Baroness Sugg has quit her role at the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office over the reduction in Britain’s foreign aid budget. So
what? Nobody knew who she was or what she did (after Madness, obviously) but surely this petulant
stomping off because the gravy tap is being backed off a tad is more an
indication of a lack of moral fibre than of any true devotion to a cause. When
the going gets tough…
But isn’t this posturing, public resignation business so
typical of the current crop of politicos? All for it when the going gets tough;
happy to lunch and dine and gladhand grateful dusky despots for the cameras; no
problem at all in accepting the plaudits for ‘a job well done’, but running away
from trouble at the first sign of difficulty.
If the worst that can happen is you get to spend more
time in the garden on full salary, or you get a more favourable post in an
easier department, where is the incentive to do better? Maybe trophy resignations
should be banned, or denied publicity, so that – god forbid – you are put under
pressure to come up with the goods. And I wonder if she is aware how few of her
countrymen care one jot about foreign aid, especially when it goes to countries
easily rich enough to solve their own problems?
But wait, aren’t WE ‘easily rich enough’ to solve OUR
problems? If we are, why are we not doing it and if we aren’t why do we think
that throwing cash at countries exclusively populated by brown-skinned people
will somehow make anything better? Is it a white saviour complex, or a second reparation
for slavery on top of the ruinously costly reparations we only recently finished paying? Is it really just white guilt that makes us fund despots who
treat their people even worse than we do?
But we don’t treat OUR people badly, do we? Seriously, I think we do. They always used to say charity begins at home and right
now I can think of no more worthy recipients of generous philanthropy than
several million of our own citizens who desperately need help of some kind. Right
now the Chancellor is busily cash-spreading; indiscriminately fertilising the field
in the hope that some of it goes towards growth, but we need something more
and, wait for it...
I think we need a return to a bit more socialism. No, don’t
click away, hear me out. We used to have world class public transport, housing,
education, policing and access to justice. Our politicians used to be public
servants, not celebrities and we had free libraries, museums, art galleries,
sports facilities and so on. Admittedly we still have healthcare ‘free at the
point of use’, but it is hideously and expensively encoiled by the serpents of equality and diversity
and other woke superficialities, and where has everything else gone?
It simply isn’t true that the private sector does
everything more efficiently; it may do things more profitably, but where does
that profit go? In publicly funded private enterprises surely the purpose is to
utilise the ruthless efficiency of the private sector in pursuit of the public
good; where is the evidence that this has worked well in the last 30 years? When
we need junior footballers to shame governments into doing the right thing,
what the hell has happened to our collective sense of responsibility?
To use Boris’s (and many others’) favourite form of three-word government, when we ‘build back better’ we have to demand the principle is also applied to everybody in a position of influence. The great industries must create wealth; the great Parliament must regulate how it deals with the share of that wealth it collects in taxes. But it’s not just about money; it is primarily how we deal with each other. I have a modification to make to that slogan; when we regroup and start over, can’t we all just try to ‘Be Better’?
