The FT has reported this morning that:
Boris Johnson is planning to fold the UK's Department for International Development into the Foreign Office if he wins this week's election, as he tries to flesh out his promise to build a post-Brexit “global Britain”.
It adds:
Mr Johnson wants Britain's £13.4bn overseas aid budget to be used more effectively and thinks putting it under the control of the Foreign Office would better align it with the country's political and business objectives.
And:
However, some Dfid officials fear that the revamp – described as “a rumour” by a close ally of Mr Johnson – could be used as a pretext to cut Britain's overseas aid budget, which has long been criticised by the rightwing of the Conservative party.
Before noting:
Some in Number 10 have suggested that Britain should set its own rules for what counts as “overseas aid” – including more defence and embassy spending – rather than using the OECD definition.
None of this is surprising, of course. The Brittania Unchained crowd, and most especially Priti Patel, have long hated international development. To them aid is a sign of market failure and so has to be ended. Unless that is, it provides support to British business, or rather, British profits.
I strongly suspect that this merger will happen if the Tories win and that aid will just become another bargaining tool for a desperate country. And by that I mean it will be used to buy off migration claims from these making trade deals with the UK. Pardon my cynicism, but institutionalised racism will be the Whitehall norm under another Tory government.
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Repulsive! It’s a sign of the times, but once the FT suggests this, it is sort-of obvious and shouldn’t surprise us – even when we remember Pritti Patel trying to re-align (or maybe just promising) chunks of our international aid budget to the highly contentious Likud party governed country which is accused of introducing apartheid legislation and of extensive land-grabbing.
Back in 2004, George Monbiot pointed out that ‘British foreign aid is now targeted at countries willing to sell off their assets to big business’, so this reprehensible behaviour is nothing new. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/jan/06/comment.internationalaidanddevelopment
Thank heaven that the Labour party is now under ‘new management’ and that a subtle paradigm-shift makes this misuse of internatonal aid spending unacceptable to most people.
Development aid may be a sign of market failure (because, duh, the market frequently fails) but it is also a sign of solidarity, compassion and hope.
Precisely