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The UK’s retreat from climate leadership is not in its national interest
(Climate Home News, 6 Jul 2023) It has been a long half-year since the end of the UK’s Cop Presidency.
The Glasgow highpoint of our climate leadership has long since faded. So too have the heady days of the 2022 Conservative Party leadership elections, in which most candidates were content at least to hold the line on UK climate ambition, internationally and at home.
Our climate news now, insofar as it exists, is some combination of domestic nimby-ism, diplomatic disinterest, and new drilling.
Personally, I left the Cop26 President’s private office, where I worked as a speechwriter and private secretary, to continue the work from outside government at one of the UK’s largest philanthropic foundations.
And it was my new role that took me to Paris last month, for the Macron-Mottley finance summit. More, of course, than can be said for the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who choose instead to party with media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
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