Tory Shadow Chancellor, Mel Stride, wants to slash the UK's overseas aid to 0.1% of national income. That's not just cruel, it's racism and fascism dressed up as fiscal prudence. Cutting aid means condemning millions to poverty, fuelling migration, and destroying economic stability. This is the politics of contempt in action, when Britain should lead the world by helping it, not punishing it for existing.

This is the transcript:

Tory Chancellor Mel Stride says he's going to cut the UK's overseas aid budget to 0.1% of UK national income.  I've heard of some stupid policies that have been proposed by governments before now, but this one ranks right up there with the very worst.

This whole idea that somehow or other, we don't need to make a contribution to the world, just because we happen to be the sixth-largest economy within it, is absolutely ridiculous.

It is small-mindedness, gone mad.

It is fascism taking over the Conservative Party.

It is racism writ large over everything that it does, and it is actually trying to compound almost every problem that we face.

Our overseas aid budget is, in part, reparations for the damage that we did to the world during the course of our  period of empire and colonialism.

We ripped the wealth out of the world.

We ripped people out of the world.

We have a duty to make good the damage we created.

More than that, this policy is one about creating economic stability for the world at large. That is why  we should be spending at least 0.7% of our national GDP on overseas development, which we achieved during the era of David Cameron, unbelievably, only a decade or so ago.  But now we have Tories saying, "We can't afford this", because they believe that we are a poor, broke country, and they don't ask the question, "Who made us a poor, broke country?" when very clearly it was them who did so over 14 years of austerity started by George Osborne.

So what are the consequences of 0.1% spent on overseas development, much of it, by the way, which will be actually spent in the UK, because spending on migrants comes out of this budget?  Well, the answer is obvious. There will quite simply be more people wanting to come to this country, because the countries in which they live will be worse off.

It will not be possible to get an education in those places.

It will not be possible to sustain lives in those places because there won't be the economic support to let that happen.

It will not be possible for people to manage the consequences of climate change because we won't be helping them do so, and therefore, climate migration will grow.

All of this is literally Mel Stride picking up the nearest available gun that he can find and shooting himself in the foot. We are making the world worse, but in a way that makes coming to the UK more attractive, and if he really is so obsessed about migration, this policy is economic madness.

But it fails at a moral level as well,  because we are a rich country. We have a duty to redistribute our wealth to those who are quite simply poor in comparison to ourselves. We have a duty to do so unconditionally. We do not need to spend this money on paying for migrants in this country. We need to spend it in the countries where they came from, so they don't have the incentive to leave those places because they have the opportunities there, which are otherwise denied to them.

But we're not going to do that. Instead, we are going to punish people for simply being. This is what the economics and politics of conceit, of utter contempt, of racism and of fascism look like. And I'm accusing  Mel Stride of all these things because he is seeking to discriminate against the people of the world on the basis they're not British, just as we did when we were a colonial power.

We should hang our heads in shame that we have a leader in the opposition who can put forward a policy like this. We have a duty to support people. But it's also a practical responsibility because if we really want to help people to stay in the countries from which they're coming, then the only way to do that is to make life possible there, and at present, we are not doing that. So we're actually harming ourselves with this policy, so stupid is it.

What on earth is Mel Stride thinking about? Or should we be asking the other question, is Mel Stride capable of thinking, because there's no evidence that he can?

Taking further action

If you want to write a letter to your MP on the issues raised in this blog post, there is a ChatGPT prompt to assist you in doing so, with full instructions, here.

One word of warning, though: please ensure you have the correct MP. ChatGPT can get it wrong.

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