David Harewood wrote a piece called “I have seen with pride how British overseas aid saves children’s lives. That is why I say cuts should be reversed”. He describes, movingly, how while visiting a hospital in Sierra Leone,

… I noticed a UK aid sticker fixed above a tiny incubator. Inside was a premature baby fighting for breath. Nearby stood oxygen equipment that staff explained had been funded through UK support. I learned that when power outages struck the hospital, as they often did, that equipment helped keep vulnerable newborns alive.

Being in the presence of these sometimes inconceivably small children, seeing the UK aid sticker labelled across the incubators that were keeping them alive, emotion completely overcame me. It was not only sadness. It was pride. Pride that people in Britain, most of whom would never meet that baby or their family, had helped make survival possible. Seven years later, that moment remains one of the most impactful of my life.

Many years ago, I turned against foreign aid – well, against most government-to-government foreign aid except immediately after natural disasters. How can I justify such a stance? Don’t I want premature babies in Sierra Leone to have incubators? I do want it. I want it very much. But take a look at this graph comparing the change in GDP per capita in current USA dollars of Sierra Leone and South Korea from 1960 to the present. In 1960, South Korea was at $158.8, a little higher than Sierra Leone’s $142.0, but still desperately poor. The next year South Korea’s figure ($94.2) was actually lower than Sierra Leone’s $142.3. I don’t know why that sudden year-on-year dip in South Korea’s wealth happened or if the effect were even real, but there can be no possible doubt about the reality of what happened over the next six and a half decades. The GDP per capita of the Republic of Korea is now $36,227.0, forty-three times higher than that of Sierra Leone, which is $846.7.

I want Sierra Leone to have incubators the way South Korea has incubators.“The Republic of Korea (South Korea) maintains excellent maternal and newborn health outcomes through its advanced healthcare system. With a maternal mortality ratio of approximately 8.1 deaths per 100,000 live births and a neonatal mortality rate of approximately 1.3 deaths per 1,000 live births, the country ranks among the world’s safest for childbirth.” South Korea did receive some foreign aid in the 1960s and 70s. Then it stopped. The country is now a donor rather than a recipient. Sierra Leone has received orders of magnitude more aid, and it has never stopped. In terms of things you can point to, like the incubators Mr Harewood saw, no doubt all that aid did some good. But in terms of that which is not seen, I believe that aid did more harm than good. The unceasing torrent of money made it less likely that Sierra Leone would do as South Korea did and so get South Korea-like outcomes.

So I’m not a fan of foreign aid. You knew that. Bet you didn’t know until you saw the headline to this post that Guardian readers are scarcely more enthusiastic about it than I am. Here are the top-level comments to Mr Harewood’s article ordered by number of recommendations:

misterrusty
27 Sep 2026 8.51
133

If Africa, which is 3 times the size of Europe stopped all the tribal infighting, it might become rich enough to support itself. The question is why a continent with such huge resources is so poor it has to rely on aid.

–

aunib
27 Sep 2026 9.07
120

We’re currently running a 4% GDP deficit and the interest on our debt is £110B a year. Charity is for surplus cash, and our government doesn’t have any of that at the moment.

–

Manchotte
27 Sep 2026 8.52
110

But the question remains: when will these African countries be able to support themselves? Sixty years since independence and they are still relying on British aid. Where did all the £100 billion go? apart from Swiss bank accounts!

–

Firtree
27 Sep 2026 9.26
92

Can someone please explain to me how it is okay for the government to borrow 10s of billions every month to keep us afloat while giving a big chunk of of it to others for free?

–

Bathreader
27 Sep 2026 8.50
83

Foreign aid is laudable but has to take its place with other priorities.Defence is the urgent priority after years of underspend.

–

The Guardian does its best to hide this preponderance of aid-sceptical sentiment among its readers by taking all eight of its “Guardian picks” from among the pro-aid comments, but anyone who sorts by “recommends”, as most people do, cannot fail to note that it is only on the sixth comment down that we finally reach one that is unambiguously in favour of foreign aid.

Edit: if the link to the graph comparing historical GDP per capita for the Republic of Korea and Sierra Leone is too much for your browser, you can generate it yourself by going to the World Bank “GDP per capita” page, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD , and entering both “Sierra Leone” and “Korea, Rep” into the search bar.

Ethnicity is not an opinion, but a fact of history, intermarriage and statistics of known populations: Romano-British, Anglo-Saxon, a few Scandinavian and, later, Normans. If you care to look up ethnogenesis, pedigree collapse and “identical ancestry” you can learn that, over several hundred years and assuming intermarriage, these groups have by now mixed almost entirely.

English ethnicity, at the end of those several centuries, is more clearly defined than most. To deny an English ethnicity is to say ethnicity does not exist, which would pose quite the shock to parts of our current political establishment.

– Isabel Paterson

Here’s a topical joke from The Ministry of Wit:

BREAKING NEWS: The UK government has sent Official cultural advice to Flydubai after the cockpit incident!! pic.twitter.com/lO7b8sixr8

— MinistryofWit (@MinistryofWit) September 30, 2026

In case the link disappears, it says “Co-pilots must not stab the pilot. This is called assault.” It is parodying a Home Office leaflet called “Understanding behaviours and expectations in the UK: a guide for asylum seekers” (non-illustrated version here), which helpfully explains on page 5 that “In the UK, both people must say ‘yes’ to sex. This is called consent.”

To be fair to the Home Office, given that the top ten countries from which asylum seekers come are, in order, Eritrea, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, Ethiopia, Iraq, Syria, Turkey* and Vietnam, there is a need to educate many men from the first eight of these countries that in the UK women have the legal right to refuse sex. In those eight countries marital rape is not a crime. The furore about the leaflets was because they reveal that the government knows damn well that education on sexual consent is particularly necessary for men from Muslim countries. It just doesn’t want to say so because the official ideology is that all cultures are equal. There is an ongoing legal case concerning the government’s reluctance to reveal crime figures analysed by nationality of offender.

It came after the Centre for Migration Control (CMC), a think tank, asked the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to reveal the total number of convictions broken down by nationality and offences for the seven years under freedom of information laws.

The MoJ initially refused, saying that to gather the data would be too expensive and that publishing the information could lead to the identification of individuals in breach of their rights to privacy.

Both arguments were rejected by the information watchdog. However, The Telegraph revealed last month that David Lammy, then justice secretary, sanctioned legal action seeking to overturn this ruling.

Opposition parties claimed the MoJ’s actions amounted to a “cover-up”.

One of the first political demonstrations I ever attended, over forty years ago, was in defence of refugees and asylum seekers. I still have great sympathy for those who seek freedom from oppression, such as Iranian Christians fleeing the Islamic Republic, and for the genuinely moderate Muslims – the almost comical over-use of that phrase does not mean they do not exist. But the current UK asylum regime is an illustration of the old medical saying that “the dose makes the poison.”

*My auto-correct tried to change “Turkey” to “Türkiye”. No.

Three years ago today, Gazan civilians – not themselves Hamas, just Palestinians taking advantage of an opportunity – abducted Shiri Bibas and her children Ariel aged four and Kfir aged nine months. They were held in captivity for an unknown amount of time before being murdered. The children were probably strangled. Hamas, wishing to be part of the Bibas story, eventually held an elaborate public ceremony, complete with jubilant children dancing on stage, before releasing coffins labelled as containing their dead bodies, along with a coffin containing the body of another murdered hostage, 84 year old Oded Lifshitz. The ceremony was arranged with much forethought. Somebody even took the time to make little plaques to put on the coffins of Shiri Bibas and Oded Lifshitz saying, “Date of arrest: October 7th 2023”.

Date of arrest. Their own words. That’s how they think.

*

Related posts:

“Miliband appears determined to maintain his antagonistic approach towards Israel, despite the recent revelation that the Israelis tipped off their British counterparts about the recent terror plot aimed at RAF Fairford, which has so far resulted in the arrest of seven suspects. While Miliband’s anti-Israel stance might appeal to Labour’s vocal pro-Palestinian lobby, his preference for puerile gesture politics will be counter-productive in so far as the UK’s broader national security interests are concerned.”

– Con Coughlin, Daily Telegraph (£). The headline of the article is “Ed Miliband won’t admit that Israel is doing the UK’s dirty work.”

The word “contempt” is too mild to really capture the range of thoughts and emotions that I have about the current UK foreign secretary and former energy minister. His conduct in office (including at energy given his championing of Net Zero, regardless of changed circumstances) has increased the vulnerability of the UK, and he has taken such actions largely out of a blinkered ideological worldview and disregard for national security. As such, he illustrates the dangers of what Gad Saad has dubbed “suicidal empathy”.