THE Nativist tendency in British politics ... is now making a push against the overseas aid budget.

[pampango]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/bagehot/2011/05/british_nativism

THE NATIVIST tendency in British politics—already cross about membership of the International Monetary Fund (because IMF membership has left Britain guaranteeing a share of the bailout funds extended to troubled eurozone economies)—is now making a push against the overseas aid budget. David Cameron has been under fire from his own right-wing for a while over his decision to ring-fence the budget of the Department for International Development (DFID), when so many other bits of the state were taking cuts. This morning's tabloids decided to take a fresh whack at DFID ...

By the time the tabloids were finished, a scorecard showing Britain spending 0.56% of GDP on aid in 2010, ahead of France at 0.5%, Germany at 0.38% or America at 0.21% became "a damning report" revealing Britain's free-spending "while British taxpayers suffer through an age of austerity." The Daily Mail splashed on the story, and the Express and Sun also had a go. Angry Conservative MPs accused the government of having its priorities all wrong.

Instead, the Tories who attack DFID with the most vigour are often the same ones who want to see British defence spending preserved from cuts. Here is Peter Bone, a senior backbencher widely quoted today:

Where are the small state purists on the Tory right? I might not agree with them if I did meet them: in an alarmingly messy, globalised world I see a continuing need for spending on both aid and defence. (I even, blush, agree with the purely moral arguments for spending relatively small sums to save the lives of women in childbirth, vaccinate children, buy bed nets against malaria and so on). But at least spending hawks cross about wasted defence and aid spending would have the virtue of consistency.