The world order has shifted on its axis, having been given a peremptory boot by the US President. What is striking to me is the speed with which our government has accustomed itself to the new dawn, overnight, almost with a sense of relief. Listen to senior Labour figures today and they do not always sound like the internationalist lifestyle-leftist Labour ninnies of old. They sound rather less internationalist than previous Conservative administrations. A whole stupid ideology seems to have been shed within a week or so.
It would not surprise me hugely to hear Keir Starmer talk of ‘remigration’ in fond terms in the not-too-distant future. The Prime Minister – or that chap who advises him, Boaty McBoatface or whatever he’s called – has grasped rather quicker than those ossified liberal idiots on the mainland (Ursula von der Leyen and the crew) that there is much to be gained in this new landscape and that on most issues there is no sense in recalcitrance. It is not simply Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s broadsides that have effected this change, but the politics of Europe too. Labour seems to have realised at last that there is no future in the hand-wringing, virtue-signalling, liberal-leftism of old which has impinged upon our societies for at least 30 years. Something new is called for, from the White House, from the electorate.
It is no small issue for a Labour government to cut our overseas aid budget almost in half and bung the resultant saving to defence. The residents of Hampstead and Kensal Rise will be in a right tizzy. Don’t forget that in its manifesto the party was ‘committed to restoring development spending at the level of 0.7 per cent of gross national income as soon as fiscal circumstances allow’. Instead, it has been cut from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent and the saving passed straight to the Ministry of Defence. The Prime Minister said he was not happy to have made this decision, but needs must etc. I don’t believe him. As I mentioned earlier, I think the decision was taken with a sense of relief.
Labour seems to have realised there is no future in hand-wringing, virtue-signalling, liberal-leftism
Everybody knows that foreign aid is a scam, a racket, which almost certainly makes things worse in the countries which are beneficiaries. Our recent foreign aid has involved bunging half a million quid or so for new Volkswagen trucks to ferry the 17 or 18 criminals still left in Albania from Tirana to Durres, or something. There was the money spent on a study into the health of shrimp in Bangladesh. Lectures about gender differences to Kenyans (see what I mean by making things worse? Cultural imperialism at its finest). Nothing quite beats the almost £10 million spent on encouraging the civil service in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to be more diverse and inclusive, though. That was the worry for every British voter last July, wasn’t it? ‘How are we going to make the DRC’s civil service less meritocratic and efficient? I do hope someone has a plan. They’d get my vote immediately.’
Overseas aid was always a guilt tax which everybody knew was a con and was beloved only by the whining NGOs and a small raft of middle-class Labour lefties who can now switch their allegiance back to the Lib Dems, where they always belonged. Talk of the UK squandering its ‘soft power’ is misplaced. When push comes to shove, hard power trumps soft power. You cannot beat the persuasive effect occasioned by the cleansing process of plutonium fusion, those magnificent neutrons flying hither and thither.
We did overseas aid because it was expected by the charities and the supranational organisations. Well, nobody cares what they think any more. Who now would worry about censure from an organisation such as the United Nations, which has spent the past two years sullying still further its grim reputation by simpering around Hamas? Those days are, mercifully, behind us. We now make decisions based upon what we feel is best for our country.
It was not simply the foreign aid stuff that provoked this article. It seems entirely unconnected that the Culture Secretary, Lisa Nandy, has been castigating those who boycott artistic and cultural events because they believe the corporate sponsors do not match up to their own levels of saintliness. Delivering the inaugural Jennie Lee lecture last week, Nandy accused the protestors of ‘self-defeating virtue-signalling’ which could end up ‘gagging society’. She added: ‘The protest against any and every sponsor of the arts, I believe, would have made [Lee] angered and ashamed.’
This all came after the Hay-on-Wye and Edinburgh literary festivals were threatened with a boycott because their corporate sponsor, the Scottish investment management firm Baillie Gifford, may have ‘had ties’ with Israel. In the end the company severed all its ties with literary festivals – a good call, as they are not reflective of modern literature and serve simply as a repository for the worst people in Britain to gather, sip wine and feel good about themselves.
As I say, on the face of it there is not an obvious connection to the world having been forcibly shifted on its axis by Trump. But essentially there is. Our arts institutions are strapped for cash and not as much will be coming from central government – so get real and take the money where you can find it. It was back in the old days when you could afford to look a gift horse in the mouth before hacking at its fetlocks with a machete. That isn’t going to happen any more.
OK, I confess, this may be thinnish evidence upon which to insist that the government has reformed itself, almost overnight. That task is probably beyond it. But I do detect a new realism at large and a conviction that all of that stuff we once did for performative reasons – paying foreign aid, protesting against big corporations because they were big corporations – is drifting away behind us.
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