So, the record of British policy in Europe during the Blair years is
strong in very important respects. It is true that Blair cannot be said to
have succeeded in his aim of elevating Britain into a consistent leadership
position in the EU, but then the nature of the EU is such that in so far as
leadership is provided by member states it is inevitably diffused and has
to be shared. To talk of providing leadership in the EU context can only
mean providing it in partnership with others. And under Blair Britain
was a leading player in several core EU policy areas: starting with the
Saint-Malo Declaration, in respect of security and defence policy; most
prominently with the leading role in helping to launch the Lisbon
Process, in respect of internal market, and especially competitiveness,
policy; most particularly in the discussions and negotiations that led
34 Burch and Bulmer, ‘Central Government’, pp. 47–8.
to the Constitutional Treaty, in respect of treaty reform policy; and
consistently in respect of EU enlargement policy. It has been further
argued that the EU’s monetary policy is actually being ‘Anglicized’,
although not through any conscious effort by the Treasury to upload
British ideas.35
Beyond specific policies, there was a growing British influence under
Blair in the broader realm of ideas, particularly in relation to the
economy. In facing economic pressures and the attendant policy dilemmas that Britain has largely confronted, EU states have been increasingly
attracted to what has been described as the ‘Anglo-Social’ model in which
a robust emphasis on economic competitiveness is accompanied by a
minimum wage, tax credits, and other ‘safety net’ measures to ensure
some protection for weaker social groups.
The broad contours of Britain’s relationship with the EU under Blair
were shaped by a policy of constructive engagement, albeit an engagement that stopped short of participation in the major EU project of the
Blair years: the single currency. As part of giving effect to this policy, Blair
expended considerable time and effort in cultivating relations with his
European counterparts. However, the Iraq War made the policy of constructive engagement more difficult, for it then became an almost impossible challenge to reconcile the simultaneous deepening of relations with
both the US and key EU allies. The fact is that although Blair came to
office in the guise of apparently the most European-inclined British
Prime Minister since Edward Heath, he was also a very strong Atlanticist
and never wavered from sticking close to the White House on the most
important foreign policy issue of his watch.
This observation takes us to what was perhaps the biggest failing of the
Blair governments on Europe: their failure to make headway in changing
public opinion on the merits of European integration. This was, of
course, a very tall challenge, but the fact is that whilst there was an
attempt to ‘go beyond the traditional perception of the EU as a threat’,36
at several key moments Blair and other prominent Labour figures tended
to set out the government’s position in defensive terms rather than presenting a positive case for integration.37 Yet if Blair wanted to persuade
people of his view of sovereignty in which the British–EU relationship
35 Jim Buller, ‘Monetary Policy’, in Bache and Jordan (eds.), The Europeanization of British
Politics, pp. 201–15.
36 Simon Bulmer, ‘Britain and European Integration’, in Bill Jones et al., Politics UK, 6th edn
(Harlow: Longman, 2006), p. 810.
37 Riddell, ‘Europe’, p. 379.
could be win-win, it was essential that the argument be taken to the
public more forcefully and less equivocally.
But, overall, when the dust has settled, the record of the Blair governments on Europe is likely to be seen as being more positive than negative.
There were significant achievements in terms of both style and substance,
which related not only to the oft-reported big issues but also to less
obvious developments and to domestic reforms that may prove to be of
enduring significance for Britain’s relationship with Europe.
25
Development
What was the state of Britain’s contribution to international
development when Labour took office in May 1997?
No British government can ignore issues of international development.
The United Kingdom’s history, the Commonwealth connection, the
reality of trade, migration and personal links, and the concern of many
citizens for humanitarian action see to that. But in the run-up to the 1997
election, the Conservative government, while maintaining its traditionally open attitude to international trade and indeed claiming in its election manifesto1 a leadership role on addressing issues of debt, was not
seen as a powerful force in international support for development.
A significant reason for that was an aid programme that was declining
in real terms. Also, the government had been found to have acted illegally
in the case of a high-profile project in Malaysia, the Pergau Dam, a project
which ministers had been advised was uneconomic. Indeed, the government had made a point of asserting that the political and commercial
interests of the UK would be given particular weight in decisions on aid.
But, more broadly, neither the UK nor many other OECD countries had
found it easy to generate strong domestic support for more than humanitarian aid, or for giving development issues a high political profile. This
had already in 1996 stimulated the Development Assistance Committee
of the OECD to set out, in a landmark document, Shaping the Twenty-first
Century: The Role of Development Cooperation,2 a new approach to aid,
linking it strongly to specific development results. But in 1997, while both
the main parties genuflected in their manifestos3 to the UN target for aid
11 Conservative Party manifesto for the 1997 general election, p. 35.
12 OECD, Shaping the Twenty-First Century: The Role of Development Co-operation (Paris:
OECD, 1996).
13 1997 Labour Party election manifesto, p. 36: ‘We reaffirm the UK’s commitment to the 0.7
percent UN aid target and in government Labour will start to reverse the decline in aid
spending’; Conservative Party manifesto, p. 27: ‘We will continue to maintain a significant
to reach 0.7% of gross national income (GNI), neither committed themselves to any particular level of funding.
What was the state of Britain’s contribution to international
development when Tony Blair left office?
Ten years later, issues of international development are much harder to
ignore, international aid from the UK and from most other donor countries has risen sharply, and the developing world – and even, in the past
few years, sub-Saharan Africa – is routinely growing faster in terms of
income per head than the countries of the OECD.
As far as aid is concerned, a revealing comme
nt on the domestic debate
is that the Conservative manifesto for the 2005 election,4 far from distancing itself from the Labour government’s approach, said ‘We believe that
British aid programmes are among the best in the world’, and matched the
government’s pledge to reach the 0.7% target by 2013. The OECD
Development Assistance Committee (DAC), in its review of the UK’s
development programme in 2006,5 started with the headline ‘UK offers a
powerful model for development cooperation’, and said that the
Department for International Development had gone through a ‘golden
age’ of growth and achievement since 1997. And at the Gleneagles Summit
in 2005, Tony Blair persuaded his colleagues to sign up to a $50 billion
increase in aid worldwide,6 and a doubling of aid to Africa between 2004
and 2010. In 2006, for the first time in the history of international aid, the
UK was surpassed in its aid levels only by the United States.
But the concerns pressed by the British government, and not least by
Tony Blair himself, went well beyond aid. As noted below, Tony Blair
became convinced that in some cases ‘hard’ power had to be deployed to
achieve durable change, and he developed a strong interest in issues
around peacekeeping and governance. The government backed treaties
on both landmines and the trade in small arms. It became more and more
assertive on issues around climate change (discussed in chapter 26). And
it continued Britain’s longstanding support for freer trade and for tackling the problem of unsustainable debt.
Footnote 3 ( cont. )
bilateral and multilateral aid programme reflecting the aspiration of meeting the UN’s
target of 0.7% of GDP as a long-term objective.’
14 Government election manifesto 2005, p. 27.
15 ‘Peer Review of the United Kingdom’, OECD Journal on Development, 7, 2006: 11.
16 The Gleneagles Communiqué, Africa, paras. 28 and 27.
Overall, although necessarily affected by Britain’s involvement in Iraq,
the UK’s international profile on development issues has probably not
been higher since John Maynard Keynes was negotiating the establishment of the World Bank in 1944.
What changed and why?
The change has been driven in part by genuine changes in articulate
public opinion. The public support for the Jubilee 2000 campaign, the
willingness to contribute on an unprecedented scale to relief and rehabilitation after the Indian Ocean tsunami, the success of the ‘Make
Poverty History’ and ‘Live 8’ campaigns, and the rise of the Fair Trade
movement all showed heightened public concern about the well-being of
poor people worldwide. In the world of realpolitik, the implications of
9/11, and the rapid rise of China and India and their impact on raw material supplies were all significant reasons for politicians to reassess the priority of international development. Many countries as well as the UK
gave development issues more weight (as witness the increase in US aid
under George W. Bush after its decline under Bill Clinton). But there was
something special about what happened in the UK, and public policy
must be allowed considerable weight in assessing the reasons for the
change.
The story starts with the Foreign Policy Review, carried out by the
Labour Party in Opposition in 1994–6, under the leadership of Robin
Cook, with Joan Lestor as the shadow spokesperson on aid matters. This
review – itself a very normal Labour Party procedure – included a proposal to establish a new department under a cabinet minister with a brief
to promote international development. Similar proposals, designed
essentially to reduce the use of aid for political and commercial ends, had
been included in Labour’s three previous manifestos in opposition, no
doubt influenced by the setting-up by Harold Wilson in 1964 of the
Ministry of Overseas Development under Barbara Castle. The legacy of
the Ministry of Overseas Development, which had in practice quickly lost
influence after Barbara Castle’s departure, remained in the form of the
Overseas Development Administration (ODA), which ran Britain’s international aid programmes as a separate unit within the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office.
As the 1997 election approached, Clare Short, who was by now the
shadow International Development spokesperson, was asked by Tony
Blair to look again at whether a separate department of state was justified.
Her conclusion, after reviewing the practice of other countries, consulting
leading development think-tanks and taking advice from the Permanent
Secretary of the ODA, Sir John Vereker, was that the proposal for a
new department headed by a cabinet minister should stand. Tony Blair’s
first important decision in this area was to accept her advice. The
party manifesto7 stated: ‘In Government we will strengthen and restructure the British aid programme and bring development issues back into
the mainstream of government decision-making. A Cabinet Minister will
lead a new department of international development.’ The presence of a
cabinet-level Secretary of State and a separate department was to prove a
powerful signal both internally in Whitehall and externally.
Clare Short herself had had no particular background in the field of
development before her appointment. As she read herself into her brief
before the election, a particularly significant encounter was with the distinguished academic and former deputy head of UNICEF, Sir Richard
Jolly. Jolly brought to her attention the DAC report mentioned above,
which had been agreed earlier in 1996 and which set out a limited
number of quantitative goals for achievement by specific dates (usually
2015) in fields such as poverty reduction, education, health and the environment. Clare Short determined that working to achieve these measurable results would be the core of the mission of the new department.
Thanks in no small measure to her advocacy, the International
Development Goals set by the DAC were taken up by the United Nations
at the Millennium Assembly in the form of the Millennium Development
Goals, which set an agreed framework for the results to be achieved by
international development efforts over the period to 2015.8 Together
with the successful UN Conference on Financing for Development in
Monterrey in March 2002,9 which emphasised the responsibilities of both
recipients and donors for real progress, and which was the focus for
important aid commitments by both the United States and the European
Union, this gave the international development effort a much clearer
frame of reference than it had had before.
The handling of the Goals was characteristic of a strong feature of the
UK’s approach under successive Labour Secretaries of State: the attempt
to influence the international system. Whether in the World Bank, the
UN system, the EU or the OECD, DFID and its Secretary of State worked
17 1997 Labour Party election manifesto, p. 36.
18 UN General Assembly Resolution 55, of 8 September 2000, United Nations.
19 Monterrey Consensus of the International Conf
erence on Financing for Development,
United Nations Department of Public Information, October 2003.
to encourage other actors to join it to make changes in accordance with its
development philosophy. The policy was clearly stated in the government’s first White Paper on International Development in November
1997:10 ‘We should not over-estimate what we can do by ourselves. We
should not under-estimate what we can do with others . . . Helping to
lead the world in a commitment to poverty elimination and sustainable
development is an international role in which all the people of Britain
could take pride.’ Nine years later, the 2006 DAC Review11 observed: ‘As
DFID proactively seeks to influence international donors towards
common approaches, it needs to strike a balance between its objective of
leadership in aid reform and being perceived as promoting its own
model’ – in a way, a backhanded testament to the strength and determination of DFID’s advocacy. Clare Short had quickly found allies in the
president of the World Bank, Jim Wolfensohn, and in her fellow ministers
from Norway, the Netherlands and Germany, with whom she formed the
‘Utstein Group’, later to develop into a wider ‘Nordic Plus’ group of likeminded donors.
However, the influencing of Britain’s partners was not just a matter for
DFID and its Secretary of State. Both Gordon Brown as Chancellor and
Tony Blair as Prime Minister used their own networks with increasing
effect to promote Britain’s aims for international development and specific initiatives. In the Chancellor’s case, these included the International
Monetary and Finance Committee, of which Gordon Brown was chair
from 1999, the G7 Finance Ministers’ meetings (crucial entities for promoting solutions to the debt problems of poor countries), and the
European Council of Ministers of Economy and Finance (ECOFIN),
which played a particularly important role in setting the aid commitments for European Union members that were adopted by the Barcelona
Summit in 2002. For the Prime Minister, the main formal stage was the
succession of G7/G8 Summits. But his personal links with developingcountry leaders, particularly those of the Commonwealth, were also used
to good effect, for example in the Commission for Africa. More is said on
BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007 Page 87