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| What Labour Wants out of the Push for African Aid |
| 2005-06-12 |
| The last half of an article in the Tory magazine the Spectator. Free reg required. The broader political significance of this poverty agenda has not yet been noticed. It has its roots in the terror all mainstream politicians feel at the collapse of mass party politics. The Labour party and the Tory party, which both enjoyed memberships of over one million voters barely a generation ago, today cannot count on more than 500,000 between them. By contrast, the four largest aid agencies — Oxfam, Christian Aid, Action Aid and Save the Children — have the best part of three million members. Just before the general election the ace Labour strategist Douglas Alexander, now minister for Europe, delineated the problem in a pamphlet, Telling It Like It Could Be. 'Citizens are increasingly participating in activities such as single issue campaigns,' wrote Alexander, 'without seeing these as activities in which party politics should or could play a role. Labour needs to engage these people in our vision of the good society.' Alexander, a key adviser to Chancellor Gordon Brown, argues that Labour must take full advantage of all this energy. His pamphlet, though published before the election, was a manifesto for much that has happened since. It explains exactly why the British government is so mesmerised by the Geldof agenda, and accounts for the perplexing collusion that will take place when the G8 summit takes place in Scotland: the British government conspiring with protesters by urging them to come and disrupt its own event. For New Labour, Make Poverty History will win back the voters lost over Iraq. It is, of course, good that we should think about Africa, and there is no denying that Bob Geldof is a wonderful man. Nevertheless, there are substantial reasons for concern at this new method of making policy. For one thing, it is not democratic. Africa did not loom large during the general election campaign. Pretty well all MPs report that alarm about mass immigration was a much bigger issue. And yet we have heard nothing about immigration since 5 May. The day after the election Tony Blair announced that he had been chastened by the result, and would spend much more time addressing the domestic agenda. Instead, he has set about the prodigious task, which has frustrated all politicians since Alfred Milner a century ago, of how to solve the African problem. This project is about re-energising lost activists, not appealing to the average voter. Giving way to pressure groups like Make Poverty History is as bad a way of making policy as surrendering to corporate lobbyists. Its agenda — debt forgiveness and a huge increase in aid — is very hard to defend. As Richard Dowden of the Royal Africa Society notes, 'If aid were the solution to Africa's problems it would be a rich continent by now.' Tony Blair is open to the same criticism over Africa as over Iraq: that he is guilty of a naive belief in interventionism. The contrast between the British insistence on aid and the American focus on proper governance is very striking. Nevertheless George Bush did his best for Tony Blair this week in Washington. He is extremely fond of the British Prime Minister, and the real venom is felt towards Gordon Brown. The Chancellor badly upset the White House when he tried to railroad Condoleezza Rice over Africa at a meeting in the British Foreign Office on 4 February. According to well-placed sources, he treated Rice with the same contempt that he normally hands out to Cabinet colleagues. Afterwards the Americans briefed that Brown's financing plan was poorly thought through and would 'be forgotten within a year'. Well-informed sources say that President Bush is proud of what he has done for Africa, and is 'affronted by the way Gordon Brown is trying to get cheap publicity ahead of the G8'. The US President may well have spent a portion of his private meeting with Tony Blair this week urging the British Prime Minister to remain in power as long as possible. Meanwhile the volume of private briefing against the Chancellor from within the White House is remarkable by any standards. None of this will do Gordon Brown any harm at all with the Labour party. Quite the reverse: falling out in such a spectacular fashion with the White House, and the prospect of a sharp cooling in the special relationship with Brown at No. 10, will help ensure him the succession. Even so, the Chancellor's clumsy, bullying diplomacy raises real questions about whether he has the calibre to be prime minister. |
| Posted by:too true |