Adam Boulton Diary: Boris is no isolationist – aid reform will make global Britain stronger

In the Spring of 1981 I sat in the back of a conference room as members of the 97th US Congress haggled over foreign aid. The arrangement was similar to the way special advisers sit along the wall behind the Cabinet table. But I was no adviser, I was a member of the public, a foreigner to boot, observing how members of the Democrat controlled House of Representatives and the Republican majority Senate attempted “reconciliation” of their very different proposals.

Jimmy Carter’s administration had failed to pass an appropriation in each of his four years in office. I was a graduate student working on a thesis which seemed a safe bet: why the new President Reagan wouldn’t get a foreign aid bill.

True to form, a Republican was explaining to the Democrats, whom he clearly regarded as both bleeding hearts and slow on the uptake, that they wouldn’t get anything to help the world’s poorest unless they agreed to a massive boost in defence aid to Israel. At that moment a Democrat snapped back with what remains one of my favourite political put-downs: “I ain’t bleedin’”, Senator Denis DeConcini of Arizona retorted wearily.

Ever since first world nations came up with the idea of “giving” their taxpayers’ money to help people in less well-off countries there has been a tension between “doing the right thing” and “what’s in it for us?”. The argument is often encapsulated by which half of a famous quotation by the 17th century cleric, Thomas Fuller, disputants chose to emphasise: “Charity begins at home but shouldn’t end there.”

This week the disagreement surfaced again when the Prime Minister announced his plans for “Global Britain”, consisting mainly of the abolition of the Department for International Development (DFID) and merging its responsibilities into an expanded Foreign Office (or FCDO, as it will become).

Whether or not to have a free-standing aid ministry has become an established game of bureaucratic ping-pong between Labour and the Conservatives. Labour governments want to seem altruistic and ethical, Tories are happier looking hard-headed. Prime Minister Harold Wilson set up the Ministry for Overseas Development twice. Ted Heath abolished it the first time, Margaret Thatcher the second. Tony Blair established the grander DFID on election in 1997.

It survived David Cameron and Theresa May, but now Boris Johnson is merging it out of existence again. Cameron, Blair and Gordon Brown united across the political divide to bemoan Johnson’s announcement.

Given the challenges of coronavirus and Brexit, many were surprised by the timing of the Prime Minister’s announcement. He set no date for completion and pre-empted “the biggest review of our foreign, defence and development policy”, which he has ordered from Professor John Bew, biographer of Clement Attlee. The former Conservative Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell claims that the abolition of DFID directly breaks a promise Boris Johnson gave him in person during last year’s Tory leadership contest.

But the decision hardly came as a surprise; the Prime Minister has already merged the ministerial teams of the two departments. Since Johnson told MPs that he remains committed to spending the UN target of 0.7% of national income on aid, it may well be that the most significant efficiency saving is the axing of the DFID Secretary. On the face of it, Anne-Marie Trevelyan’s departure would further dilute the small number of women in the Cabinet.

So why bother? Boris Johnson may have learned something from his short period as Foreign Secretary after all. The bitterness of his description of DFID as “a giant cash dispenser in the sky” echoes the frustration of many Foreign Office mandarins that DFID officials matter more than they do in many corners of the world.

Diplomats make representations and handle tricky situations under instructions from their political masters; DFID officials dole out cash. The FCO’s current annual budget is £2.4bn, DFID’s is £11bn. As the Prime Minister pointed out, if they get the money anyway there is little incentive for foreign governments to attend to their benefactor’s diplomatic requests.

If Global Britain is to make its voice heard in the world, it may need to focus its aid spending more astutely. But, judging by what the Prime Minister has said, the FCDO merger is unlikely to make much difference beyond presentation. He is not considering a “UK First” attitude to the world akin to President Trump’s “America First”.

Britain’s Seafaring Postmaster General Penny Mordaunt is in for disappointment. The aid budget will not go on building a new Royal Yacht Britannia, not least because there are strict agreed international definitions of what constitutes aid, and they don’t cover subsidising Her Majesty’s boating habits. Even the £900,000 patriotic make-over for our leader’s private jet will have to come out of another pot.

Foreign aid is more popular with Labour and Liberal Democrat voters than with Conservatives. Painting the aid budget red, white and blue and calling it to the colours of national interest at the Foreign Office could be an effective way of protecting it from further attacks from the right.

The change, when it happens, may make little practical difference. The vast majority of other OECD nations already run their aid in tandem with their foreign policy.

At a time when many other countries are looking at the state of this nation with either sadness or quiet satisfaction, the Prime Minister cannot afford to give up the prestige bestowed by the fact that, as he puts it, “the UK possesses the third biggest aid budget and diplomatic network in the world”. Either way, airdrops to the desperate will still be labelled UK Aid. That Foreign aid can aid Global Boris Johnson.

Unlike Donald Trump, the Prime Minister is clear that he wants to go on participating fully in multilateral projects and institutions including the World Health Organisation. He boasts about the UK’s chairmanship of the recent GAVI conference, which raised £16bn for an international push on vaccines, and of the upcoming COP 26 environmental conference. Some many doubt the sincerity of his true intentions but for now he has put his money where his mouth is.

President Trump is the leader who is out of step. To universal surprise the bruising compromises between hawks and doves in the US Congress resulted in Ronald Reagan getting an aid appropriation at his first attempt. He enjoyed continued success in this area during his term of office. My thesis underwent a rapid rewrite.

Each side had to bleed a little. The Republicans did not get all the tanks and bombs they wanted. And there were no Democratic Senators from Arizona for thirty years after DeConcini was elected for the last time in 1988.