need is faith’; faith that the goal of global cooperation can be achieved. And ‘you don’t need no ticket’ signifies that it doesn’t matter what country you come from, what political party or political viewpoint you hold. Never mind! ‘You just get on board’ because, as previous instalments have shown, Simpol transcends, includes and reconciles those divisions.

‘People get ready for the train to Jordan’ signifies that the Simpol train can restore us to a fairer, more secure and more harmonious world. The world to which we truly belong and have always belonged. And since ‘It’s pickin’ up passengers from coast to coast’, increasing numbers are signing on to the campaign, increasing its momentum while reminding us, always, that ‘faith is the key’: having faith that, however ambitious and fantastical it may seem, global and simultaneous implementation can be realised. And those who sign on and board the train are ‘loved the most’; that is, they forgive themselves and each other: they love!

‘There ain’t no room for the hopeless sinner who would hurt all mankind just to save his own’ suggests that those who choose not to sign on and refuse to board have made the choice to place their own self-interest above our global common interest. Some artists, notably Sting, change these words to ‘There’s even room for the hopeless sinner…’[iii] which I prefer in the sense that we are all the prisoners of Destructive Global Competition (DGC), all hopeless sinners. So, there is in any case room for everyone. All that’s required is to sign on in good faith; to get on board.

‘Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner’ is, indeed, an appeal to realise that DGC produces suffering and we should have pity on those who do suffer and seek, through Simpol as well as in other ways, to better the circumstances of everyone globally, especially the poor.

‘For there’s no hiding place against the Kingdom’s throne’ has always been a bit unclear to me. But I take it to mean that, ultimately, there is no avoiding that we are all one, all different yet all in the same boat, and that sooner or later global cooperation will be seen to be in everyone’s best interests – our only salvation. After all, there’s no hiding from God or, in secular terms, as I’ve argued elsewhere[iv], from evolution’s trajectory towards ever-larger scales of cooperation. Try to hide, and we won’t survive.

And then the final verse is a reprise to underline the message but adding: ‘This time I’m ready’ which not all versions include, but to my mind is vital. It signifies that, to the extent that no other viable alternative is available, signing on to Simpol is a personal responsibility; it is each of us standing up, personally, proudly and resolutely, using our vote to claim our individual, personal right and responsibility to global citizenship. This time I’m ready: yes, I am! It’s either now or never.

What better anthem could we have for global unity?

Are you ready?

John Bunzl – International Simultaneous Policy Organisation – https://simpol.org - March. 2026

Dear Simpol Supporter.

If any optimism can be drawn from the wars in Ukraine and Iran it’s that the superpowers may be learning that, for all their military might, they cannot dominate; they cannot impose their will. Could this herald their humbling? Could it make global cooperation more likely? If there’s to be any international order at all, it looks very much as if it’s slowly heading, despite all the kicking and screaming, in Simpol’s general direction.

But what is that direction? Is Simpol globalist or nationalist? Or is it something so different and unique – something so reconciling and transcendent - that we need a new term to describe it? That term is simulculturalism. We explain it in the piece below.
Before that, however, a few short items of news:

Danish elections March 2026
Danish National Coordinator, Mette Millard, reports that, although we didn’t achieve any pledged MPs, we received twelve pledges from candidates that represented almost the entire Danish political spectrum. They came from four parties: Moderaterne, Venstre, Radikale Venstre and Alternativet. That is, two from the centre-right, one from the centre-left and one from the left. This is only the second Danish general election we’ve fought, so it’s a very encouraging result. See the candidates who pledged at dk.simpol.org/hvad-goer-vi/vi-spoerger-politikerne 

Dutch podcast interview
Our Dutch supporters may want to check out our Dutch National Coordinator, Kees Kerremans, being interviewed about Simpol on this podcast https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ypWPcyG91y55wS32pmuQ8?si=YS8_DvtkRECvjNrTTXB9OQ&t=0&pi=TqnBkz34TYG_O  

Simpol/SmartSettle collaboration
A paper describing Simpol’s collaboration with SmartSettle Infinity, an AI-driven multi-user negotiation platform designed to help nations reach win-win agreements on climate change, has be published by the Toda Peace Institute. A short overview including links to the paper and an explanatory video is at https://drive.google.com/file/d/195oZ2ckDXi7aFmPIx161W9CHZHe8jSE_/view

Global Politics of Love
The final part in our Global Politics of Love series, part 10, concludes with a piece of music; call it an anthem to global cooperation. You can find it at https://simpol.org/who-we-are/global-politics-of-love/newsletters  Enjoy!

And now, simulculturalism:

Why Simulculturalism beats Globalism

Globalism often presents itself as enlightened common sense. It says the world is interdependent, so we must cooperate. That sounds reasonable enough — until we notice the assumption that can sit beneath it: that cooperation may gradually lead to convergence, and convergence may eventually produce sameness. In other words, globalism can sometimes become less a politics of cooperation and more a tendency toward absorption: multiculturalism. It can encourage nations to soften their identities, dilute their differences, and adjust democratic communities to what is presented as a universal model.

That’s why Simpol isn’t globalist. Its ethos is something different: simulculturalism. And that word matters. As far as I know, it is a term first used in The Simpol Solution, where it describes a vision of the world that takes human plurality seriously; a form of global cooperation that respects and honours all cultures simultaneously in their own context, whatever their stage of development, by ensuring that each is equitably supported by a global economy that is cooperatively governed and genuinely fair to all . Simulculturalism doesn’t imagine a single world culture. It recognises that the world is, and will remain, a place of distinct cultures, nations, histories, and loyalties. The task is not to erase that reality, but to make it workable.

That distinction is not academic nitpicking. It goes to the heart of the political choice before us. Globalism can lean toward a melting pot. Simulculturalism encourages coexistence. Globalism can imagine an increasingly standardised global order. Simulculturalism accepts that difference is enduring and that global politics must be built around that fact.
Simpol is the practical expression of that idea. Its core insight is straightforward: no single country can solve climate change, arms races, tax avoidance, or financial instability alone. But instead of concluding that nations must be absorbed into a higher authority, Simpol offers another path. It proposes simultaneous policy implementation. Countries commit to act together, at the same time, on the issues that genuinely require collective action. That is not world government. It is not ideological homogenisation. It is a strategy for cooperation without surrendering national sovereignty or cultural differences.

That, to my mind, is what makes Simpol so refreshing. It does not rely on familiar cosmopolitan language that sometimes overlooks the realities of identity and belonging. It does not ask us to assume that national identities are obsolete or that cultural difference is only a temporary stage on the way to uniformity. Instead, it begins with the world as it is: sovereign states, differing interests, differing political systems, and a common tendency for each country to safeguard its economic competitiveness; to fear acting before others act.

Globalism often presents itself as moral maturity, yet at times it can feel dismissive of smaller nations, local communities, and cultural minorities. It encourages adaptation — but adaptation to what? Often to models developed elsewhere, sometimes by institutions far removed from the communities most affected. The result can be less genuine unity and more flattening. Diversity becomes symbolic rather than lived. Local self-determination can feel reduced. The world becomes more connected, but not always more confident in its differences.

Simpol offers a different perspective. Simulculturalism suggests that a just world order must allow different societies to remain different. Cooperation does not require cultural surrender. Shared action does not require shared identity. Countries can maintain their traditions, institutions, religions, and political self-understanding while agreeing to act together where the challenge is global. This is not a compromise between globalism and nationalism. It is an alternative, more mature way forward that reconciles both.

This is why Simpol deserves to be seen as a meaningful and innovative idea, even though its tone is measured. Its significance lies in avoiding the false choice between isolation and assimilation. It suggests we do not need to become one world to solve shared problems. We simply need to recognise that serious politics does not have to choose between national self-interest and supranational uniformity. There is another way: coordinated plurality.

And that is what simulculturalism captures. It is not just a slogan about diversity. It is a political principle. The world is not moving toward one culture, one public philosophy, or one civilisational path. It is moving toward deeper interdependence among societies that remain distinct. That reality can be managed poorly, through overreach or retreat. Or it can be managed constructively, through simultaneous cooperation on selected issues while preserving the integrity of distinct communities.

Simpol points toward that constructive option. Its strength is that it does not ask humanity to become less varied in order to become more functional. It asks governments to coordinate without erasing the differences that make politics meaningful in the first place. That is why the language of globalism can sometimes feel incomplete or misleading. It can suggest that global cooperation must eventually lead to a single unified order. Simulculturalism questions that assumption.

The future is unlikely to belong to a single melting pot. It is more likely to belong to those who can think in terms of simultaneous, plural, negotiated action. Simpol reflects that possibility.

As always, please let us know your thoughts by emailing newsletter(at)simpol.org 

Wishing you all the best,
John and the Simpol Team.

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

The standard objection to Simpol is easy to state: “That’ll never happen.” It sounds practical, worldly, and realistic. But once global problems are understood as failures of international coordination rather than as mere failures of moral will, that objection begins to look much less rational. If states are trapped in a system that punishes unilateral action, then supporting a mechanism designed to enable simultaneous action is not utopian. It’s logically consistent.

This point matters not only for individual citizens but also for campaigning NGOs. Organisations such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have been indispensable in exposing environmental damage, mobilising public concern, and forcing issues onto the political agenda. But their practical theory of change often appears to rest on an unspoken assumption: that if public pressure becomes strong enough, governments will eventually accede to ambitious demands. The weakness in that approach is not its moral seriousness, but its inadequate account of the structural constraints under which governments operate.

The real obstacle is structural

Public debate often treats political failure as a problem of weak leadership, corruption, or insufficient courage. Those factors matter. Yet on issues such as climate change, tax justice, labour standards, and financial regulation, the obstacle is also built into the structure of global market competition itself.

Governments do not act in isolation. They operate in a world of mobile capital, internationally traded goods, footloose investment, and constant comparison with rival states. Under these conditions, any government that alone imposes significantly tougher environmental rules, closes major tax loopholes, or strengthens labour protections can fear losing investment, competitiveness, and ultimately electoral support.

This is why governments make ambitious promises in principle while retreating in practice. Even where leaders recognise the collective need for stronger action, each state has an incentive to avoid moving first or moving furthest. The problem isn’t simply bad intentions. It’s a coordination failure generated by a competitive international system.

That point is now widely recognised in policy analysis of climate negotiations. Recent work from the Toda Peace Institute describes a “multipolar trap” in which strategic competition between states repeatedly weakens international climate cooperation. The language differs, but the underlying reality is the same one that Simpol was designed to address.

What Simpol changes

Simpol, short for the Simultaneous Policy campaign, starts from a simple proposition: many global problems will not be solved unless governments can act together in ways that remove the fear of unilateral disadvantage. Its central mechanism is therefore simultaneous and conditional implementation. Policy packages are to be implemented by all, or by a sufficient number of, countries at the same time.

This matters because simultaneity alters the incentive structure. If states move together, no one government is exposed to the costs of going first. What would be risky as unilateral action becomes far more viable as coordinated action.

Simpol also recognises that global cooperation is more likely to succeed when treated as a package rather than as a series of disconnected single-issue bargains. A state may accept tougher obligations in one area if it gains from reform in another, such as taxation, financial regulation, or trade. That allows coordinated action to reflect reciprocal advantage rather than moral self-sacrifice.

Just as importantly, Simpol is not a plea for leaders to become more enlightened. It is a political strategy in which citizens use their votes to encourage politicians to commit themselves in advance to simultaneous implementation. In that sense, Simpol is not an alternative to democratic politics but an attempt to make democratic pressure effective at the level where many modern problems are actually generated.

Why “that will never happen” is not a strong objection

The phrase “that’ll never happen” usually presents itself as sober realism. In fact, it often conceals a poor form of reasoning.

First, it assumes that because transnational coordination is difficult, attempts to build it are not worth supporting. But difficulty is not the same as irrationality. The relevant question is whether a proposal addresses the real structure of the problem better than available alternatives.

Second, the objection rarely compares Simpol with the strategy it silently prefers. That preferred strategy is normally some continuation of existing campaigning, lobbying, litigation, summitry, and public protest. Yet decades of climate diplomacy show that these approaches, while sometimes valuable, have repeatedly failed to overcome the competitive logic that drives weak commitments and delayed action.

Third, the objection neglects the asymmetry of risk. Supporting Simpol is low-cost for citizens and organisations alike. It does not require abandoning existing campaigns, endorsing unilateral sacrifices, or betting everything on one institutional design. At the same time, its potential upside is substantial because it targets the coordination problem directly. When an option has low downside, modest cost, and potentially transformative benefit, dismissing it out of hand is not a model of rational caution.

A more candid description of the objection is that it expresses status-quo bias. It assumes that because the present order frustrates meaningful coordination, proposals aimed at overcoming that frustration must be unreal. But if the current order is precisely the source of failure, treating its constraints as fixed is not realism. It is intellectual surrender.

Where NGOs go wrong

This is where the argument becomes especially important. Major campaigning NGOs do not usually foreground Destructive Global Competition as the central explanation for political failure. Their public materials focus far more often on scientific urgency, justice, legal obligations, and the moral inadequacy of governments.

That focus is understandable, and much of it is correct. But it gives rise to an implicit theory of change: if campaigners mobilise enough people, generate enough attention, and sustain pressure loudly enough and long enough, governments will eventually concede. Protest, litigation, public persuasion, and electoral embarrassment are treated as the primary levers.

The difficulty is that this theory of change is only partial. It underestimates the extent to which governments are constrained not merely by bad will, but by the strategic fear of moving ahead of rivals. In trade and climate policy alike, “level playing field” concerns are not marginal inventions; they are built into negotiations and policy design.

This means NGOs often continue to demand ambitious national action without adequately addressing the structural reason governments resist it. They may dismiss competitiveness claims as excuses, and sometimes they are excuses. But excuses can still point to real constraints. If those constraints are systematic, then a strategy that does not try to remove them remains incomplete.

The problem, then, is not that NGOs are wrong to demand strong action. It is that their campaigns risk relying too heavily on an image of politics in which moral pressure can reliably override systemic incentives. After decades of evidence to the contrary, that is no longer a sufficiently rational working assumption.

Why NGO support for Simpol would be rational

Once the coordination problem is seen clearly, the case for NGO support becomes straightforward.

Supporting Simpol would not require organisations such as Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth to abandon protest, legal action, policy expertise, or issue-specific campaigning. It would require them only to add a structural demand to their existing agenda: not merely that governments adopt stronger policies, but that they commit themselves to a simultaneous international framework that makes those policies politically and economically viable.

That would make their strategy more rational and compelling in several respects. It would align diagnosis with remedy; it would answer the competitiveness objection rather than merely denounce it; and it would connect public mobilisation to an electoral mechanism capable of changing the incentive structure itself.

By contrast, to continue campaigning as though public pressure alone can repeatedly overcome structural coordination failures is to rely on an increasingly implausible theory of change. It is to keep demanding unilateral virtue from governments embedded in a system that penalises it.

For NGOs, then, the question is not whether Simpol is guaranteed to work. No serious political strategy comes with guarantees. The relevant question is whether a movement that seeks rational, effective routes to major global change should exclude a proposal specifically designed to solve the coordination problem that conventional campaigning so often leaves untouched.

Once framed in those terms, the answer is hard to avoid. NGOs may still decide that Simpol is insufficient, incomplete, or in need of modification. But simply ignoring it, while persisting with a model that assumes pressure can substitute for coordination, is the less rational course.

A more coherent politics

For citizens, the argument is simple. If global problems persist because states cannot safely act alone, then supporting a mechanism for acting together is more reasonable than dismissing such a mechanism as unrealistic. The low cost of support and the potentially high value of success make refusal difficult to justify on rational grounds. By supporting Simpol, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

For NGOs, the logic is even stronger. Their own experience should already have taught them the limits of a strategy centred only on pressure within an unchanged framework of international competition. To integrate Simpol would not be to weaken their campaigns but to strengthen and complete them. It would mean moving from protest alone to protest plus a structural pathway by which governments could act together without being punished for doing so.

That is why the real irrationality lies not in supporting Simpol, but in continuing to exclude it. If the obstacle is systemic, the response must be systemic too.

Environmental and social justice NGOs have achieved a great deal. They’ve exposed abuses, shifted public opinion, won court cases, blocked harmful projects, and kept urgent issues in the public eye. But the overall global trajectory on many of the issues they campaign on—climate breakdown, ecological destruction, inequality, tax avoidance, labour insecurity, and financial instability—remains deeply negative.

That contrast suggests not that NGO campaigning has been worthless, but that its dominant strategic model has reached its limits. Many NGOs still operate as if sufficiently intense protest, lobbying, legal action, and public persuasion will eventually force governments to concede. Yet where governments fear competitive disadvantage from acting alone, that strategy is not enough.

The deeper problem is that much NGO campaigning is irrational in its incompleteness. It identifies harms, proposes remedies, and mobilises supporters, but often fails to distinguish between two fundamentally different kinds of demand: those governments can adopt unilaterally with tolerable risk, and those that can only be implemented safely if many governments move together.

Once that distinction is made, the case for supporting Simpol becomes much stronger. By separating their demands into unilateral and simultaneous categories, NGOs could offer the public and politicians a strategy that is more complete, more candid, more coherent, and far harder to dismiss.

The rise and fragility of NGO legitimacy

The power of NGOs today cannot be understood without recalling the surge of public faith they enjoyed in the late 1980s and around 1990. In the UK, Friends of the Earth grew from about 17,000 registered supporters in 1980 to 226,000 by 1990, while staff numbers rose from 12 to over 100. Historians sometimes describe 1989 as a “green breakthrough,” a period in which environmental organisations enjoyed rapidly rising visibility, income, and authority.

At that time, many citizens understandably came to believe that NGOs were becoming the decisive vehicle of social and ecological change. Join, donate, protest, and history would bend. But support became more fragile after that peak. Greenpeace USA’s membership reportedly fell from 2.5 million in 1990 to 1.7 million in 1993, while Greenpeace’s annual contributions fell sharply in the same period. Mid-1990s reporting also described Greenpeace’s worldwide supporter base and donations as below their early-1990s high, while other environmental groups experienced post-1990 drops in membership too.

This was not simply a fundraising problem. It reflected a deeper loss of confidence that NGOs, for all their courage and commitment, were changing the overall direction of events. Historians of the green movement note a sharp decline in public interest in environmental issues in the early 1990s, following the late-1980s surge. Over time, many people seem to have sensed a painful contradiction: NGOs could win local or symbolic victories, but the world system as a whole remained on a worsening path.

The blind spot in current NGO strategy

The mainstream NGO repertoire is familiar: document the harm, propose policy responses, mobilise supporters, pressure decision-makers, and escalate through protest, litigation, media campaigns, or consumer pressure. This can work well where a government can act on its own without paying a major competitive penalty, or where the issue is primarily domestic in scope.

But many of today’s most urgent issues are not like that. On climate policy, taxation, labour standards, trade, and financial regulation, governments are often constrained by the fear that moving further or faster than their competitors will harm domestic firms, deter investment, or provoke voter backlash tied to jobs and prices. Recent analysis of climate diplomacy describes this as a “multipolar trap” in which strategic competition repeatedly undermines collective ambition.

Yet many NGOs still campaign as if the main task were simply to intensify pressure until governments relent. In effect, they behave as though moral urgency and public mobilisation can reliably overcome structural disadvantage. That is only partly true. When governments can act safely on their own, pressure may be enough; when the issue is structurally tied to international competition, the demand for policy needs to be matched by a demand for coordination.

Two categories of demand

Simpol introduces a distinction that NGOs urgently need: the difference between unilateral and simultaneous policies.

Unilateral policies are measures a government can adopt on its own without incurring serious international competitive harm. Simultaneous policies are those that are desirable but dangerous if undertaken by one country alone, including reforms where unilateral action can drive capital, production, jobs, or profits elsewhere.

This distinction changes how campaign strategy should be designed. If a demand is unilateral, NGOs should press relentlessly for immediate adoption. But if a demand is simultaneous, then it is strategically irrational to demand the policy without also demanding the mechanism that makes coordinated implementation possible.

Why incompleteness is irrational

A strategy becomes irrational when it repeatedly ignores a known obstacle while continuing to demand outcomes blocked by that obstacle. Suppose an organisation demands strong domestic climate action that would impose real costs on national producers if done in isolation. If that organisation knows governments fear capital flight, industrial relocation, or electoral punishment, then intensifying moral pressure does not remove the incentive not to act.

At that point, one of three positions must be taken. Either the competitive constraint is unreal, or it can be overcome by political will alone, or it is real and requires an institutional response that neutralises it. The first claim is often implausible, the second has repeatedly disappointed, and the third is the only position that fully engages with the structure of the problem.

This is why NGO campaigns that exclude Simpol, or some comparable simultaneous framework, become irrational in their incompleteness. They ask governments for outcomes while declining to address the most powerful reason governments resist them.

What Simpol adds

Simpol is not a substitute for NGO campaigning. It is a structural complement to it. Its central proposal is that policy packages addressing global problems should be implemented by all, or by a sufficient number of, countries simultaneously. That removes the danger that any one state will move first and suffer alone.

It also offers two advantages that NGOs badly need. First, it is multi-issue, allowing climate, taxation, trade, and finance to be combined into packages so that what a country accepts in one area can be offset by what it gains in another. Second, it is electoral, using citizens’ votes to encourage politicians to support simultaneous implementation, which turns cooperation from a moral aspiration into a politically advantageous commitment.

A harder-to-dismiss strategy

If NGOs adopted the unilateral/simultaneous distinction, their campaigns would become more rigorous. For unilateral demands, they could say: this can be done now, and we demand that you do it now. For simultaneous demands, they could say: this is necessary too, but it must be implemented through an agreed international framework, so we demand that you support Simpol in order to make it possible.

That would make NGO strategy more logical because it would match the form of the demand to the structure of the obstacle: the right tool for the right job. It would also speak directly to the public’s fading confidence. Citizens who have grown sceptical of protest politics are not necessarily cynical about change itself; they may simply doubt that protest alone can alter a global system whose incentives remain intact. A strategy that says “act alone where possible, act together where necessary” is therefore likely to appear more serious and credible than one that relies on pressure alone. Moreover, Simpol has demonstrated its political effectiveness in the number of Members of Parliament in the UK and elsewhere who support the campaign.

From moral urgency to strategic completeness

The question for NGOs is not whether protest, litigation, lobbying, and public mobilisation still matter. They do. The question is whether those methods, on their own, are enough when the problem is international coordination failure. Increasingly, the answer is no.

That is why support for Simpol should no longer be seen as optional or peripheral. It is the missing element that can make many NGO campaigns strategically complete. By separating demands into unilateral and simultaneous categories, NGOs would retain the moral force of their current campaigns while adding the structural intelligence they now lack.

The public once placed enormous faith in NGOs because it believed protest and pressure could change the direction of history. The partial decline of that faith since 1990 reflects a growing awareness that, despite many brave and important victories, the broader system has remained largely intact. To regain strategic credibility, NGOs need more than louder demands. They need a more complete theory of change.

That more complete theory begins with a simple distinction: unilateral action where possible, simultaneous action where necessary.

Modern protest culture has produced a long sequence of movements that flare brightly, command attention, and then fade. From Reclaim the Streets in the 1990s to Occupy, Extinction Rebellion, and Just Stop Oil, each has brought energy, theatricality, moral urgency, and moments of genuine public disruption. Yet none has established a durable route by which governments can safely and consistently deliver the scale of change demanded. They come, they go, they dramatise crisis, and then they dissipate.

That pattern suggests a distinction worth making. Some activism is adolescent: emotionally intense, morally charged, often courageous, but strategically underdeveloped. It assumes that protest, disruption, or civil disobedience will itself push governments into doing what is necessary. Other activism is mature: it begins not only from moral urgency, but from a sober assessment of the incentive structures that govern political action. It asks not merely how to dramatise a crisis, but how to alter the conditions that keep reproducing it.

Seen in that light, Simpol represents a more mature activism. It does not reject protest, but it refuses the fantasy that pressure alone can solve problems generated by competitive interdependence between states. Instead, it seeks to build the political mechanism that would make effective action rational for governments themselves.

What adolescent activism looks like

Calling a form of activism “adolescent” is not an insult to the sincerity of those involved. It refers to a style of politics that is developmentally incomplete. Adolescent activism tends to divide the world sharply into the morally awake and the morally compromised; it privileges expressive action; and it often assumes that if enough disruption is created, power will finally yield.

This pattern can be seen across several generations of protest. Reclaim the Streets fused carnival and direct action, turning roads into spaces of festive resistance and anti-car politics into a form of cultural confrontation. Occupy captured public anger at inequality and the power of finance, but struggled to convert encampments and slogans into a durable governing strategy. Extinction Rebellion wagered heavily on mass arrest, disruption, and the theory that emergency messaging plus non-violent civil disobedience would force governments to “tell the truth” and act. Just Stop Oil pushed disruption further still, openly embracing tactics designed to annoy, shock, and force climate breakdown into the centre of media attention.

These movements differ in ideology and style, but they share one assumption: that sufficient protest pressure can move governments, despite the structural constraints under which those governments operate. They seek to create a moral or psychological crisis intense enough that leaders are compelled to respond. The state is treated as if it is mainly blocked by cowardice, denial, or bad faith, rather than by institutional incentive structures that make unilateral boldness risky.

That assumption gives these movements their emotional power. It also helps explain why they struggle to sustain themselves. If the main strategy is escalation of protest, then movements face a recurring cycle: disruption creates attention, attention provokes backlash, repression increases, participation narrows, and the movement either moderates, fragments, or burns out.

Why the cycle repeats

The recurring rise-and-fade pattern of these movements is not accidental. It follows from the weakness of their theory of change.

Protest can certainly put issues on the agenda. It can alter cultural narratives, widen the range of what is discussable, and expose hypocrisy. But if the problem at hand is sustained by a system of international competition—over capital, trade, taxation, energy, labour costs, and electoral legitimacy—then moral urgency does not by itself remove the penalty for acting first.

This is especially clear in climate politics. Governments may recognise the need for stronger action, yet still fear that moving further or faster than competitors will raise costs, provoke industrial relocation, or trigger domestic political backlash. Recent analysis of climate diplomacy describes this as a “multipolar trap” in which strategic competition systematically weakens ambition and implementation.

Once that is understood, the limits of adolescent activism come into view. Movements may succeed in increasing urgency without changing incentives. They may win promises without implementation. They may dramatise the apocalypse while leaving intact the mechanisms that make governments hedge, delay, or free-ride.

This is why such movements often leave behind a residue of frustration. Their followers may feel, with some justification, that they were brave, right, and sacrificial—and yet that nothing proportionate followed. The problem is not simply repression or media hostility. It is that protest was being asked to do more than protest can do.

What mature activism requires

Mature activism begins when movements stop confusing moral intensity with strategic adequacy. It does not abandon protest, but it demotes protest from being the whole theory of change to being one tool among others.

A mature movement asks harder questions. What are the actual incentives facing governments? Which reforms can a state adopt unilaterally, and which expose it to serious competitive risk? Where is the blockage psychological, and where is it structural? What political mechanism could make necessary action rational rather than sacrificial?

This kind of activism is “adult” in a specific sense: it accepts constraint without capitulating to it. It does not imagine that power will yield simply because a movement is morally pure or theatrically disruptive. It works to redesign the strategic environment in which governments, parties, and electorates make decisions.

Why Simpol is mature activism

Simpol exemplifies this more adult politics. It begins from the recognition that many global problems are coordination failures: governments often cannot solve them alone because acting alone can bring competitive disadvantage. Instead of demanding unilateral heroism, Simpol proposes simultaneous implementation of policy packages by all, or by a sufficient number of, countries.

This is a far more mature model of activism for three reasons.

First, it distinguishes between unilateral and simultaneous policies. That means it does not confuse demands that a government can safely implement on its own with demands that require international coordination. Adolescent activism tends to blur that distinction and apply the same pressure logic to both. Simpol does not.

Second, Simpol targets the incentive structure directly. If governments fear losing out by moving first, the rational response is not just to shame them more loudly, but to create a framework in which all or enough move together, removing the fear of unilateral disadvantage. In that sense, Simpol is not merely another campaign. It is a mechanism for making other campaigns executable.

Third, Simpol is politically adult because it is electoral. It asks citizens to use their votes to encourage politicians of all parties to commit in advance to simultaneous action. Protest movements often hover uneasily between moral witness and anti-political purity; Simpol operates inside representative politics while trying to alter its constraints. It harnesses the one thing politicians cannot ignore: our votes.

Expression versus implementation

The deepest difference between adolescent and mature activism is the difference between expression and implementation.

Adolescent activism is often expressive. It says: the situation is intolerable, and normal politics has failed, so disruption is morally necessary. That may be true. But expression does not by itself produce implementation. A roadblock, an occupation, or a spectacular act of civil disobedience can communicate urgency without generating the institutional conditions in which a state can act effectively and survive politically.

Mature activism asks the next question: once attention has been captured, how will the demanded change actually occur? If implementation requires coordination among multiple states, mature activism must build a mechanism of coordination, not simply intensify the performance of urgency.

This is precisely where Simpol has an advantage. It converts moral demand into strategic design. It does not assume that because something is necessary, governments will do it if enough people glue themselves to roads or occupy public squares. It asks what institutional commitment would make the necessary action a rational, electorally advantageous, political move.

From perpetual adolescence to political adulthood

The repeated emergence and fading of protest movements is not evidence that protest is useless. It is evidence that in a globalized world protest alone is insufficient. Reclaim the Streets changed the mood of urban protest. Occupy changed the language of inequality. Extinction Rebellion changed the tone of climate politics. Just Stop Oil forced public confrontation with a profound emergency. But none built a durable mechanism for overcoming the coordination failures and competitive pressures that keep governments from acting at the necessary scale.

That is why activism must now go beyond permanent escalation. It must incorporate structural intelligence. It must separate what governments can do alone from what they can do only together. And it must build political leverage not only through protest, but through institutions that change incentives.

Simpol points in that direction. It represents a movement from protest as catharsis to politics as design, from moral intensity to strategic adulthood. If adolescent activism says, “Look how desperate things are—now act,” mature activism says, “Here is the mechanism which makes action rational.”

That is the difference between a movement that merely erupts and a movement that can endure. And it is why Simpol deserves to be understood not as one more activist initiative, but as a model of activism growing up.

Any proposal for global cooperation has to pass two very different tests before it can go anywhere: does it fit the political culture of liberal democracies, and does it fit the political culture of China, the one power without whose participation no global problem gets solved? Most schemes for global governance fail one test or the other. Simpol may be the rare proposal built to pass both.

Ending destructive competition, not decreeing uniformity

Simpol's starting diagnosis is that nations trapped in Destructive Global Competition (DGC) cannot solve shared problems unilaterally, because the first mover simply hands a competitive advantage to everyone who doesn't move. Its answer is simultaneity: governments enact the same policy together, simultaneously, only once enough of them have signed on in principle, so no one is left exposed.

That diagnosis sits closer to Confucian thought than it might first appear. The Confucian ideal of he, harmony, is explicit that harmony is not sameness — "the gentleman seeks harmony, not uniformity" (Analects 13:23).¹  Confucianism itself arose as an answer to ruinous rivalry between warring states, proposing shared commitments as the way out of a trap that no single state could escape alone.²  Simpol applies that same logic globally: coordinated, simultaneous action among still-sovereign, still-different nations, not a single homogenised world order.

Where the old model breaks — and where a new one doesn't

Classical Confucian statecraft is not fully democratic. The Tianxia ("all under heaven") tradition imagined a hierarchical order radiating out from a civilisational centre,³ and contemporary Confucian theorists such as Jiang Qing propose meritocratic rule by a virtuous elite rather than government by popular vote.⁴  Simpol’s engine, that citizens give preference in elections to politicians who support the campaign, would be incompatible with that if it applied to states such as China – but it isn’t.

That mechanism only operates where competitive elections exist. In a one-party state, participation would be a government decision — the same channel through which China joins any other treaty today. Read this way, joining Simpol would, for China, be closer to Confucian dezhi (virtue government) than to Western democracy: a capable central authority entering into an agreement on the nation's behalf, exactly the model Jiang Qing and others already favour for the state level.⁴  Simpol, it turns out, runs on two tracks rather than one: citizens and governments as policy-makers where elections already exist, governments alone as policy-makers where they don't — asking neither side to become the other.

China's own words already point this way

Xi Jinping’s Global Governance Initiative, unveiled in September 2025, rests on five declared principles: sovereign equality, international rule of law, "true" multilateralism, a people-centred approach, and real results — explicitly framed against "hegemonism" and rules "imposed by a few countries."⁵  Simpol asks nothing that contradicts a single one of those principles. Rather, it embodies them all. No state is asked to alter its system of government to join; every state acts as an equal; and the whole design exists to produce real, measurable outcomes rather than declarations.

Taking the stated word, not the presumed motive

Sceptics note that China's global-governance rhetoric could also be read as an attempt to reshape the international order in Beijing's favour.⁶  That may be true. But the more constructive — and rhetorically stronger — approach is to hold governments to what they have already said in public, rather than to argue about what they secretly mean. International relations scholars call this "rhetorical entrapment": once an actor has publicly committed to a set of norms, rejecting a proposal that simply extends those same norms becomes reputationally costly, since the alternative is visible inconsistency.⁷  Presenting Simpol as the practical expression of principles that Beijing has already proclaimed as its own is harder for Beijing to reject than importing a foreign framework would be — and it is the approach international-engagement specialists recommend for any state, democratic or not: sustained cooperation on shared problems, anchored in each side's own declared commitments, works better than either confrontation or naïve trust.⁸

The same design that fits Beijing also fits the West

None of this requires Western democracies to give up anything either. In a democracy, Simpol works entirely through existing institutions: citizens give strong preference at elections to candidates who have signed Simpol’s pledge to implement whatever policies may be agreed simultaneously alongside other governments.  Candidates who sign thus gain an electoral advantage over those who don’t. As Simpol’s bloc of citizen-supporters grows, signing the pledge can make all the difference if politicians wish to retain their seats. This converts voters from powerless policy-takers into policy-makers able to compel their own government through the ballot box, the very mechanism democratic culture already runs on.

Commitment, admittedly, is never guaranteed in either system — a government that joins by executive decision has no domestic lock holding it to the deal beyond diplomatic and reputational pressure. But this is true of any international agreement, not a special flaw of Simpol: no world government enforces the WTO either, and cooperation persists there because nations come to see it as being in their own self-interest to keep it.

Simpol therefore doesn't require Confucian China to become a liberal democracy, nor liberal democracies to adopt a Confucian hierarchy. It asks each to act through the political culture it already has. That may make it as compatible with Chinese and Confucian thinking as any serious global-governance proposal is ever likely to be — while remaining, at the very same time, entirely at home in Westminster, Washington, or Berlin.

1. Elena Ziliotti, "Confucian Ethics and Social Cohesion," on the Confucian principle that harmony (he) requires diversity, not uniformity (Analects 13:23): https://jcpc.skku.edu/xml/44354/44354.pdf

2. American Affairs, "Confucianism and Meritocracy: Light from the East," on Confucianism's origins as a response to destructive inter-state rivalry: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/08/confucianism-and-meritocracy-light-from-the-east/

3. The China Story, "Tianxia," on the hierarchical, centre-radiating structure of the classical Tianxia world-order concept: https://www.thechinastory.org/yearbooks/yearbook-2013/forum-politics-and-society/tianxia-%E5%A4%A9%E4%B8%8B/

4. PhilArchive, "Is Confucian Political Meritocracy a Viable Alternative to Liberal Democracy?," on Jiang Qing's proposal for meritocratic rule by a virtuous elite: https://philarchive.org/archive/TANICP-2

5. Xi Jinping's remarks at the SCO Plus meeting unveiling the Global Governance Initiative and its five core principles: https://www.scochina2025.org.cn/en/n3/2025/0902/c518818-20361093.html

6. Texas National Security Review, "Xi's Vision for Transforming Global Governance," on Western analysts' reading of China's global-governance rhetoric as strategically self-interested: https://tnsr.org/2018/11/xis-vision-for-transforming-global-governance-a-strategic-challenge-for-washington-and-its-allies/

7. Frank Schimmelfennig, "The Community Trap: Liberal Norms, Rhetorical Action, and the Eastern Enlargement of the European Union," on the "rhetorical entrapment" mechanism: https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/10897961.pdf

8. Westminster Foundation for Democracy, "How (Not) to Engage with Authoritarian States," on the case for sustained, principle-anchored engagement over confrontation or non-engagement: https://www.wfd.org/what-we-do/resources/how-not-engage-authoritarian-states

Catholic Social Teaching has much to say about global cooperation, but it usually speaks in the language of moral principle rather than institutional strategy. It insists that human dignity, the common good, solidarity, subsidiarity, and care for creation should guide political and economic life, and recent Vatican commentary has again stressed that these principles offer a framework for strengthening global governance in an age of fragmentation. The difficulty is that moral doctrine alone does not solve the strategic problem that repeatedly blocks international action: states often know they should cooperate, yet fear that moving first will leave them economically or geopolitically disadvantaged.

This is where Simpol becomes relevant. Simpol, short for the Simultaneous Policy campaign, is not an alternative moral doctrine to Catholic Social Teaching. It is better understood as a practical strategy for operationalising one important part of that doctrine: the call for international cooperation on problems that no nation can solve alone. Yet Simpol may also carry a spiritual significance that Christians can recognize. Its method does not depend on the prior moral purification of nations, corporations, or citizens. It begins instead from the world as it is: a world of fear, rivalry, dependence, and systemic compulsion, and asks how people might nonetheless take a shared step toward the common good together.

Catholic Social Teaching and the need for global cooperation

The modern Catholic social tradition has long recognized that the common good now extends beyond the nation-state. In conditions of deep interdependence, the good of each people is tied to the good of all, so questions of finance, migration, ecology, war, development, trade, and technology can no longer be treated as purely domestic matters. This is why Catholic Social Teaching consistently links solidarity with responsibility across borders. It does not treat international concern as optional philanthropy but as a duty arising from the equal dignity of persons and peoples.

At the same time, Catholic Social Teaching avoids two opposite errors. On one side, it rejects a narrow nationalism that treats cooperation as weakness and leaves shared problems to intensify. On the other, it rejects centralized forms of governance that crush local communities and intermediate institutions. Its characteristic solution is to hold solidarity and subsidiarity together: broader levels of authority should act where necessary for the common good, but they should support rather than displace lower levels of social life.

This balance is morally rich, but politically incomplete. Catholic Social Teaching tells states and citizens that they ought to cooperate, yet it does not by itself provide a detailed mechanism for overcoming free-riding, competitive undercutting, or first-mover disadvantage in the international system. In a global economy where governments fear losing jobs, tax base, capital, or strategic leverage, moral exhortation often proves insufficient.

The problem Simpol addresses

Simpol begins from a straightforward diagnosis: many of today’s gravest problems persist not because solutions are unknown, but because governments hesitate to implement them alone. A country may want stronger climate rules, tighter financial regulation, better labor protections, or measures against tax avoidance, but if it acts unilaterally it encounters capital flight, loss of competitiveness, or domestic political backlash. As a result, governments remain locked in patterns of destructive competition even when cooperation would serve everyone better.

The Simultaneous Policy proposal is to design packages of policies that all, or a sufficient number of, countries agree to implement on the same date so that no nation is disadvantaged. Simpol is explicit that only genuinely transnational problems belong in such packages. If an issue can be resolved by one nation acting alone without serious competitive disadvantage, it would likely have been implemented by that nation alone in any case and so such policies are not be included. That point is crucial because it means Simpol is not a recipe for generalized centralization; it is a limited method for those areas where interdependence has made unilateral action ineffective.

That structure aligns strikingly well with subsidiarity. Catholic Social Teaching holds that higher-order authority is justified when lower levels cannot adequately secure the common good on their own. Simpol applies a similar logic procedurally: leave what can be handled nationally or locally at those levels, and coordinate only where simultaneity is necessary to prevent undercutting and failure. In this respect, Simpol can be read not as an exception to subsidiarity but as one of its global applications.

Why Simpol fits CST unusually well

Three features make Simpol especially compatible with Catholic Social Teaching.

First, Simpol is oriented toward the common good rather than the unilateral advantage of any one state. Its own formulation says the aim is to construct agreements that are not only in the global common interest but also in each nation’s self-interest, so that cooperation becomes politically feasible and enforceable. This matters because Catholic Social Teaching does not demand that politics ignore prudence or institutional reality. It asks that politics be ordered to justice. A strategy that makes cooperation rational while serving the wider human good can therefore support rather than dilute CST’s moral aims.

Second, Simpol operationalises solidarity without assuming moral perfection. Catholic doctrine calls peoples and nations to solidarity, but real political systems are populated by actors who fear losses and often defect from collective commitments. Simpol takes that fallible condition seriously. Instead of assuming that leaders will act generously in a competitive system, it seeks to redesign the incentives so that solidarity is no longer punished. In practical politics, that may be one of the most realistic ways to honor the moral demand of solidarity.

Third, Simpol is democratic in method. Its campaign model asks citizens in democratic countries to use their votes in a coordinated way to press politicians of all parties to support simultaneous action. That resonates with the Catholic tradition of civic responsibility and lay action in public life. It does not wait passively for elites or international institutions to become enlightened. It treats citizens as active agents in the pursuit of the common good.

Spiritual resonances with Christianity

Beyond institutional compatibility, Simpol may also have spiritual resonances that make it especially interesting from a Christian perspective. One of its most striking features is that anyone can support it, including those deeply enmeshed in the structures of global competition. A financier, executive, politician, investor, consumer, or ordinary worker need not first escape every compromise of the present system before taking part in a process directed toward the common good. In that sense, Simpol reflects a recognizably Christian intuition: the path toward conversion begins not with the morally pure separating themselves from the compromised, but with persons turning, however imperfectly, toward a better order.

This does not mean Simpol literally absolves sin in the sacramental sense, which belongs to the Church alone. But politically and spiritually it does something analogous at the level of social participation: it permits people who are implicated in harmful structures to begin acting for their transformation without first pretending to be innocent. Christianity is realistic about the fallen condition of the world and of the self. Simpol is similarly realistic about the way individuals, firms, and states are entangled in systems they did not create alone and cannot easily exit alone. It does not require moral blamelessness as a condition of entry. It asks only for support for a shared step toward cooperation.

A second Christian resonance is Simpol’s refusal of blame and shame as the primary mode of politics. Catholic moral thought recognizes personal responsibility, but it also acknowledges social sin and structures of sin: patterned arrangements that pressure persons and institutions toward harmful conduct. Simpol works from a comparable insight. It understands that governments, corporations, and citizens are often locked in a vicious circle of destructive competition from which unilateral escape is costly or impossible. That does not exonerate injustice, but it changes the tone of political engagement. Instead of merely denouncing actors for participating in a broken system, Simpol offers them a practical route by which they may help transform it.

That is why Simpol can be described, in a qualified sense, as offering redemption. It does not redeem in the theological sense that belongs to Christ. But it does offer a redemptive political possibility: those trapped in destructive competition are not condemned to remain instruments of it. By supporting simultaneous cooperation, they can begin to participate in the repair of the very system that deforms them. Such a move has an affinity with the Christian conviction that grace does not wait for perfect innocence but works through frail and compromised persons who nevertheless say yes to a better path.

A third and deeper resonance concerns simultaneity itself. Christianity holds together personhood and communion: the human being is not dissolved into an undifferentiated whole, yet neither is fulfillment found in isolated self-assertion. The Church’s social vision therefore seeks unity without erasure and solidarity without fusion. Simpol’s insistence on acting together simultaneously can be read as a political image of this pattern. Nations remain nations, persons remain persons, and institutions remain distinct. Yet through simultaneous action they can become one in a real but non-totalizing sense: united in common purpose without losing particularity.

This is why simultaneity has more than technical significance. It is not merely a scheduling device. It is the form through which separated actors cross the threshold from rivalry into shared agency. It is perhaps the nearest political analogue available, within the world of institutions and interests, to a non-dual relation in which plurality is not abolished but gathered into coordinated action. In a destructively competitive world, the transition from destructive global competition to constructive global cooperation can scarcely occur any other way than together, hand in hand, simultaneously. Simpol gives institutional expression to that intuition.

Reservations and their limits

None of this means Catholic Social Teaching would adopt Simpol without reservation. CST would still ask whether any specific Simpol policy package truly protects human dignity, gives due priority to the poor, respects family and community life, and avoids technocratic domination. It would also insist that global coordination remain accountable and not become detached from moral truth or local realities.

But these are not objections unique to Simpol. They are the ordinary prudential questions CST would bring to any economic or political proposal. The more important point is that CST does not appear to offer another comparably concrete mechanism for dealing with the structural logic of global collective-action failure. It offers principles, judgments, and broad institutional orientation. Simpol offers a campaign architecture and negotiating logic designed precisely for the circumstance in which states know cooperation is necessary but fear acting first.

For that reason, Simpol should not be viewed as a rival doctrine standing over or against Catholic Social Teaching. It is better seen as a candidate instrument. Catholic Social Teaching can evaluate the ends, moral limits, and human meaning of global cooperation; Simpol can help specify one way such cooperation might actually be made politically possible.

From moral doctrine to political form

The deepest affinity between CST and Simpol is that both reject the fatalism of the present order. Catholic Social Teaching refuses the idea that competition, fragmentation, and domination are the highest laws of political life. It maintains that institutions should serve the flourishing of persons and peoples, especially the vulnerable, and that the common good can require action beyond existing habits of sovereignty. Simpol likewise begins from the conviction that destructive global competition is not an unchangeable destiny but a design problem that can be politically addressed through simultaneous cooperation.

This is especially relevant in the face of ecological crisis. Catholic teaching increasingly speaks of the planetary scale of interdependence and of the need for governance arrangements capable of addressing shared threats without erasing local agency. Simpol’s insistence on multi-issue, simultaneous policy packages is well suited to such conditions because ecological breakdown is bound up with finance, trade, inequality, energy, and development. A piecemeal response is often defeated by the very interconnectedness of the system. That is precisely the problem simultaneous policy is designed to solve.

Seen in this light, Simpol may be one of the few contemporary proposals that speaks the language of both moral responsibility and strategic realism. It accepts the Catholic claim that cooperation is necessary for the common good, but it also asks what institutional logic could make that cooperation viable in a competitive world. It neither romanticizes states nor abolishes them. It works through them, but under coordinated conditions designed to prevent mutual undercutting.

A constructive Catholic reading of Simpol

A constructive Catholic reading would therefore frame Simpol in five ways.

• As an application of solidarity, because it seeks practical cooperation among nations for shared human and ecological goods.
• As an application of subsidiarity, because it limits transnational coordination to problems that lower levels cannot solve alone without major disadvantage.
• As a service to the common good, because it aims to create social and political conditions in which justice-oriented policies can be adopted without triggering destructive competitive penalties.
• As a form of civic responsibility, because it relies on citizens to press democratic systems toward morally necessary cooperation.
• As a spiritually resonant politics of conversion, because it invites compromised actors into a shared movement of repair without beginning from condemnation, and because simultaneity symbolizes unity in action without the erasure of difference.

Understood this way, Simpol does not replace Catholic Social Teaching. It translates a part of its global ethic into viable political procedure. CST remains the deeper source of moral judgment: it can still criticize unjust policies, insist on the priority of the poor, and reject any merely technocratic vision of governance. But where CST says humanity needs structures of cooperation adequate to interdependence, Simpol offers a credible suggestion about how those structures can emerge under present conditions.

The real question, then, is not whether CST already contains a ready-made equivalent to Simpol. It does not appear to. The more fruitful question is whether Simpol can serve as one practical means of giving institutional effect to CST’s longstanding insistence that solidarity among peoples is morally necessary, that higher levels of coordination are justified when lower levels are insufficient, and that the common good of humanity must increasingly be pursued at a global scale. On that question, the answer is plausibly yes, provided its practical method remains governed by a moral vision in which justice, mercy, responsibility, and human communion belong together.

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from knowing what is right but being unable to do it. The politician who would legislate to tax the rich but dares not, for fear her country’s capital will simply flee across the border. The executive who would pay a living wage but cannot, because his competitors won’t, and the market will punish him for trying. The parent who recycles, insulates the loft, avoids the flight, and still watches the planet warm. We are, all of us, caught in something larger than our own choices — a vast, grinding machine of Destructive Global Competition in which even our best intentions are conscripted into a race we did not choose and cannot individually stop.

I’ve come to believe this condition is not merely political. It's spiritual. It is, in fact, close to what the great religious traditions — and Christianity above all — have always called sin: not simply the wrong things we do, but the state of separation we are born into and cannot, by will alone, escape. No one designed destructive global competition as a moral failing to be blamed on this politician or that corporation. It is a structure, a system, a vicious circle that predates all of us and implicates every one of us. And like sin, it should always be resisted and minimised wherever we can — but it cannot, this side of transformation, be wholly avoided by any single soul acting alone.

This is the ache that Simpol was born to answer. And it is here, I think, that Simpol quietly touches something sacred.

The offer that asks nothing first

Every great spiritual tradition wrestles with the same impossible demand: how can the broken be made whole, when wholeness itself seems to require a purity none of us actually possesses? Christianity’s answer, as I understand it, is startling in its generosity. Grace is not a reward for having already become good. It is offered first, to sinners as they are, so that transformation can begin from within the very compromise it seeks to heal. You do not need to have already escaped the world to be loved by it. You need only turn, however falteringly, toward the light.

Simpol works, I believe, on a strikingly similar logic — not as theology, but as a political embodiment of the same deep intuition. It does not ask the financier, the fossil-fuel executive, the anxious government minister, or the ordinary consumer buying the cheaper, more destructively-produced good, to first purify themselves of their entanglement in the system before they are welcome. It cannot ask this, because none of us could comply. We are all, in some measure, prisoners of destructive global competition — pushed by its logic even when our hearts incline elsewhere. Simpol’s invitation is instead unconditional: come as you are, complicit as you are, and add your name to a shared act of turning.

This is why I have come to see the Simpol pledge — for a citizen, an organisation, or a politician — as something closer to a sacrament than a signature. It's not a certificate of innocence. It is a confession, and in the same breath, an absolution: an acknowledgement that we are trapped in a game none of us can unilaterally quit, joined instantly to the hope that together we might finally leave it. To sign on is to say: I am not free of this, and I forgive myself for that, as I forgive you, and in forgiving ourselves and each other, I commit myself to the day we are free of it together.

The politician’s covenant

For a politician, the pledge carries an even more solemn weight, closer still to something like a religious vow. In signing, a Member of Parliament or a minister does not merely tick a policy box. She stands before her fellow citizens and before the world’s other governments and says, in effect: I will, if you will. I stand ready to negotiate the policy content of Simpol and, once agreed by sufficient nations, to implement it simultaneously with other governments. It is a covenant in the oldest biblical sense — a promise made not because the other party has already proven trustworthy, but because someone must go first in faith that others will follow. Every covenant in scripture begins this way: not with certainty, but with a step taken into the unknown, trusting a promise not yet fulfilled by the other side.

That simple formula — I will, if you will — is, I think, one of the most spiritually significant sentences in politics today. It refuses cynicism without denying reality. It does not pretend that other nations are already good, or that markets are not fierce, or that capital will not flee. It simply says: let us agree to leap together, so that no one who leaps is left to fall alone. And by declaring it publicly, each signatory becomes a living rebuke — gentle, but unmistakable — to every politician who has not yet found the courage to say the same. In this way, faith becomes contagious not so much through coercion but through moral example, exactly as the saints and prophets always hoped it would.

Many becoming one, without ceasing to be many

Perhaps the most mysterious spiritual dimension of Simpol lies in the idea of simultaneity itself. At first glance it looks purely technical — a scheduling mechanism to prevent competitive disadvantage. But sit with it a while, and it becomes something closer to a vision of communion.

Every major spiritual tradition dreams of a unity that does not erase the person — a togetherness in which the self is not dissolved, but fulfilled precisely through union with others. Christianity speaks of many members in one body. Other traditions speak of the drop returning to the ocean without ceasing to be a drop. Simpol offers, remarkably, a political image of exactly this pattern. Nations do not merge. Sovereignty is not abolished. Every country remains itself, distinct, particular, sovereign. And yet, through the simple, disciplined act of moving together, at the same time, on the same policies, they become — briefly, but really — one acting body. Not fused. Not erased. United. Simultaneity is unity and diversity reconciled.

I do not think it is an accident that the world’s oldest religious hope — that separateness is not the final truth of things, that the isolated self can find its completion in communion with others — should re-emerge, almost unbidden, in the technical architecture of an international campaign for policy reform. When the idea of simultaneous implementation as a way around the problem of competitive disadvantage first arrived, it was a mix of all these feelings. But I have come to feel that we reach, again and again, for the same handful of sacred patterns whenever we try to imagine how estranged parts might become a living whole. Simultaneity is that pattern, translated into the grammar of treaties, policies and votes.

Faith without illusion

None of this asks us to be naïve about what Simpol is. It’s not a church. It does not forgive sin in any sacramental sense; that belongs, for believers, to God alone. It does not, by itself, guarantee that the policies eventually agreed will be wise, or just, or sufficiently attentive to the poorest among us — that discernment must remain the task of conscience, of moral tradition, of vigilant citizens holding their representatives and Simpol itself to account. And it does not pretend that destructive competition will vanish the moment enough pledges are signed. Real transformation is slower and harder than any single mechanism.

But faith, in every tradition I know of, has never meant certainty. It has meant a willingness to act rightly before the outcome is secured — to light a candle while still surrounded by the dark, to forgive before we are sure we deserve forgiveness, to promise cooperation before we know whether others will keep their word. That is precisely the posture Simpol asks of us. It does not wait for humanity to become good enough to cooperate. It invites humanity, exactly as compromised and afraid as it is, to take one coordinated step toward the good anyway — trusting that the step itself, taken together, might be the very thing that makes us, at last, capable of it.

Simpol, you see, loves unconditionally because it understands in its deep structure that it is Destructive Global Competition itself which drives so much of our damaging behaviour, that it is destructive competition itself which locks us all into that vicious circle, and so Simpol forgives us all and so is open to all. Simpol has no need to point fingers nor any need to take sides for we are all on the same side and we always were. In acknowledging our human fallibity and brokenness, and knowing that we are all in some sense responsible for our perilous predicament, we see that Simpol has only a need to include us, to forgive us and to afford us the opportunity of making it our own. I hope you see as I do, that Simpol has a need only to love.

If that is not a spiritual act, I don’t know what would be. And so I would say to anyone weary of feeling trapped inside a system too vast for any one conscience to redeem: you do not need to be pure to sign on. You do not need to have already solved the contradictions of your own complicity. You are asked only to say, alongside millions of others across every nation and every faith: I will, if you will. In that shared word — offered in hope rather than certainty, in humility rather than righteousness — I believe we come as close as politics can bring us to grace.