Yet when he faces the Parliamentary Labour Party on Monday, he will need to calm a darkening mood among his own troops following his bold decision to raid the aid budget in order to fund a belated boost for defence spending.
This era began four decades ago with Live Aid, a heartfelt response by pop stars to scenes of terrible suffering in Ethiopia. Unfortunately, they ignored African voices and ended up aiding the dictatorship behind a cruel famine. This set the tone for a self-serving sector that exploded like knotweed to push its flawed idea that rivers of cash and simplistic gesture politics can solve complex global problems.
Critics accuse Starmer of following the lead of Donald Trump, who sent shockwaves around the world by ending most US foreign aid contracts. Typically, the US President took a sledgehammer to smash up the institution, failing to target cuts in a strategic manner and sparking a spate of legal challenges. Then he highlighted the waste with his usual mixture of misinformation and mockery in last week’s boastful address to a joint session of Congress.
These moves are driven largely by domestic concerns. Yet it is absurd for indebted nations to borrow money to spray around the world, especially when struggling to pay many bills at home.
It is worth noting, however, that for all the squeals of pain, the amount given by the 32 wealthiest nations in overseas development assistance has risen almost threefold this century. We now give cash even to countries that have their own aid agencies and space programmes.
square KITTY DONALDSON
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Starmer’s move led to the loss of his aid minister, and her departure reflects deep concern felt in a party that contains more MPs who worked for Save the Children alone than in the nation’s financial powerhouse of the City. Scottish Office minister Kirsty McNeill typifies how this rent-seeking sector has become so entwined with Westminster: she left a £118,450-a-year policy post at the charity to become an MP, having previously been an aid lobbyist, then a Downing Street special adviser.
Former foreign secretary David Miliband fumes that these cuts are “devastating for people who need more help, not less” – although their desperation failed to stop him taking an annual pay package in excess of £1m from his aid charity.Save the Children also complains about the supposed risk to lives, with at least 58 staff based in London on six-figure packages and a US boss who pocketed $629,195.
So perhaps she might get her committee to examine events in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where more than 7,000 people have been killed since January and huge numbers of refugees forced to flee after a rebel militia aided by Rwandan troops overran a region laden with mineral riches.
Behind this bloodshed lies a brutal dictatorship in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, handed huge sums by Britain and other Western nations, who ignored brazen atrocities and rampant looting in their desperate search for an aid poster child. President Paul Kagame skilfully played naive donors and exploited guilt over genocide, showing off clean streets and a female majority in his patsy parliament (while spending millions to sponsor his beloved Arsenal football club).
It is deluded neocolonialism to think we can use our cash to impose stability, peace, prosperity or democracy in such places.
If Westminster really wants to help such places, it should tackle laundering of stolen cash through our firms, institutions and tax havens. But so much of our aid just helps gruesome regimes, undermines democracy, fosters corruption and fuels conflict.
Starmer should tell his troops the truth: this spendthrift era must end since it was at best an unintended farce and at worst a damaging fraud.
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