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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 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

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Free Trade or Protectionism? Is that the right question?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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