Why women and children will die because of 'hard man' Keir Starmer's aid budget cut

Prime Minister Keir Starmer is a hard man. His announcement earlier this week cutting international aid so that the UK can spend more on defence may have pleased military chiefs, but be in no doubt, people will die because of his decision.

It takes a certain type of politician to risk the lives of women and children rather than bend his self-imposed fiscal rules. No amount of parroting “£22 billion black hole” will justify cutting the aid budget by at least £6bn.

He didn’t give his ministers the space to offer alternative savings and he only told the woman in charge of international development of his intention to decimate her budget hours before his announcement. Anneliese Dodds, who also happened to be the women’s minister, found out not long before we did. Little wonder she resigned yesterday. She had no option. As I said, Keir Starmer is a hard man.

Labour legend Barbara Castle, seen with Harold Wilson in 1966, was a staunch defender of international aid who would have resigned over the kind of cuts Keir Starmer has just made (Picture: McCabe/Daily Express/Hulton Archive) | Getty Images

Barbara Castle’s defence of aid

Britain’s first international aid minister, or overseas development as it was called back then, was Barbara Castle, who set up the department in 1964. Younger readers will have no idea who Castle was, but she remains a legend in the Labour party and the wider movement. She was, without doubt, one of the greatest politicians of the post-war generation and helped shape global international aid policy. She also introduced equal pay for women.

Her boss, Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who some say Starmer tries to emulate, would not have dared lay a finger on her budget without telling her. And if he had, it would have been a toss-up as to who would have had to resign – Wilson or Castle. Dodds may seem an unlikely successor to Castle, but she has, by leaving her post, shown the same steel as the Red Queen and far more integrity than Starmer.

While the Prime Minister has clearly ignored Dodds’ warnings about the impact of the cuts on “desperate people” and Britain’s reputation, he could do well to take heed of Castle, who in August 1965 warned her parliamentary colleagues of the dangers of cutting the aid budget.

“Anyone who knows anything about overseas development knows that aid programmes are continuing programmes which cannot be turned on and off like a tap,” she said. “They are commitments which we make over varying periods to countries which have to make development plans. We would produce world chaos if we were tempted to go back on the series of solemn commitments made as part of Britain's long-term programme of aid.”

‘Hate-hate’ relationship

That’s not to say that there were not pressures on Castle’s budget. Indeed, in July 1966, after she had left the overseas development department for the Ministry of Transport, the then Chancellor Jim Callaghan cut international aid as part of a package of spending cuts and tax rises in a desperate response to the balance of payment crisis.

Their relationship has been described as “hate-hate”, and one of Callaghan’s first acts when he became prime minister in 1976 was to sack Castle.

As Starmer recovers from jet lag after his flying visit to Washington for an audience with President Trump, he is probably congratulating himself on a job well done. He showed Trump that he too could be tough, taking money from what Trump once reportedly described as “shithole” countries and spending it on defence. But at what cost?

Next Saturday is International Women’s Day. Labour ministers will rush to outdo each other with their messages of solidarity, and in some cases, sisterhood. The Prime Minister may even join in this self-congratulatory chorus, but their words will drip with hypocrisy.

Foreign Office warned of deaths

A 2023 analysis by the Foreign Office – the very department responsible for international development – revealed that thousands of women were at risk of death because of the Conservative government’s cuts to overseas aid. It warned that budget reductions would increase the number of unsafe abortions and maternal deaths.

The number of girls enduring female genital mutilation would rise and, in Yemen alone, half a million women and children would be denied healthcare. In classic civil service speak, "fewer preventable deaths will be avoided” – in other words, women and children will die.

That nightmare scenario was based on a reduction of less than £1 billion. I can only imagine what a similar exercise will reveal about the impact of Starmer’s cold-hearted cuts, which are at least six times the size of the previous government’s. Assuming, of course, that Dodds’ successor can find the courage to commission an equality impact assessment for the new budget.

‘The scramble for votes’

As women and children in sub-Saharan Africa are put at risk of death by Starmer’s decision, his advisers are no doubt congratulating him on a job well done. Polls suggest that the public is “highly sceptical” of the benefits of the UK’s international development programme.

The British Foreign Policy Group’s 2023 survey showed that the majority of people (61 per cent) believe international aid takes away money that should be spent on domestic needs. And last year, only a small minority (11 per cent) said that the UK should restore its 0.7 per cent GDP spending commitment.

Castle has a message for Wilson’s self-appointed heir apparent. As a similar debate about overseas aid raged in the 1960s, she argued that the Labour party should never be tempted “in the scramble for votes” to abandon one of its core principles: “I am my brother’s keeper – and his friend.”

By taking life-saving and life-changing cash from the world’s most vulnerable women and children, Starmer has calculated that the scramble for votes is indeed worth abandoning not only Labour’s principles, but the manifesto pledge he made a few months ago when he promised to “strengthen international development work” and “renew expertise and focus, especially in priority areas such as…empowering women and girls…”

You have made your decision Prime Minister. You now have to live with it.