Name? Liz Sugg, Baroness Sugg
Westphalian identity? British
Age? 43
Why is she in the news? Lady Sugg submitted her resignation as Foreign Office Minister of Development after Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak announced a cut to the UK’s aid budget by one third from 0.7% to 0.5% of the UK’s GDP.
Why do we care? According to Lady Sugg and aid experts, these cuts could cause a million girls to lose out on schooling, nearly three million women and children to go without life-saving nutrition and 5.6 million children left unvaccinated. And this is only a prediction based on the lack of UK aid. Overall, the World Food Programme expects a famine of “biblical proportions” with potentially 265 million at the risk of hunger.
Why should you care? Aside from the fact that millions of people who depend on this money will be affected negatively? What should make you care is that these people are dependent on aid in the first place. It once again shows the existing flaws in the aid and development sector and the groups most vulnerable to globalisation: Women and children. Lady Sugg is most aware of this and resigned to highlight the hidden impact on women and girls.
Who else cares? The poor humans affected by the missing aid.
Any further comments? After becoming head of the Tory party in 2019, Boris Johnson said about the UK’s claim to global leadership: “Like some slumbering giant, we are going to rise and ping off the guy-ropes of self-doubt and negativity”. In 2021, the UK chairs the G7 and hosts the Global Climate Summit, an opportunity for Borris (and Britain) to shine on the world stage while largely failing at home. This cut in the aid budget only shows the level of reliability the world can expect from the UK so far. The main challenge for Boris and the Tories remains the balance between feeding the British pride connected to it’s once so “glorious” Empire, and actually feeding its population at home. #HolidayHunger
