New Labour’s overseas development aid policy – charity or self-interest?

ABSTRACT

Robin Cook argued that New Labour’s foreign policy would have ‘ethical dimensions’,(Cook, “Robin Cook’s Speech on the Government’s Ethical Foreign Policy.”) and an assumption is often made, within existing literature, that this is an accurate statement when considering the overseas development agenda of New Labour government’s between 1997 and 2010. Tingley argues that the more left-wing a party, the more likely they are to increase attention on, and funding of, overseas development aid (ODA) projects.(Tingley, “Donors and Domestic Politics.”) This article uses the New Labour governments, from 1997 to 2010, as a case study to test the argument of Tingley and determines that his conclusions are accurate in the case of the UK. This article will then argue, using the work of Breuning that the motivations of the New Labour governments, and the way they conveyed their policy to the electorate changed overtime rather than remaining morally focused for the duration of their time in power.(Breuning, “Words and Deeds.”) By focusing on the rhetoric of the Labour Party, the changes in motivation can be identified in the period 1997–2010, with a distinct move from moral justifications to more self-interested pragmatic reasoning, which confirms Breuning’s argument.

KEYWORDS:

• Blair
• brown
• breuning
• overseas development aid
• new labour

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Simon Lightfoot at the University of Leeds and Oliver Daddow at the University of Nottingham for their considered feedback and encouragement. I would also like to thank the reviewers for their very helpful comments, and the journal editor. All errors are, of course, my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Cook, “Robin Cook’s Speech on the Government’s Ethical Foreign Policy.”

2. Tingley, “Donors and Domestic Politics.”

3. Blair, “Transcript of Labour Party Conference Speech.”

4. Tingley, “Donors and Domestic Politics”; and Breuning, “Words and Deeds.”

5. Thérien and Noel, “Political Parties and Foreign Aid.”

6. Krozewski, “Global Britain and the Post-Colonial World,” 222–223.

7. Tomlinson. “The Commonwealth, the Balance of Payment and the Politics of International Poverty,” 420.

8. OECD Data.

9. Krozewski, “Global Britain and the Post-Colonal World,” 224.

10. Krozewski, “Global Britain and the Post-Colonial World,” 222–240; and Tomlinson, “The Commonwealth, the Balance of Payments,” 413–429.

11. Blick, “Harold Wilson,” 345–6.

12. See above 8.

13. Thérien, “Debating Foreign Aid.”

14. Ibid., 450.

15. Ibid., 451.

16. Ibid., 460.

17. Tingley, “Donors and Domestic Politics,” 40 and 42.

18. Ibid., 40.

19. Thérien and Noel, “Political Parties and Foreign Aid”; Thérien, “Debating Foreign Aid”; Boone, “Politics and the Effectiveness of Foreign Aid”; and Chong and Gradstein, “What Determines Foreign Aid?”

20. Joly and Dandoy, “Beyond the Water’s Edge.”

21. Daddow, “The Use of Force in British Foreign Policy”; Dodds and Elden, “Thinking Ahead”; Dyson, The Blair Identity; Gaskarth, “Interpreting Ethical Foreign Policy”; Little and Wickham-Jones, New Labour’s Foreign Policy; and Vickers, The Labour Party and the World, Volume 2.

22. Whaites, “The New UK White Paper on International Development”; White, “British Aid and the White Paper on International Development”; Young, “New Labour and International Development”; Payne, “Blair, Brown and the Gleneagles Agenda”; Honeyman, “Gordon Brown and International Policy”; and Honeyman, “Foreign Policy.”

23. Joly and Dandoy, “Beyond the Water’s Edge”; Fleck and Kilby, “How do Political Changes Influence US Bilateral Aid Allocations?”

24. Alesina and Dollar, “Who Gives Foreign Aid and to Whom and why?”; Burnell, Foreign Aid in a Changing World; Hook, National Interest and Foreign Aid; and Maizels and Nissanke, “Motivations for Aid to Developing Countries.”

25. Mawdsley, “From Recipients to Donors”; and Riddell, Does Foreign Aid Really Work?; and Sogge, Give and Take.

26. Boone, “Politics and the Effectiveness of Foreign Aid”; Chong and Gradstein, “What Determines Foreign Aid?”; and Maizels and Nissanke, “Motivations for Aid to Developing Countries.”

27. Alesina and Dollar, “Who Gives Foreign Aid and to Whom and why?”

28. Tingley, “Donors and Domestic Politics.”

29. Harman, “Speech on International Development.”

30. Brown, My Life, Our Times, 136.

31. Breuning, “Words and Deeds.”

32. Hermann, “Assessing Leadership Style,” 2.

33. See above 31.

34. Conservative Party, “One World Conservatism,” 5.

35. Breuning, “Words and Deeds,” 237–8.

36. Ibid., 238.

37. Fleck and Kilby, “How do Political Changes Influence US Bilateral Aid Allocations?” 212.

38. Breuning, “Words and Deeds,” 239.

39. Blair, “Transcript of Speech given in South Africa.”

40. Daddow and Schnapper, “Liberal Interventionism in the Foreign Policy Thinking of Tony Blair and David Cameron”; Gaskarth, “Interpreting Ethical Foreign Policy”; Honeyman, “Liberal Interventionism to Liberal Conservatism”; and Ralph, “After Chilcot.”

41. Politics Resources.net.

42. Manj, “The International Development (Offical Development Assistance Target) Act 2015,” 659.

43. Fleck and Kilby, “How do Political Changes Influence US Bilateral Aid Allocations?” 211.

44. DFID, Eliminating World Poverty, 1.

45. Ibid., 1.

46. Hansard HC Deb. Vol. 294, c90w.

47. Mawdsley, ”DFID, the Private Sector and the Re-Centring,” 346.

48. Blair, “Transcript of Labour Party Conference Speech,” 1998.

49. DFID, Eliminating World Poverty.

50. DFID, Eliminating World Poverty, 6.

51. Ibid, 7.

52. Blair, A Journey, 24–5.

53. DFID, Eliminating World Poverty, 14.

54. Blair, “Transcript of Speech for the Global Ethics Foundation in Tuebingen.”

55. Gallagher, Britain and Africa under Blair, 7.

56. Blair, “Transcript of Speech given at ‘Faith in Politics’ Conference.”

57. See above 35.

58. Blair, “Transcript of Speech given to the British Ambassadors in London.”

59. Blair, A Journey, 559–60.

60. Blair, “Transcript of Labour Party Conference Speech,” 2004.

61. Brown, “Transcript of Leadership Acceptance Speech.”

62. Brown, “Transcript of Speech given at Lambeth Conference.”

63. After the 2010 general election, Gordon Brown continued to focus on helping developing nations to overcome poverty. He was appointed UN Special Envoy for Global Education and he and his wife Sarah work for various organisations and charities focusing on global education projects.

64. Brown, “Gordon Brown: We cannot fail the challenge of tackling world poverty.”

65. Labour Party Manifesto, “A Future for All,” 10:6.

66. See above 41.

67. DFID, Public Attitudes towards Development, 2.

68. Thérien and Noel, “Political Parties and Foreign Aid”; and Thérien, “Debating Foreign Aid.”

69. See above 8.

70. Breuning, “Words and Deeds,” 9.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Victoria C. Honeyman

Victoria C. Honeyman is a Lecturer in British Politics, focusing on the foreign policy aims of the New Labour and Cameron governments. She focuses her work on the ethical agenda of the New Labour government and the Liberal Conservatism of the Cameron era, the motivations behind this policy and the legacy of this to successive governments. She has also written on Labour's historic record in government.