‘The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman thinks about the next generation’

James Freeman Clarke, American theologian and author (1810-1888) 

The BBC's 2025 Reith lectures are entitled ‘Moral Revolution’, and they are being delivered by Rutger Bregman. The title is a worthy aspiration, but almost everything that's happened during this past year has made bringing about a moral revolution feel like pushing water uphill.

The three major threats for our time have all grown massively:

  • The accelerating degradation of our environment, where the COP30 conference exposed a massive lack of commitment from leading nations.
  • The rising threat of existential conflict which was first expressed directly by Donald Trump in his initial meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House (‘You’re playing with World War 3’).
  • The total vacuum for taking any steps to resolving the chasm in global wealth polarisation and the steady erosion of human employment opportunities as a result of automation.

The arrival of the Trump Mark 2 presidency has graphically exposed all of these growing risks. His actions have, in my view, raised the threat level in all three respects — including the risk of conflict, where he regards himself as a peacemaker. However, he is by no means the only person bearing responsibility in that respect.

Rutger Bregman describes the challenges very comprehensively, but he does not, in my opinion, have the answers when he describes national governments as the solution. He looks for what he describes as a ‘realistic utopia’ with ideas such as Universal Basic Income and ‘fair taxation’; in other words, he sees national governments as bearing the responsibility for setting us straight.

But all the evidence over the past one hundred years is that national governments can't deliver this; they are short-termist and operate as giant monopolies within their areas of responsibility and, in western democracies, this has simply resulted in colossal public debt levels and the absence of effective long-term strategies.

The environment has arguably been the most visible casualty during 2025. Violent storms, horrendous flooding, and clear analysis from climate scientists should be making everyone in power realise that we can't go on discounting the future. And yet, at both global and national level, we make totally incoherent policy decisions resulting in persistent and now almost irreversible global warming.

The continued emphasis on oil and gas extraction and its usage in the United States, Russia and India shows how little regard there is for future generations, and in the United Kingdom we continue to see carbon-free solutions such as electric vehicles being only economically viable for householders who can charge them from home.

Meanwhile, the only statesmen in the global oversight of climate degradation are the UK Royal Family, who continue to argue strongly for global responsibility.

Superpowers are much more focused on the rising level of tension and preparations for conflict. While there is no doubt that Trump's involvement has put the lid on the Israel-Gaza conflict, his unpredictable machinations concerning the Russian invasion of Ukraine have every sign of making a bad situation worse. Last week’s warning from NATO spelt that out in graphic detail.

And while Trump blows hot and cold in what he describes as peace-making, the Chinese autocracy bides its time over its potential acquisition of Taiwan while at the same time continuing to increase its massive military strength.

There is a real absence of statesmanship in terms of global peace-making and integration. On 23rd June we called for a ‘Global Assembly for Faith’ which could set a new sense of direction in recognition of the fact that most conflicts originate from religious differences; but while we wait for any global initiatives to take hold, populations across the world just have to look on anxiously as the autocratic superpowers flex their muscles. 

However, both environmental and peace-making initiatives are held back by growing levels of wealth polarisation which make the wealthy feel ‘above it all’ and those in poverty feel a sense of exclusion from participation. The failure to address issues such as inter-generational rebalancing has been with us for all time, but the need for it becomes ever more acute as birth rates decline among the wealthy and as conflict and climate change fuel growing levels of migration.

Next May there will be a conference at the Institute for Fiscal Studies into inter-generational rebalancing, covering both academic and policy perspectives. It will be organised by the charity Share Alliance and the Cambridge University Economics Department. Its focus will be both national and global, and hopefully fresh ideas will emerge to help us plan for a more equitable world.

However, James Freeman Clarke’s challenge still remains: how to get focused on the next generation as opposed to just the next election.

As we move into the new year, we must hope that much more attention is placed on the future of humanity and our world than that which has been evident in 2025. In order to do this, we need to replace fear and greed with hope and more interest in caring for the needs of others; and politicians need to explore what steps they can take to move out of their short-term mindset focusing on upcoming elections and into those wider, long-term issues that attracted so many of them towards government in the first place.

Gavin Oldham OBE

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