Readers' letters: UK Government plumbs new depths with international aid betrayal

The UK Government has plumbed new depths as it proposes to balance increased defence spending on the backs of the world’s poorest by slashing development aid (Scotsman, 26 February).

This move also breaks Labour’s manifesto pledge to restore development spending, which had been cut by the Conservative Government, to 0.7 per cent of gross national income.

The cut in aid is not just a moral dereliction of duty, betraying the world’s most marginalised, but on a practical level is a false economy, bringing greater instability to the world and making it less safe.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer leaves the Downing Street Briefing Romm after delivering Tuesday's defence spending statement. (Picture: Leon Neal/PA Wire)

Conflict is often an outcome of war, famine, or persecution. Our finances should be spent on preventing this and not the deadly consequences.

As General Matiss, President Trump’s defence secretary in his previous administration, said: “If you cut the foreign aid budget, you’re going to have to buy me more bullets.”

It is amazing how a visit to a US President by Prime Minister Starmer can focus the mind, as the Labour government continues to dance to President Trump’s tune and turns ploughshares into swords.

Alex Orr, Edinburgh

Enough for Trump?

Keir Starmer’s knee-jerk increase in defence spending in response to Trump’s expectation that Europe needs to defend itself can be explained by his imminent visit to Washington.

This, however, is a tiny increase of 0.2 per cent of GDP, hardly enough to cover a peacekeeping contribution in Ukraine and certainly not enough to impress Trump. If as Starmer claims this decision has been coming for three years why did he not make it when coming to power?

A stony-faced Labour front bench listened to Starmer announce a 40 per cent cut in international development spending.

While Trump will no doubt welcome a Britain First approach he will warn Starmer that three per cent of GDP defence spending will need to be achieved in this parliament, not the next. Trump’s support may ultimately depend on whether Starmer and Macron can persuade allies to ramp up spending to near wartime levels.

That may be easier now Germany’s likely new leader will rip up peacetime defence spending limits but this poses Starmer a dilemma. If the runner-up AfD were to come to power in the future it may use that capability to exit Nato in support of ally Putin. To safeguard European security that cannot be allowed to happen. Starmer has many reasons to be worried and will need a cool head in Washington if he is to return having had any influence. The days when Britannia ruled the waves are long gone.

Neil Anderson, Edinburgh

Lack of logic

Donald Trump clearly doesn’t have any advisers prepared to point out a lack of logic in his thinking.

Trump seems to be offering some form of support for Ukraine only if Ukraine will give him all the mineral resources he wants. He has obviously not thought this through.

Perhaps President Zelensky should point out that if Russia were to overwhelm Ukraine, Putin could take all the raw materials he wanted out of the country without even having to ask. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful irony if the US then had to buy them from Russia?

Alastair Gentleman, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Naked emperor

Who said “Under a Labour government we would freeze energy bills. We wouldn't allow them to go up”? It was, of course, the Prime Minister, back when he was leader of the opposition. He actually committed to using the excess profits of oil and gas companies to pay for his promised freeze.

With bills set to rise by 6.4 per cent in April (Scotsman, 26 February), following a 1.2 per cent increase in January and a ten per cent hike last October it looks like Sir Keir was prepared to say pretty well anything if he thought it would win votes.

When it comes to keeping promises it would appear our “emperor” has no clothes (apart from the ones gifted to him by Lord Alli, that is).

Alan Woodcock, Dundee

Get cracking

Ian Moir writes tongue-in-cheek (Letters, 26 February) about a hydrogen plant as “all that is required to save the Grangemouth plant”.

In reality, all that is required to save the Grangemouth oil refinery, as discussed in the UK Parliament on 9 January 2024, is spending of £60 to £80 million to re-start the refinery’s hydrocracker.

E Campbell, Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire

Religious values

I was dismayed to read (“Free King Charles!”, Scotsman, 24 February) a piece by the Very Rev Kevin Holdsworth advocating the repeal of the Act of Settlement and – though not admitted – that by extension the Church of Scotland should therefore no longer be the national church. The argument rested on the premise that this legal arrangement is both an outdated relic and a form of legalised sectarianism.

The Very Rev Holdsworth belongs to the Scottish Episcopal Church so he affirms its Episcopal order, Anglican inheritance, Sacraments, and Ministry.

After the Reformation of the 1560s, the Scottish Episcopal Church crystallised into a distinct institution opposed to both the Roman Catholic order which had proceeded it and to the Presbyterianism to which most Scots had turned after the Reformation. Today, it remains a distinct contemporary institution for precisely those reasons.

Yet, by the same logic, is that not also “legalised sectarianism”? Not in the morally repugnant sense of faith used for hate, but in the simple fact that multiple religious traditions coexist in one bounded space.

If such a situation is intolerable, should the Scottish Episcopal Church exist? Should the Dean not join the Anglican Ordinariate of the Roman Catholic Church or submit to the Presbytery and become part of the Church of Scotland? Surely not.

The Episcopal Church’s historic roots make it a distinct institution, just as Scotland’s historic roots – at least in part its historic Presbyterianism and relations with the Crown – make it a distinct nation.

Those are not always desirable roots; sometimes they are reprehensible. But we cannot do away with the past or the present without losing that distinctiveness; else something important, even existential, would cease to exist in the Scottish Episcopal Church, indeed in Scotland.

The Very Rev Holdsworth must surely understand that – and that is why he continues as an ordained minister of that church and not of any other.

Dr Stephen Rainbird, Edinburgh

Pope’s legacy

Many of us non-Roman Catholics will agree with Ian Petrie’s positive view of Pope Francis’s tenure and character (Letters, 26 February). But there remains one lesson which he, uniquely, could have taught but almost certainly never will.

He could have pronounced Argentina’s case on the Falklands as modern colonialism and historically weak while conversely the UK’s case not only in the 2020s but from 1833/34 or 1765 or even 1690 is ethnically, democratically, culturally and historically very strong.

He could have ruled that his fellow-Catholics “shall not covet” the islands, and advised his fellow-Argentinians to display the self-confidence, political maturity, common sense and basic humanity to accept these points and therefore the status quo.

Surely that would not have been so difficult for him – and would leave behind a fine legacy in terms of robust practical Christianity.

John Birkett, St Andrews, Fife

Cats welcome

Despite living in a “post-truth” world, I feel compelled to correct claims that PETA wants to “ban cats”, as suggested by Brian Monteith (Scotsman, 25 February).

As the Good Morning Britain guest Mr Monteith mentions, I can confirm that, while PETA is against breeding animals for profit, we’re not “against ownership of pets”. On the contrary, many PETA staffers share their homes with rescued companions, knowing first-hand how dire the situation is for the UK’s one million homeless animals.

We also seek to educate the public on responsible animal care which includes, among other things, keeping cats safely indoors. Not only is this best for native wildlife (free-roaming cats are responsible for killing billions of birds each year) but also improves and prolongs the cats’ lives. Cats provided with adequate enrichment indoors lead happy lives and are less likely to be hit by cars, attacked by other animals or cruel humans, and contract contagious diseases like Feline Leukaemia Virus, herpesvirus, calicivirus, and Feline AIDS.

While PETA UK doesn’t operate animal shelters, PETA US does operate one in Virginia, which takes in sick, aged, injured, and feral animals – many of whom have been severely let down by humans – and a rescue team, which is on call 24/7 to give relief to abused and suffering animals.

Lastly, to add vital much-needed context to Mr. Monteith’s other claim: PETA US’s Holocaust campaign was proposed by a Jewish staffer, inspired by a passage from Nobel-prize-winning Jewish author Isaac Bashevis Singer’s book, The Letter Writer: “In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.”

Jennifer White, Senior Media and Communications Manager, PETA Foundation, Edinburgh

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