Donald Trump’s race to the bottom on international development has an energetic new entrant in the form of Keir Starmer. The prime minister has raided the UK aid budget, in a move that would have embarrassed some of his recent predecessors, so he can commit to increasing defence spending ahead of his White House meeting. It is now some of the world’s most defenceless people who will pay for the UK’s defence.
As if to underscore the extent to which the US president has turned the established order on its head, we were treated to the strange sight of the prime minister being applauded by the leader of the opposition, while Reform complained noisily about Labour stealing their flagship policies.
These latest cuts will be met with horror by many people. However, they are a continuation of a trend. Over the last 10 years, both the quality and quantity of UK aid funding have been slashed to the point where the Institute for Fiscal Studies observes that even if it was raided in its entirety, the pot is no longer big enough to get defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP.
Following the prime minister’s announcement, UK government spending on international development is set to hit a low last seen under Margaret Thatcher. It’s part of a wider pattern of weakening international cooperation. Indeed, long before Elon Musk boasted of putting USAID into the woodchipper, traditional champions of humanitarianism such as Sweden and the Netherlands have been backsliding.
The financial impact of the latest announcement on those NGOs that rely on UK aid will be serious. Many of them do excellent work. However, it is the human cost in some of the world’s poorest countries that ought to be making headlines. People in refugee camps whose food parcels will shrink. Children awaiting life-saving vaccines will now be pushed to the back of a lengthening queue. Programmes to help smallholder farmers adapt to the worst effects of the climate crisis suddenly abandoned. I still remember the impact of the last round of cuts in 2021, not least to our own peacebuilding work in South Sudan.
Aid is in many ways just one piece of the jigsaw puzzle of international cooperation. What the UK does in helping to tackle the climate crisis, build peace, offer fair trading conditions for the poorest countries, and close the loopholes that allow cross-border tax abuse will ultimately have a much bigger impact on poverty and inequality. In an increasingly multipolar world, the choices made within countries are often what will be most decisive in whether people are able to escape from the poverty trap or not.
But none of this means that aid is unimportant. At its best, it expresses solidarity with global neighbours, especially during emergencies, and supports civil society to do the things that states and the commercial sector cannot do or should not do.
Diplomatically and economically, the UK is a much smaller global player than was the case almost 30 years ago, when Labour created the Department for International Development. But rather than beat a retreat from its international commitments, it surely behoves any government worth the name to engage in a serious conversation about its responsibility towards the wider world. When others are reneging on their own promises and descending into beggar thy neighbour politics, where Britain stands on international development is a test of the prime minister’s leadership.
Patrick Watt is the CEO of Christian Aid
