Do you ever think the world’s gone mad? Then you look around and see few others agreeing with you. And you wonder if maybe it’s you, maybe you’re the mad one?
I feel a bit like that with the latest Labour bombshell, last week’s announcement that the aid budget would be cut to fund an increase in military spending.
This is a simply heinous decision. With the exception of John Swinnney and Stephen Flynn, I see little indignation or outrage from our elected representatives. No-one has called a demo. I’ve not been bombarded with petitions from 38 degrees and others. True, the aid minister has resigned and good on her. But otherwise, there’s little evidence of rebellion on Labour’s backbenches.
What’s going on? Imagine if the Tories had done this even a year ago.
Is it just such a blow to the solar plexus of liberal democracy that we can’t catch our breath to shout back.? Perhaps our collective compassion has just been boiled like frogs, and we’ve not noticed. In much the same way as stopping to help someone lying on the street in front of you is now seen as aberrant behaviour.
But this can’t go on. In the words of the Manic Street Preachers, “if you tolerate this, then your children will be next”.
There’s two parts to this equation. Let’s start with the first, the unevidenced and unchallenged assumption that there is an imperative to rapidly increase military spending.
I for one am getting sick of one retired general after another taking to the airwaves demanding we fight a war with other people’s children. Their argument seems to be that if America is pulling resources out of NATO, these must be matched by a corresponding increase in contributions from the remaining members states.
Well no. If America is pulling out of NATO, then it’s time to reevaluate what on earth NATO is for in the first place and whether we need to look at different alliances. But doing that immediately begs the argument what is the role of a European military alliance. For starters it shouldn’t be to secure a playing field for American corporations, or to enrich American arms manufacturers.
But more than that we need to ask whether Western powers intend to exist in a permanent state of tension with the rest of the world, or to seek an accommodation with it. Is this really a battle between east and west as if the Soviet Union had never disappeared? Is it really a battle between liberalism and totalitarianism when European countries elect overt Nazis to their parliaments in droves?
We should also look at what the MoD spends money on and ask whether it is actually contributing to our collective defence. Right at the top of the audit list would be the £6.5Bn spent every year on the nuclear submarine programme. A system that is not fit for purpose, can only be maintained with American support, and drains resources from elsewhere.
That budget is many, many times the increase in spending announced last week. It could be used to ensure forces are properly staffed, trained, and equipped. Instead, it is squandered on a white elephant for the vanity of mandarins and generals who’ve never got over losing an empire.
Even if your concluded that there was a serious threat to freedom and democracy which required an increase in military expenditure, then at least have the honesty to argue that we should divert more wealth to the public sphere to pay for it. If Daily Mail readers are really so supportive of getting on a war footing, then let them pay for it.
There’s no danger of that, though. Instead, the people who will be paying are the wretched of the earth who will now be denied British aid. Those who have the misfortune to be borne into the shanty towns of the Indian sub-continent or the grinding poverty of Africa.
You cannot help but think that Starmer is playing for Reform votes here, by pandering to ill-informed prejudices about international development. Shame on him for doing so. Part of that right wing narrative is that hard earned British taxes end up in the hands of third world despots who use it to furnish their palaces whilst keeping their own population down.
If it matters, that’s not true. Pretty much none of the aid budget is given directly to national governments in the countries where is targeted. The biggest proportion goes to multilateral organisations like WHO, GAVI and the World bank’s International Development Association. Most of the rest goes to country-by-country programmes where projects are delivered on the ground through major NGOs like Save the Children or Marie Stopes International.
To be clear none of this work has adequate funding.
The overseas aid budget has already been cut by a third since 2010. More than a quarter of what remains isn’t used for aid at all, but to pay for refugee accommodation in the UK because the government won’t let asylum seekers work for a living.
The consequences of further proposed cuts of 40% will be death and misery. The poor will get poorer. The consequences of that will be a more unequal, unstable and insecure world. This decision is not just bereft of humanity. It is counterproductive and stupid too.