By the end of this week, Andy Burnham will have made the first major foreign policy decision of his premiership.

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Who runs the Foreign Office matters more than the politicking that has dominated the speculation thus far. Whoever gets the job, conceivably our tenth Foreign Secretary in a decade, inherits a complex and dangerous world under a Prime Minister with little appetite for foreign policy.

One item in their in-tray, a sharp test of how Britain sees its place in the world, is foreign aid. In a crowded field of unpopular policies, the Government’s decision to cut aid stands apart for commanding broad public and cross-party support. But the rush to curtail it risks repeating the mistake that got us here: chasing a number, not an outcome.

Britain’s about-turn on aid isn’t unique. Globally, it fell by a record 23.1% between 2024 and 2025. Contrast this with the New Labour and Coalition years, when the 0.7% of GNI target hardened into an unassailable moral duty. Even at the height of austerity, we became the first G7 country to enshrine that target in law.

Aid had become dogma; the metric of our morality.

Then........

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