Anneliese Dodds, the international development minister, has quit her post over Keir Starmer’s decision to slash the international aid budget by almost half to pay for a generational increase in defence spending.
Dodds, who was also a minister for women, was sceptical about Starmer’s promise to maintain aid funding for Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, as well as for vaccination, climate and for rules-based systems, despite raiding the aid budget.
She predicted that the prime minister would find it “impossible” to deliver on his commitment to maintain development spending in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine with the diminished budget.
Dodds said she firmly believed the prime minister was right to increase defence spending as the postwar consensus had “come crashing down” after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The senior Labour MP, who attended cabinet, warned that the UK pulling back from development would bolster Russia, which has already been aggressively increasing its presence worldwide, as well as encouraging China’s attempts to rewrite global rules.
