Ex-world leaders call for ‘powerful shift' as they warn of extreme inequality
The world is facing a looming crisis of inequality that could see the first trillionaires emerge while nearly half of humanity still languishes in poverty, a group of 40 former presidents and prime ministers warns.
In a letter seen by the Guardian, the group – which includes the ex-British prime minister Gordon Brown – issues a joint appeal to current world leaders for a 'new economic coalition of the willing' to address the escalating threats of inequality, poverty and environmental breakdown.
The former leaders also condemn 'narrow unilateralism' and the 'outdated' 1944 economic model while urging comprehensive debt relief, international tax cooperation, and reform of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.
The letter was organised by Club de Madrid, the world's biggest forum of democratic former heads of state and government, with support from Oxfam and the People's Medicines Alliance.
Its signatories include Brown; Helen Clark of New Zealand; Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain; Carlos Alvarado Quesada of Costa Rica; Aminata Touré of Senegal; Sanna Marin of Finland; and Nobel peace prize winners José Ramos-Horta, the current president of Timor-Leste, and Óscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica.
Their rare intervention comes in a moment of profound global uncertainty with democracies backsliding, the rules-based order in retreat and violence on the rise. Policy analyst Fiona Hill has argued that a third world war is in effect already under way.
Donald Trump has continued to challenge the post-war consensus, withdrawn the US from the Paris climate accord and, with help from the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, shuttered the development agency USAID. Musk is poised to become the world's first trillionaire by 2027, according to one report.
'Volatility orders our world today,' the letter states. 'Inequality spirals across nations. Trillionaires could emerge this decade, while near half of humanity lives in poverty. 3.3 billion people live in countries that spend more on interest to pay sovereign debt than on education or health.
'Climate breakdown outpaces green transitions. Across too many places, children are being buried under states' belligerence as any sense of a rules-based order is violently displaced by a power-based one. The multilateralism to solve global problems that grew out of two World Wars is in disarray. Global problems that need global solutions and cannot be solved by nation states on their own remain unaddressed.'
The world is falling short in multilateral cooperation and the financing of global development aid, the former leaders warn, leading to more poverty, ill health, illiteracy and environmental problems.
In what some observers may interpret as a swipe at Trump, who has attacked organisations such as Nato, the United Nations and World Health Organization, the letter states: 'Alone, any one country – and its people – is left vulnerable when another chooses narrow unilateralism above all else. We need international cooperation, revamped for our era.'
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Despite the grim assessment, the former leaders express optimism that 'a powerful shift is possible' and advocate for 'a new economic coalition of the willing of countries to cooperate – to combat extreme inequality, end poverty and meet human rights. One that is founded upon values of solidarity and sovereignty.'
They assert: 'Trillions of dollars exist for financing development – but too much public money is captured by private power.' Condemning the 'hemorrhaging cuts by rich nations', they argue for a restoration of development aid and global minimum taxes on the profits of multinationals.
The group of 40 former presidents and prime ministers identify the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville, Spain, G20 in South Africa and Cop30 in Brazil as major opportunities to advance their agenda.
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The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Worse than anything under the Tories': changes to welfare bill anger disability campaigners
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Telegraph
7 hours ago
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A year after gambling on Starmer, Britain is gripped by buyer's remorse
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British voters have clung to mainstream parties for as long as anyone can remember – yet now they are genuinely considering political revolution. And this is happening as a result of the perceived failure of conventional politicians, currently represented by Starmer. Plummeting support A comprehensive poll by public policy research agency Public First for The Telegraph reveals the scale of the Prime Minister's problems. Currently, 53 per cent of voters have a very unfavourable view of him, while just 26 per cent view him favourably. On the eve of the last election, Public First had Starmer with an approval rating of plus 1 per cent. The drop is dramatic. A year ago, 47 per cent of voters said – when asked directly – that they liked Starmer, while 47 per cent said they did not. Now, 62 per cent say they do not like him, and just 33 per cent say they do. A year ago, 32 per cent of voters agreed with the statement 'I do not like the Labour Party or Keir Starmer'; a year on, that figure has risen to 44 per cent. Crucially, a year ago voters regarded him as a good leader by a margin of 40 per cent to 29. Today, 48 per cent consider him a bad leader, with only 25 per cent still backing him. And by 53 per cent to 23, they believe he has performed poorly as Prime Minister. Jumpy backbenchers will have picked up on at least some of these sentiments on the doorstep. Behind the briefing by Labour MPs against Morgan McSweeney, Starmer's chief of staff, is likely a deeper antipathy towards the Prime Minister himself. The new polling was conducted even before it emerged this week that Starmer was preparing to cave in to Labour rebels and allow existing disability claimants to keep their benefits – a move likely to make him appear even weaker in the eyes of many voters. The survey shows that, given a choice of leading contenders, people believe Farage would make the best leader – ahead of Starmer, Kemi Badenoch and Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader. These are the dreadful fundamentals Starmer should be most concerned about. Starmer's undoing Things started to go wrong for Keir Starmer almost immediately. Just weeks into his premiership, in the late summer of 2024, he was already in serious trouble with voters. Although he was dealt a difficult hand, he made a series of decisions that so alienated him from the public, those that voted for him may never return. It's rare for individual events to have a measurable impact on public opinion – most come and go without voters noticing. But these incidents cut through – partly because Starmer was new in office and people were watching closely, but also because they genuinely mattered to people. Tracking polls at the time show that Starmer's favourability ratings dropped with each new crisis. 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However, any goodwill evaporated by the time of the Autumn Statement on October 30. The scale of new tax rises shocked businesses already struggling with weak growth, and the media fallout deeply unsettled voters weary from years of economic hardship. Then, in January 2025, Keir Starmer found himself in an extraordinary clash with the world's richest man, Elon Musk, over the Government's alleged failure to take the fallout from grooming gangs seriously enough. The affair has since descended into farce, with Starmer and senior colleagues agreeing to a new investigation – after previously dismissing calls for one as politically motivated. Starmer enjoyed a decent run at the end of winter, announcing on February 25 that defence spending would increase to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027, while taking a more assertive and constructive role on the world stage. 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Voters themselves aren't shocked, but they are surprised that Labour appears 'just the same' – and have responded with a mix of exasperation and outright hostility. Failure to deliver For politicians, popularity is primarily driven by voters' judgment of their ability to deliver policy change. Tory failure on policy – on the NHS, immigration and the cost of living – explains the scale of their defeat in 2024. Labour policy failure explains the speed and scale of their fall. When asked in the Public First poll which pledges Starmer had made progress on, by far the most popular answer was 'none of the above,' chosen by over 39 per cent of voters. Only small minorities believed he had made progress on any of the other promises drawn from Labour's 2024 election manifesto. Only 24 per cent said he had made progress on cutting NHS waiting times – the only area where any reasonably positive change is believed to have occurred. Given that NHS failures were a key factor damaging the Tories before the last election, with voters desperate for quicker treatment, Labour must urgently improve these figures. Elsewhere, on issues of similar importance, only 8 per cent said Starmer had made progress in restoring order to the asylum system, and just 12 per cent believed he had improved border security. Labour made a big deal of their ambition to change the country for the better – this was central to their manifesto, and Starmer and his front bench made it the defining theme of their election campaign. Yet only 10 per cent believe they have made progress in changing the country for the better; 11 per cent think they have begun to restore hope; and 14 per cent feel they have started to end the chaos within Government. Carping during the pandemic The public's dim view of Starmer dates back to his first months as Labour leader, following his election on April 4 2020, during the first Covid lockdown. Starmer was unusually unpopular in his first year as Labour leader; voters reacted poorly to him almost immediately. To be fair, he became leader at the worst possible time for the opposition. The pandemic was a period when voters first demanded total loyalty to the government during a national crisis, then quickly shifted to demanding concrete alternative ideas to get us out of the mess we seemed trapped in. They wanted new plans to improve track and trace, Covid testing and vaccine distribution. While in some ways unreasonable, this was the expectation voters held. From the earliest days through to the end of the pandemic – and until quite recently – voters in focus groups repeatedly criticised him for 'carping from the sidelines' and offering nothing constructive. As the pandemic faded but chaos under the Tories continued, Starmer had one clear advantage: voters saw him as a low-drama politician. While the Tories delivered years of turmoil under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, Starmer quietly kept his own show running. Under his leadership, Labour stopped saying 'mad' things, and the eccentricities of the Corbyn years disappeared. This is a big achievement, and it's to Starmer's massive credit that he pulled it off. But the scale of his success is lost on most voters. Most people have no idea – how could they? – about the challenge of running a bureaucracy like the Labour Party, with ideological enemies everywhere and rivals waiting to steal your job. All they really knew was that he was low-drama. Even as Starmer built a formidable poll lead, he lagged badly in focus groups, with sceptical voters raising persistent doubts about his character. Things began to shift in late 2023. By spring 2024, focus groups finally mirrored the polls, and the popularity Labour and Starmer enjoyed in the surveys became a reality. People started saying he 'looked' like a leader, contrasting his calm demeanour with the headless chickens who had run the Conservative Party. But the shift in most voters' attitudes was driven by the head, not the heart, and was therefore never truly 'real.' They never fully came to respect Starmer. Instead, they calculated that backing him was the best way to remove the Tories without placing the country in peril with a high-risk alternative – and that was most voters' priority by the election. People still said they knew little about him; they simply hoped he would be better than the Conservative option. People simply didn't know who he was. In the Public First poll on Starmer conducted on the eve of the general election, nearly twice as many respondents incorrectly believed he was under 60 (when he is over 60). By a similar margin, many said he had never had to worry about money, despite his family struggling financially when he was a child. Other questions about who Starmer cares most about – whether young or old, business leaders or workers – also produced large numbers of 'don't know' responses. If Starmer's lack of clear definition helped him just before the election, what was once a weakness early in his leadership has now returned as a weakness in his premiership. Being low-drama compared to the Tories was briefly an asset, but now it once again makes him seem unsure of what to do. Policy delivery matters most but, for prime ministers, there is always more to it than this. Prime ministers are leaders – and voters demand dynamic leadership. Starmer has never been able to convince the public he can provide this, which casts doubt on his ability to turn his reputation around. Farage in the driving seat Someone of Starmer's character – low-key, moderate and decent – is unlikely to 'communicate' his way out of trouble, especially with the threat from Reform looming. Great communicators can pin the blame on others or make the prospect of change seem worse than the status quo. But it's unlikely Starmer can convince people himself that change would be worse. Instead, Starmer's strategy – which remains his best bet – is to quietly keep the show on the road and try to make tangible gains in a few key areas, which he can point to on the eve of the next election. Those key areas are the NHS, migration, and growth. On the NHS, he must at least show that more GPs are being recruited and that a medical cavalry is gathering on the horizon; it would also help if pharmacies were further empowered to provide basic treatments, speeding up care. On migration, the unfortunate reality is that he has no choice but to close hotels and begin swiftly removing significant numbers of failed asylum claimants, hopefully stemming the flow of boats. And on growth, he needs to at least offer small businesses hope by cutting taxes and easing their regulatory burden. There's little chance he'll be able to show the country has 'changed' by the next election – and perhaps even less chance by the time he faces a challenge from a Labour rival. All he can hope for is to convince people the country is heading in the right direction, and to claim: 'It's working, don't let others ruin it.' If he can make small amounts of measurable progress, it will put him in a strong position. That's because the unvarnished style that makes Reform politicians appealing to the public will likely lead their senior figures to say and do damaging things during this Parliament. Meanwhile, it's reasonable to expect the Tories will soon plunge back into civil war – a challenge to Badenoch is on the cards. In this context, Starmer could once again appear the least-worst option. Regardless, we know enough about Starmer to be sure he will never fully be master of his own destiny. It won't just be Labour backbenchers pushing him around between now and the election. He will never dictate the terms of political debate in this country – that role will belong to Farage for the duration of this Parliament. Starmer will succeed only if others fail. In this climate, with his opponents occupying the volatile edges of the political spectrum, that's not necessarily a terrible place to be.
Spectator
7 hours ago
- Spectator
Oxfam's Gaza propaganda
An astonishing email from Oxfam, one of Britain's oldest and biggest humanitarian charities, dropped into my inbox this week. Dramatically titled (in blood scarlet) 'Red Lines for Gaza', it demanded that if I am as outraged by the 'horrors that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza' as Oxfam is, and I want to do something about it, I should scrawl a red line across the palm of my hand and send the image to the charity. They will then use it to make a striking design for their campaign on the Gaza issue in the coming days. The email simply assumed that I must share Oxfam's one sided, extreme and unbalanced views, and would automatically lend my support to their absurd and sinister propaganda stunt Nowhere in the angry text of the email was there any attempt to explain or explore why there is a conflict in Gaza. There was no mention either of what happened on 7 October 2023. Nor was there any indication that the Strip is controlled by Hamas – an armed jihadist terrorist group banned in Britain, which is sworn to the destruction of Israel and the death of its Jewish citizens. A terrorist group who are still holding more than 50 of the hostages they abducted during their invasion of Israel on that deadly October day. The email simply assumed that I must share Oxfam's one sided, extreme and unbalanced views, and would automatically lend my support to their absurd and sinister propaganda stunt. Oxfam has always been a leftist and anti-western organisation, but it's a swift moral decline when the charity ignores the actions of a ferocious and murderous bunch of terrorists so it can focus on Israel. It is not the only household name to take up the anti-Israel cause this week. On Tuesday, the Co-op food retailer announced it would no longer stock produce from Israel or 16 other countries that it deemed guilty of serious human rights violations. The Co-op claimed it made this move as a result of pressure from their members. I hold a Co-op loyalty card myself – but have never once been asked by them for my views on Israel, Gaza, or any other 'human rights' issue. Like Oxfam, the Co-op is a venerable British institution with deep left-wing roots (it was affiliated with the Labour party and even sponsored many of their MPs), but its open support for one side on such a controversial issue is not what I expect from my grocer, and clearly limits its customers' freedom of choice in selecting what they can and cannot buy from the supermarket chain. International politics and buying toilet tissue should be kept firmly apart. Founded in Oxford in 1942 in the midst of the second world war, Oxfam began life as an initiative by a bunch of bien pensant local Quakers and university academics to bring food to people ravaged by the global conflict. After the war, as it grew into an industry and expanded with branches across the world, Oxfam doubtless did much worthy good work in alleviating hunger in famines and relieving suffering caused by wars, earthquakes, floods and similar natural and manmade catastrophes. But in doing so, the charity conglomerate became drawn away from disaster relief and into politics over issues such as national debt and climate change (inevitably on the 'progressive' leftist side). It also has been embroiled in several scandals, leading to suggestions that the once-upstanding institution had become irredeemably tainted. Oxfam workers in Haiti and Chad were accused of sexual abuse and exploitation of the very people they were supposed to be helping; the charity's higher executives drew obscenely high salaries; and in 2017 Oxfam was fined under the Data Protection Act for misusing private information naively entrusted to them by donors. But in its Gaza propaganda, Oxfam has plumbed new depths. That may give the naturally generous and fair-minded British public second thoughts, the next time they are asked by the charity to reach into their wallets.
