“The cuts to foreign aid must be opposed, and the rhetoric of military austerity must be challenged by the broader labour movement. We should not allow debates on foreign aid cuts and increased military spending to be separated.”
In our Red Weekly Column, Fraser McGuire analyses the reaction to and ramifications of the government’s defence spending surge, funded by the cut to the international aid budget.
Last week, the government announced huge cuts to the foreign aid budget as part of a move to increase military spending to 2.5 percent of GNI over the next two years. The cuts amount to more than £6 billion annually, and will see the UK drop from being the tenth highest foreign aid donor as a percentage of GNI, to 25th.
Coming so soon after Trump slashed the US foreign aid budget by 90 percent, the impact of these cuts will exacerbate suffering in some of the most vulnerable regions which currently receive humanitarian aid, and will likely hit specific programmes that protect women and children. In 2022, Afghanistan and Ukraine were the largest recipients of UK Official Development Assistance (ODA), followed by Nigeria, Somalia, and Ethiopia, and the primary areas receiving the aid were refugees, humanitarian aid, and health.
The divisions in the Government continue to widen, with the announcements of the foreign aid cuts being just the most recent in a string of unpopular decisions alienating Labour from its own voter base. Soon after the announcement, Anneliese Dodds announced her resignation as International Development Minister, stating that it will be “impossible” for the government to maintain their self proclaimed priorities of continuing support for Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, health programmes and the climate, given the severity of the cuts.
At a time when the Trump administration is driving for an increase in arms spending, this marks a perilous step towards a higher risk of global conflict. Increased military spending by European NATO members will open up capacity for the United States to transfer power to the Pacific and shift focus onto challenges against China. Further alignment with the interests of the United States will only further isolate the UK, and draw us closer to a Presidential administration previously described as “No friend of Britain”, “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic”, and “tyrant” by now Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
Chair of the International Development Select Committee, Sarah Champion, called the government’s decision “deeply shortsighted” and pointed out the counterproductivity of the policy – with development aid both preventing conflict and providing humanitarian and refugee aid to those affected by wars. Opposing not just the decision, but the rhetoric itself is crucial. Socialists should remember the debates of the early 20th Century, when some argued that only higher arms spending by Britain or Germany could prevent the outbreak of a global conflict.
In 2021 – when the Conservative government cut foreign aid spending from 0.7 to 0.5 percent of GNI – Lammy stated that “It is wrong to cut the UK’s contribution to foreign aid” and to do so during a pandemic is “morally bankrupt”. These most recent cuts push foreign aid spending to the lowest levels since 1999 – and now less than half of what was being spent in 2020 when Labour came out to attack the Conservatives for their own ‘moral bankruptcy’.
The cuts to foreign aid must be opposed, and the rhetoric of military austerity must be challenged by the broader labour movement. We should not allow debates on foreign aid cuts and increased military spending to be separated. The path forward must be rooted in genuine internationalism and a recognition that broadening conflicts will lead to the suffering of workers and ordinary people across the world.
The phrase ‘A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends’ is as relevant today as it was a century ago, and it is vital that trade unionists and socialists oppose both rising militarism and cuts to aid to the world’s most vulnerable.
- The Red Weekly Column will appear each Monday on Labour Outlook from one of our regular socialist contributors.
- Fraser McGuire is the Chair of East Midlands Unite Hospitality, Young Labour’s East Midlands representative and an organiser for Arise: A Festival Of Left Ideas. You can follow him on Twitter/X and Instagram.
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