The Foreign Office’s new aid minister said that cutting aid makes politicians responsible for death. This can only go one way…
Kirsty McNeil, who was moved to the FCDO from the Scotland Office in the Burnham reshuffle, is now the Minister of State responsible for aid. Prior to her election in 2024 she spent nine years at Save the Children as Executive Director of Policy, Advocacy and Campaigns. This is the charity, led by an ex-Department for International Development director general Moazim Malit, which weeks ago accused Starmer of being complicit in the deaths of thousands of civilians in Gaza…
Writing in the New Statesman in 2022 McNeil, also an ex-aide to Gordon Brown, said that if British politicians don’t increase aid “they will be responsible, directly or indirectly, for the suffering and death to come.” She said that “conflict, Covid and climate change are causing a global wave of hunger” and added:
“None of this is inevitable; decisions by world leaders to delay action and underfund responses carry deadly consequences. These are deaths by choice.”
McNeil’s prescription for Western governments was “taking strong measures to limit further climate change… expanding social safety nets that help people prepare for shocks by providing cash and quick supplies in times of crisis” and forcing “major financial institutions” to “provide shared, scaled and early financing.” Sounds expensive…
Prior to joining Save the Children McNeil actually ran a pro-aid NGO lobbying firm whose clients included ActionAid, Amnesty, Ark, Christian Aid, Crisis Action, the Diana Awards, Global Witness, IPPF, David Miliband’s IRC, Malaria No More, ONE, Oxfam, Stonewall, Teach First, Tearfund, Unicef, and Save the Children itself. Must have been hard to see Starmer cut aid to her old clients…
A FCDO source tells Guido that McNeil’s appointment will likely precipitate “a significant shift towards activism and pandering to the pro-Palestinian lobby from the Foreign Office. This is while we’re flogging embassies, cutting support to key Commonwealth countries like Kenya and Bangladesh and starving the British Council and World Service of funds – at the same time firing cash at frothing loonies in Oxfam, Save the Children and so on.” A question for starters: How will Burnham, Miliband, and McNeil afford to increase aid spending?
Tom Baldwin, author of Starmer’s hagiography, spoke to Times Radio:
Tom Baldwin: “I think he’d like to do something. He’s very dutiful and driven by service. That’s why he came into politics. I think that’s characterised his time as prime minister. He hasn’t always sought popularity or been good at being popular. But I think he has some of the necessary qualities that we actually do want in a prime minister. That resilience, that relentlessness, that ability to carry the weight and the job really does weigh very heavily on people and he carries that weight very, very well.”
Jo Coburn: “NATO Secretary-General?”
Tom Baldwin: “I think that’s something that he would be interested in. I think it probably requires Andy Burnham’s government to support him in that and these are some of the questions which Andy Burnham has to resolve quite quickly.”