Keir Starmer’s Plans For Aid And Diplomacy Could Help Define Him

 

Debates over the duty one person owes another tend to stir strong feelings. Take foreign aid. Those on the right of Britain’s Conservative Party see spending on the distant poor as a symptom of wastefulness and wokeism. Boris Johnson once called the aid department a “giant cashpoint in the sky”, dishing out funds without regard for domestic interests. Those on the left of the Labour Party feel just as keenly that aid is a moral imperative and that post-Brexit Britain needs to signal more clearly than ever that it is committed to the broader world. Polls suggest that Labour will form the next government. What Sir Keir Starmer, its leader, decides on foreign policy matters. His stance on foreign aid is a test of his priorities.

The big question is how to fix the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (fcdo), the mega-department formed from the merger of the aid corps and diplomatic service in 2020. Like many rushed marriages, this one has not gone well . Top talent is hard to lure. Funding has been cut abruptly, throwing aid projects into disarray. Other departments have pilfered its funds: about 30% of the foreign-aid budget is now spent in Britain, mostly by the Home Office to put up asylum-seekers in hotels. With little good news to share, the department has clammed up. After it stopped publishing detailed spending data, Britain has tumbled down international rankings of aid transparency. The country’s cherished reputation as a leader on aid is being lost.