What are the lessons for activists from the cut in the UK development budget? Did big NGOs get their messaging all wrong? How much damage did the closure of DFID do? Or the departure of David Cameron as PM? Katy Chakrabortty unpacks the implosion of UK aid…
Snapshot 1: It’s a grey morning late in the winter of 2013. I am on the grass square outside the UK Houses of Parliament in an ill-fitting suit and wearing a plastic mask giving me the face of the then UK Finance Secretary George Osborne. To my left and right are hundreds of other ‘Osbornes’ of various shapes and sizes. This was no dystopian nightmare, rather a progressive dream, as campaigners gathered to urge the Conservative-led government to raise the UK aid budget to 0.7% of GNI. In the March budget they duly obliged and so began nearly a decade of UK aid spending in line with this hallowed target.
Snapshot 2: It’s 2025, in the packed chamber of the House of Commons. The Foreign Office Minister looks uncomfortable. “In this dangerous new era, the defence and national security of this country must come first” he states. He is explaining the UK Prime Minister’s decision to increase defence spending, and to finance this with the biggest cut to UK aid in a generation, reducing it to 0.3% of GNI and dropping the UK right down the league table of donor nations. This was no raid by a right-wing populist party come to power, but the decision of a Labour Prime Minster. What is more, the words above were spoken by a former colleague at Oxfam, a former senior adviser in the Department of International Development, and a long-term champion of aid.
The news is devastating, will cost lives and livelihoods and represents the reversal of some campaigner’s life’s work. How did this happen, and what does this tell us about how campaigners like me can make change happen… and stick?
The instant “take” I have seen from the sector is that the big aid agencies (Oxfam GB, Save the Children, Christian Aid etc) didn’t get their messaging right. They lost the centre ground of the public and so the support for aid drained away in the face of constant attacks. There is of course some truth here, but it is far too simplistic (and would only lead you to spend a lot more money on expert comms consultants and agencies). Making change happen is not a question of simply communicating things well to a passive audience. It is about understanding the dynamic strands of history you are working in and bending them to your cause.
The Big Man view of history, and centralised power
It is possible to tell the story of UK aid with reference simply to the major (largely male) players. Aid and development featured in the progressive and internationalist politics of Tony Blair and his successor Gordon Brown. Conservative PM David Cameron sought to be their heir on such issues. Boris Johnson marked a turning point as he embraced more right-wing populist politics, and when Putin, Netanyahu and Donald Trump challenged and upended the world order the current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer responded in a way he saw as logical. This is a thin explanation, but it does reinforce an important lesson in any power analysis. Particularly when it comes to foreign policy and spending decisions, power in the UK is massively centralised, and the personal politics and ambitions of a handful of key leaders matter very much. It is also a reminder of how fast change can be when power is so centrally held.
Structural determinants of history, and always asking the next big question
No leader is an island and of course the characters above are reacting to the world around them. The world in which the UK aid commitments were made is very different from the world today. The UK has struggled to produce growth over 1% in these decades. It has been almost 20 years and 6 prime ministers since the last prolonged period of falling poverty in the UK. If people don’t feel economically secure, they don’t feel confident that they can afford aid. Changed too is the nature of the international system. The appeal of being a ‘development superpower’ as the UK styled itself, in a world of international institutions has given way to more naked national self-interest and a might-is-right approach to the global system. Finally, the very notion of ‘rich’ countries aiding ‘poor’ countries is becoming less relevant as the majority of global wealth has steadily moved into private hands.
Over decades with such dynamics, of course it is harder to enthuse people for a status-quo policy position, especially one christened as a percentage. But this is why I would encourage campaigners to think less in terms of pushing fully-baked policy ideas, and instead to forcefully pose the right question du-jour, in response to which your target is forced to come up with policy. The question “How are you going to Make Poverty History?” in 2005 led to aid commitments as the easiest of the policies suggested. In today’s world, organisations like Oxfam are genuinely asking the right question, namely: ‘How will you respond to runaway inequality and the corrupting power of wealth?’ – to which wealth taxes and aid/welfare spending are also a plausible response. Unfortunately, in recent months President Trump bellowed his own question: ‘How are you going to defend yourselves if I stop the US protecting you?’ and defence spending through aid cuts was the depressing answer.
Think politically and be the answer to their fears.
The story of UK aid is above all a story of politics, where the question above all is ‘What will gain us more votes than we lose?’. It is ironic that it was a Conservative-led coalition that raised aid spending and protected it through the financial crisis, whilst Labour – the traditional party of redistribution – cut the budget within a year of coming back to power.
However, campaigners should recognise that this is no aberration. Yes, parties can be expected to follow their core political philosophies and protect their base of voters but are also often willing to reach far into non-traditional territory to attract voters or defend their perceived weaknesses. Hence a right-leaning Conservative party will legalise same-sex marriage or raise aid spending to counter the idea of being the ‘nasty party’, whilst Labour will bend over backwards to counter the idea it is woolly on defence or irresponsible with money. Positioning yourself as the antidote to a parties’ electoral weaknesses is a good strategy. Sadly as politics becomes more polarised, both major UK parties are feeling that their weakness comes from the threats of far-right parties such as Reform UK rather than the centre-ground Liberal Democrats.
Institutions lock in change – but can tip into ‘vested interests’
What Labour did do in creating the Department for International Development (DfID), separate from the Foreign Office, was foundational. This was more than a home of expertise to administer aid (which it was), it also served to lock in a political champion for aid at the highest levels of government, and to tether political careers to the cause of aid. Even aid critics, on being made Secretary of State for International Development, found they had to defend it or be seen to not be good ministerial material. Party structures emerged such as “Conservative Friends of International Development” and the annual Conservative volunteering mission to Rwanda, Project Umubano. These informal groupings were important in signalling for young activists and ambitious party members that being into development was a viable route to getting noticed in the party, and rubbing shoulders with MPs and ministers. This was even more true for Labour who had the Labour Campaign for International Development and whose recent intake includes many former INGO colleagues.
So campaigners should defend the value institutions and (mea culpa) we should have fought harder for this Labour Government to bring back DfID. The other strategy we tried as a campaign was to lock the 0.7 commitment into law. We got the legislation, but when it came to it there was no sanction for breaking the law. Once DfID was dismantled that law proved a paper-thin protection.
However, this has its risks as a strategy. The institutions of the major INGOs grew in this period and that public voice certainly kept the cause of international development flying high. But when they were hit by the scandal of sexual exploitation in 2018, they somewhat lost their status as moral arbiters and instead risked bring seen as money-grabbing organisations with a vested interest in aid.
So what now?
I have neither the wordcount nor the headspace for all the answers but it starts with the right analysis of where we are in history. There is no immediate prospect of a reversal of this decision, only meaningless commitments to returning to 0.7% “when the fiscal situation allows” or a debate on where the cuts should land.
I think we are embarking on a long process of rebuilding a consensus and set of policy priorities that meet the moment for this generation. What are the fundamental questions of today and can we at least unite around the problem? (Might the actions of Elon Musk finally persuade us that extreme wealth is a problem?) What institutions do we need to defend before it’s too late or could we create new ones? And beyond ‘messaging’ or policy ideas, how are we investing in the values and capabilities of upcoming generations?
Katy Chakrabortty is a freelance consultant specialising in advocacy, influencing and strategy facilitation. For the past 16 years she worked for Oxfam GB in political advocacy, and before that for the Electoral Reform Society and Amnesty International UK. She lives in London with her husband and two daughters.
This post first appeared on our “Blogger Emeritus” Duncan Green’s new LSE blog about activism, influencing and change, which we’ll be sharing highlights from here. You can read more from it and subscribe here.
Katy.
Thanks for an interesting and sweeping look at what has brought us to here. I would add two things:
– Adopt the narrative as far as possible – when government is talking in terms of security and we are talking in terms of development, it is too easy to dismiss our concerns as being peripheral, fluffy and ‘nice-to-have’. Argue for how better development also serves UK self-interest – and there is plenty of of soft power loss following the Merger etc to demonstrate this.
– Understand (for ourselves; for real – not as a presentational device) that development and security are not an either/or concept, but two sides of the same coin. This may mean making alliances with people and around issues which are not our comfort zone – when even former Chiefs of the Defence Staff are saying the the development cuts hurt UK security, perhaps we should be working out how to support that argument too?
Perhaps the trick here is to re-think the question that you pose above: Rather than “How are you going to make poverty history?”, we might ask “How is making poverty history good for us too?” There are plenty of good arguments for how a fairer, more equitable world is also good for the UK’s economy and security. But we – the development world – seem to fear to tread in those arguments.
I am not suggesting that we should securitise development, but that we should development-ise security.
JAB
Great, thought-provoking article. It feels to me that the focus on reducing poverty and inequality has become a ‘nice to have’, now that we are in a new, heretical and anarchic political order that could lunge us into world war. Maybe today’s question is ‘How can we make the world safer for everyone?’ Ramping up defence spending is one solution, but only the richest countries can afford to keep that up. The longer-term answer for the world as a whole must surely include countries working together towards development and humanitarian objectives.