Justine Greening is a robust politician and bean counter who reportedly used extremely fruity language when told she was being reshuffled to the International Development Department. Even though the new Secretary of State has made a strong start in her role, announcing the end of Britain’s aid programme to India by 2015 and suspending bilateral aid to Rwanda, she remains in a difficult position.
In this week’s Spectator aid special, two writers examine the problems with Britain’s international development policy, from its target to spend 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income to politicians’ underlying assumptions about aid.
Jonathan Foreman asks why politicians continue to throw money at aid projects that don’t work:
One of the more bizarre mysteries of contemporary British politics is the ironclad, almost fanatical intensity of the government’s commitment to foreign aid spending and the activities of DFID, the Department for International Development.
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