POLITICS: Despite domestic pressures, the Prime Minister must turn to COP26

By: Alexander Urwin

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has had a turbulent start to the new parliamentary session. Energy prices have soared, disputes regarding the Northern Ireland Protocol remain unresolved, and lorry driver shortages have left Britain’s tabloid newspapers proclaiming Christmas is in doubt. Those same newspapers this week ran front page splashes of the Prime Minister at his easel, holidaying in the sun. Where domestic crises mount, though, forthcoming international action offers Johnson and his favoured ‘Global Britain’ focus a chance to relieve the pressure. 

Indeed, as November’s pivotal, UK-hosted COP26 approaches, with it comes a golden opportunity to offer answers to the questions of global impact and legacy that surely grip any incumbent of Number 10, even those without long-held designs on ‘world king’. If this summer’s UK-hosted G7 gave Johnson his first real, post-global lockdown taste of statesmanship and international diplomacy, September’s climate-focused address to the General Assembly in New York surely underscored the unique possibility such events can provide. These are the moments that allow a leader like Johnson to fully grapple with the fundamental question of high office: for what will I be remembered? A defining achievement of summitry in Glasgow—a 2021 equivalent of the Paris Agreement the world so needs—would surely go a long way in answering that question.

As is so often the case for a British leader seeking achievements on the international stage, the US president will be the vital ally. This tradition is as old as the concept of the so-called ‘special relationship’ itself, a term coined by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1946, in celebration of an alliance with President Roosevelt that had saved Britain and won the Allies the war. At the start of this century, Prime Minister Tony Blair infamously looked to the White House in his own search for international influence and acclaim. And Prime Minister Gordon Brown clearly saw the importance of a close working relationship with a newly-elected President Obama in coordinating a response to the Atlantic Financial Crisis and, indeed, boosting Brown’s own flailing domestic popularity. Such was Brown’s excitement at playing a Keynesian role at the right-hand of the then-international political rockstar, he erred in an address to the UK Parliament and celebrated his own role in “[saving] the world”. He had meant to say the banks.

Johnson and President Biden may be unlikely bedfellows; when Biden entered office much was made of Johnson’s jarring remarks regarding President Obama’s ancestry back in 2016, given the overlap at official level between the Obama and Biden teams. But such is the magnitude of the challenge, anything peripheral seems trivial. Indeed, both leaders have already shown they can work together on climate issues, not least in Biden’s doubling of America’s contribution towards Johnson’s flagship COP26 target, as announced at the UN last month. And, whether in Cornwall or during Johnson’s recent visit to the White House, there does appear to be some genuine rapport. It is worth noting too that this is not as asymmetrical as many of the UK’s calls on its ‘special’ partner. International success in the battle with the climate crisis is clearly a key tenet of Biden’s agenda and, while the President would naturally prefer this Glasgow summit to be in Greensboro or Gilbert, the outcome will be as important for him as it will Johnson.

Of course willingness and opportunity to engage, while important, are no substitute for a clear plan to marshall others and the funds they commit. Here, Johnson’s Climate Envoy Mark Carney, in his recent speech to Columbia’s World Leaders Forum, is instructive. The former governor of the Bank of England spoke of a government that recognised the existential challenge it faced, and an understanding of the scale of the financing required ($100 to $150 trillion, across public and private sources, by 2050). He channeled Bill Gates in recognizing the route to this inconceivably large sum was through public investment that mobilized private investment, with only the most ambitious and impactful technological solutions capable of delivering the pace of change required. While less eye-catching, the work Carney set out on fundamentally updating the ‘plumbing’ of the financial system - to better map and pool risk for insurers, to more effectively monitor fledgling climate commitments across the world, and to put ‘Net Zero’ at the center of every executive-level consideration - will be vitally important too. 

So, if the UK and US, or specifically Johnson and Biden, can effectively coordinate the efforts of their own national infrastructures and those of their key COP26 partners, most notably China, behind these steps, there seems to be a route to summit success. From there, momentum could push us towards an international conversation on a credible carbon pricing model and the coherent approach to the compensation required for such a seismic structural change. For Johnson, if he can leverage the UK’s COP26 presidency and move the world substantively forward on climate, still relatively early in his premiership, that would go a long way to shaping the legacy he so craves and, at the same time, would provide a distraction from his presently persistent domestic pressures. Christmas might not be so bad after all.