Is aid cut a Tory bid to inflict avoidable megadeaths on foreigners?
RIP democracy: Boris Johnson cut aid to foreign countries without offering MPs a chance to vote on it. His claim that the law allows such a move is highly debatable.
The message This Writer took from MPs’ failure to force a vote on reversing foreign aid cuts is that it means there will be hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths in affected countries.
That was said by Tory Andrew Mitchell, who seems to have come a long way since the “BikeGate” controversy.
And the really offensive part was that the decision to cut foreign aid from 0.7 per cent to 0.5 per cent of National Income (do they mean Gross Domestic Product?) was taken without allowing Parliament to vote on it.
It was an offence against democracy, because Boris Johnson’s Tory government believes in dictatorship instead.
And (obviously) it believes in finding ways to ensure that as many people as possible die.
Ministers have said it is possible to vary the amount spent without changing the 2015 law that makes the target binding.
But the decision to make the change unilaterally means there is no deadline for restoring that target – meaning the government could leave the cut in place indefinitely.
Isn’t there a more important question to be answered, about what’s being done with this aid money?
Isn’t it important that it should be used to ensure that the nations receiving the money need less and less of it in the future?
Has that been happening? How can we check?
There are many questions to be answered about foreign aid and This Writer hopes the debate on Tuesday (June 8) provides some of the answers.
The joy of it is that the Tory government has shot itself in the foot, whatever happens.
It has already garnered bad publicity over this in the week before the UK hosts the G7 summit.
It will receive more bad publicity with the debate.
And Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has said he wants a substantive vote, which means if Boris Johnson refuses to grant it, he’ll have even more bad publicity.
Source: Foreign aid: Rebel Tories blocked in bid to reverse cuts – BBC News
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