{"id":82411,"date":"2025-05-18T07:45:52","date_gmt":"2025-05-18T06:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=82411"},"modified":"2025-05-18T08:48:49","modified_gmt":"2025-05-18T07:48:49","slug":"the-diminished-state-of-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/05\/18\/the-diminished-state-of-the-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"The diminished state of the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"

As The Guardian reported yesterday<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The UK\u2019s drastically diminished aid budget is the \u201cnew normal,\u201d the development minister, Jenny Chapman, has said, as she claimed Labour\u2019s approach would help repair voters\u2019 faith in overseas aid.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Jenny Chapman - a failed Labour politician who is a Baroness, and who is rumoured to be close to Starmer - is talking total drivel. To contextualise this, the Guardian noted:<\/p>\n

\n

Lady Chapman took up her post in February, after\u00a0Anneliese Dodds resigned<\/a>\u00a0in protest at Keir Starmer\u2019s decision to\u00a0slash overseas aid spending<\/a>\u00a0to 0.3% of gross national income from 0.5%, to pay for increased defence spending.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In other words, although the UK has immense privilege, which it has and still does exploit to extract considerable value from what are called developing nations, and although it still runs a chain of tax havens which are used to loot many such places with varying forms of supposed legitimacy, we really do not think we can bear responsibility for the consequences any more, or are required to hand just a little back.<\/p>\n

Compassion has gone.<\/p>\n

Soft power has been abandoned.<\/p>\n

Responsibility is so out-of-date now.<\/p>\n

And as for meeting obligations created not long ago, including that to spend 0.7% of GDP on aid, all that has been forgotten.<\/p>\n

Worse still, up to 30% of the aid budget is spent in the UK on managing migrants: this does not come out of domestic spending but is charged to the account of the rest of the world, who lose out as a result.<\/p>\n

All of this is staggeringly shortsighted, not only for our status in the world, but also for our international relationships, the promotion of supposed Western values, and for the sake of our international businesses, who will now so often lose out to Chinese competition as a result. It also makes us seem an utterly unreliable partner. And when many of the programmes are crucial to development, it seems like we just do not care.<\/p>\n

All of that happens so that Rachel can balance the books, and the Cult of Nigel can be appeased.<\/p>\n

What is Starmer playing at? If he wanted to destroy the standing of the UK in the world, he is going about it in the right way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As The Guardian reported yesterday: The UK\u2019s drastically diminished aid budget is the \u201cnew normal,\u201d the development minister, Jenny Chapman, has said, as she claimed
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,14,19,204,35,16,118,106,32,97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-age-of-aggression","category-corruption","category-development","category-economic-justice","category-economics","category-ethics","category-labour","category-politics","category-tax-havens","category-tax-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82411"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82458,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82411\/revisions\/82458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}