515. Starmer’s Foreign Aid Betrayal, Islamophobia & Australia’s Far Right (Question Time)
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thanks for listening to The Rest Is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com.
Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Now, Rory, I think we may agree on this one. Lucy is a TripPlus member from Warrington. Love the Warrington wolves. What did you make of the government's announcement last week that it is cutting the development budget from 0.5% to 0.3%? Surely, says Lucy, at a time of increasing war, worsening global security, we should not give up on tackling both the root causes and consequences of these conflicts.
Yeah, I think it's completely shocking. I don't think people have concentrated on this. So firstly, the Labour government, when the Tories decided to cut international development, attacked them repeatedly in the House of Commons. And Keir Starmer made these great value speeches about how the Tories need to understand that international development is national security and there's no trade-off between the two. He said that when he did the podcast in opposition. Absolutely. And everyone was very cheered up when he said the podcast in opposition that he was going to hold to the 0.7% commitment and they were all very much signed up to as soon as fiscal conditions allow, we'll come in. Then they came in and they said they were going to increase spending on various things, but in fact, not on international development.
And the fact is that what Keir Starmer's government has done with international development spending is worse than anything that happened during austerity, worse than anything that happened on international development under Boris Johnson or Liz Truss or anyone. So austerity was a 25% cut in departments. This is almost a 70% cut in international development standing from where I was as the international development section. In 2019, I was spending about 20 billion US dollars a year. We're now down in practice If you take out the amount that they're now using that money to spend on refugees in Britain. So you take that out, we're down to about something like 0.24%. This is the lowest level of British spend on international development since 1970.
We were spending more on international development during the oil crisis of 1973. During the moment when we went to the IMF in the 1970s, we were spending more on international development. On Mrs. Thatcher, we were spending more on international development, on austerity.
What are the implications of the UK government's aid cuts?
Keir Starmer has taken us down to the lowest level in 56 years. You're not happy? It's extraordinary. I'm not happy. I mean, it doesn't make moral sense for the Labour Party that cares about these things. I mean, you created the 0.7% commitment. You created a Department of National Development under new Labour. It's one of the few things that the Tories got behind. David Cameron got behind it. Theresa May was under a lot of pressure after Brexit to cut it. But she decided, actually, I think rightly, that when Britain left the European Union, the last thing it could do It started retreating from the world by cutting international development. So she kept that commitment forward. Add to that, we're now in a world in which Trump has cut international development spending.
Apart from the moral and political stuff, it's the context. Completely changed world. So we are in the world of the second Trump administration. We're in the world of Elon Musk and Doge. We're in the world in which Musk comes in and destroys USAID, cuts all that spending, destroys all the support for PEPFAR AIDS programs, malaria. TB, all of that in crisis. The US has stripped all its funding from key UN agencies. And yet we are now spending less as a percentage of our GDP than Trump's United States for America on international development. Okay, let's take a quick pause. Back in a moment. This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy. Energy policy rarely stays in Westminster for long, usually a rise for the bill.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:23
2
What are the implications of the UK government's aid cuts?
2:23–6:04
3
How does Starmer's international development policy compare to previous governments?
6:04–7:09
4
What lessons can the UK learn from South Australia's recent election?
7:09–11:42
5
What role does Islamophobia play in UK politics today?
11:42–12:14
6
How is the concept of Judeo-Christian culture being used politically?
12:14–15:36
7
What are the challenges of monitoring long-term government projects?
15:36–16:59
8
What book recommendations did the hosts share at the end of the episode?
16:59–51:53
Speakers
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