22/07/2026. London, United Kingdom. Prime Minister Andy Burnham Official Portrait. 10 Downing Street. Picture by Alecsandra Dragoi / No 10 Downing Street

Last week, while delivering the ‘Leadership’ session of Net Zero Business Academy, I found myself musing on the four requirements of leaders I listed (cribbed from Warren Bennis) ahead of this week’s COP31 meeting:

• Sense of Purpose
• Authenticity
• Resilience
• Bias to Action

It struck me that many national leaders would do well to attend that webinar, as their ‘walk’ is not measuring up to their ‘talk’. For example, UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham talks a good game on Net Zero, yet there are strong rumours that the Rosebank oil field will get the nod following the recent approval of the Jackdaw gas field, and that the 2030 EV mandate target is going to be slashed from 80% to 60% or even 50%, meaning the 2035 phase out of internal combustion engines is almost certainly be doomed. While Burnham repeatedly cites ‘pragmatism’, it is worth noting that Norway is already at 97% EV market share. In other words, the UK targets are very doable, given some purpose, authenticity, resilience and action…

There is going to be a lot of reckoning soon as ambitious stretch targets like ‘Net Zero by 2030’ soon collide with the reality that lots of incremental changes do not add up to a step change. This is why I posited in my 2011 book, The Green Executive, that leadership was the difference between the best and the rest in Sustainability. The kind of step change thinking that breaks us free from business-as-usual-but-a-bit-better has to happen in the boardroom or at the Cabinet table. Push has come to shove and we need to close the gap between ambition and delivery.

Burnham is scheduled to be paying a brief visit to COP31 this week. Hopefully peer pressure in Antalya will be enough to get him to raise his sights from short term challenges to what needs to be done for his kids’ and their kids’ future. Maybe ‘pragmatism’ will give way to proper, big ‘L’ Leadership.