UK aid advocacy veteran Katy Chakrabortty unpacks the implosion of UK aid, and the lessons for activists
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. Rather I think we are into the 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? (Could 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.
You might be a bit harsh on ” big aid agencies (Oxfam GB, Save the Children, Christian Aid etc)” as they never were as influential as they thought they were or the imprssion their “successful” advocacy and fundraising gave. The actual big players – World Bank, UN Agencies etc have always got more of the share and first, without too much asking and they will still.
Personally I think that like the left-right pendulm swings in politics, there will be a swing back at some point and Foreign Aid will regain its attraction with its feel-good factor and moral high ground.
In the meantime we should reflect. “Where did we all go wrong?” Well for one thing we never managed to reduce the political and professional civil service control, nor did we diminish the role of them and the likes of USAID as dominant donor institutions rather than just…. one of many institutions. Your “big aid agencies” were only too keen to be at the top league, perpetuating the top-down outside-in and upside down approach to Foreign Aid. True there was often talk of designing projects with “beneficiaries” from “grass-roots” upwards, “fully participatory”, even as “equal partners”. Well no sign of that now, is there, with the demise of USAID and the drastic UK cut?
John I think you are right there is some inherent bias and placing the INGOs I knew at the centre of this analysis. Yes the real aid industry of multilaterals and UN dwarfs the charities. I know there are plenty thinking creatively about what this cliff edge means for the ability to shift funding and power for good.
Thank you for an interesting take on an important issue, However, I think it lacks recognition of one significant (and to my mind determinant) factor that was present in the 2010-2015 political landscape but largely absent between 2015 and 2024 – the role of the Liberal Democrats.
Your article reflects that “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 the article doesn’t analyse what was unique about that Conservative led government – i.e. that it included another party (the Liberal Democrats) – which had been committed to the 0.7% policy since its adoption by the UN in 1970 and had previously supported the recommendation of the Pearson Committee on International Development, published in 1968 – the precursor to the 1970 UN resolution establishing the target.
To my mind, it is no coincidence that 0.7% was reached in a government in which the Liberal Democrats exercised political power, nor that aid has been cut in Conservative and Labour governments in which they did not. Yet you make no reference to the role of the party and the influence of its threat to Conservative electoral fortunes in 2010 on Conservative policy stances, instead crediting Conservative change of heart simply to not wanting to be seen as the “nasty party”.
You are not alone in this approach, I have lost count of the number of articles I have read, that credit a ‘Conservative-led government’ with a range of policies – including the 0.7% target, legislating for same sex marriage, raising the tax threshold to take millions of low paid workers out of paying income tax, or increasing the state pension and cutting pensioner poverty through the triple lock – but fail to point out that these were either policies that were exclusively in the Liberal Democrat 2010 manifesto (tax thresholds and the triple lock), were policies which a majority of Conservative MPs voted against (same sex marriage) or were later abandoned by the Conservatives (0.7% and increasing tax thresholds), when they no longer needed to rely on Liberal Democrats to form a majority government.
An analysis of where we have gone wrong on 0.7% might consider that failure to even reference the presence of the Liberal Democrats in the government that achieved the target, let alone credit them with a part in its achievement, was part of a pattern of holding Liberal Democrats responsible for negative outcomes of the coalition without crediting their significant achievements. This approach contributed to the public concluding that the party had achieved nothing in government that was positive, with the result that the party’s electoral support collapsed and it ceased to be a significant parliamentary force from 2015 -2025 – a period which ushered in Brexit, and hence led to the Johnson government that scrapped DfID and slashed the Aid budget, despite a manifesto commitment not to do so.
As a former Adviser in the 2010 government, I should perhaps by now be more sanguine about this airbrushing of history but I find it hard to be so in relation to the issue of the international development target, the demise of which will have such a negative impact on millions of the most vulnerable. If we are going to learn the lessons of where we went wrong, lets ensure we learn all of them.
Jonny thank you, I am really pleased to see this as an important corrective, and an opportunity for me to think some more. You are right of course that the fact that there was a coalition until 2015 was hugely important. This really broadened out the power analysis in parliament and governement. As Deputy PM Nick Clegg had international advisers who worked across government – not just on aid but other progressive ‘wins’ at this time such as the Arms Trade Treaty. Furthermore Michael Moore was the sponsor of the legislation on aid (which Duncan thinks I have underplayed here).
The other point is that post 2015, without the need to share out ministerial roles with Liberal Democrat partners, the politics of those around the cabinet table became increasingly hostile to development and aid.