The callousness of the Conservative foreign aid cut

A billionaire who reduces his or her charity is a billionaire asking to be judged and found wanting. When they do so, not on the basis that their charity is squandered but because they fancy keeping more of their wealth for their own purposes, they demand to be judged and found wanting all over again.

This morning, the United Kingdom and its government is that billionaire. The government has won its campaign to reduce Britain’s foreign aid contributions. As so often, a much-vaunted Tory rebellion delivered rather less than it promised. As a consequence, money will be withheld from some of the world’s poorest peoples and kept instead by some of its wealthiest.

There are, for sure, reasonable arguments to be had on the destination and efficient use of the UK’s aid budget. But it is, once again, worth stressing that the usefulness of that money was not, indeed is not, questioned by the government. What counted instead is that it is our cash, not theirs. So bugger the world's poor.

Of course voters — from across the political spectrum — hate foreign aid. But what of it? Voters have any number of brutish enthusiasms and politics, like the law, is supposed to act as a brake upon popular prejudices, lest they otherwise run amok and lead us nowhere good. The relationship between government and the public is not as simple as leading or following. In truth it is an elaborate dance, albeit one for which there are no formal rules of interpretation. Sometimes one leads and sometimes the other takes the initiative. Polling is useful — and even if it were not, unavoidable — but a government run by polling is a government abdicating from its responsibilities.

Be that as it may, certain trends are apparent. Every liberal gesture must be balanced by a harder-edged conservatism very much in love with the sound of its own toughness. Priti Patel is Home Secretary for a reason. While I fancy a liberal immigration regime is only made possible if the public consider it pleasingly beastly, the sense persists that Patel would like it to be truly beastly rather than merely apparently so.

For having swallowed Ukip, the Conservative party has gained a fresh appreciation for Kippers. The right has been 'reunited' but at the expense of making Ukipism a core component of the Conservative and Unionist party. That has consequences and few of these are electoral. What is useful in elections — or in terms of polling — should not be confused with what is moral. Kipperism is an intrinsic part of today’s Toryism and it is a mistake to forget this.

Cutting the foreign aid budget will cause the government no difficulties at the next election. Few votes are at stake here. Which is also, then, why slashing the international development budget from 0.7 per cent of GDP to 0.5 per cent is such a dispiriting, uncharitable, and even un-Christian policy. It is a decision of choice, not necessity.

And thus it is a revealing one too. For it shows a government happy to exploit some of the poorest people in the world purely to curry favour with its own supporters. The aid budget is not being cut because this country can no longer afford it or because the government has concluded that aid does more harm than good. It is being slashed because the government would rather feed domestic prejudice than confront or merely ignore it. There is something depressing about that and it is a reminder of how, fundamentally, Boris Johnson’s ministry lacks moral fibre. A low moment but then there is no shortage of such moments.