Labour’s ‘pragmatism’ isn’t neutral – it locks the party into fiscal caution, reinforcing stagnation and fuelling the very instability it seeks to avoid.
Politics is about choices. Some are forced on governments by circumstance. Others are self‑imposed. Labour’s decision to cut the aid budget to “pay” for increased defence spending is firmly in the latter category. It is also wrong – forcing the world’s poor to pay for Britain’s safety. This is a false economy. Cutting aid will make the world more unstable, not less. The very crises that fuel conflict – poverty, failed states, climate disasters and mass displacement – will only worsen with less development funding. Labour’s logic is self‑defeating: diverting money from aid to defence does not buy security; it undermines it.
The numbers tell the story. Despite government attempts to inflate the amounts involved, the extra £5bn‑£6bn for defence is tiny relative to Britain’s GDP. The UK could easily absorb this through borrowing – especially in a global financial system where sterling is heavily traded – or, if the government prefers, through a modest wealth tax. Yet Sir Keir Starmer has chosen to frame this as a zero-sum game, where aid must give way to security. Why? Because this is not about economic necessity – it’s about political positioning. Labour wants to prove that it can be fiscally disciplined even when the numbers don’t demand it. It wants to neutralise Tory attacks, even when the real battle is over priorities, not affordability.
