With the death of Pope Francis, the world loses not only a church leader but also a moral compass

AS all eyes focused on Labour’s first Budget in 14 (long) years, barely anyone saw fit to link it to events in Valencia, the Amazon or the heat dome over central Africa. Yet these are the bigger issues around which global politics, economics and national Budgets will increasingly revolve.
Droughts in South America and central Africa might seem too remote for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to be juggling with. But the images from Valencia ought to have intruded somewhere in her Treasury conversations.
More than a year’s worth of rainfall hit Valencia in eight hours. Torrents swept through the streets, turning them into impromptu scrap yards of displaced cars. Over 150 people have died. Dozens more are missing.
ALAN SIMPSON warns of a dystopian crossroads where Trump’s wrecking ball meets AI-driven alienation, and argues only a Green New Deal can repair our fractured society before techno-feudalism consumes us all


