Political opinion with A LibDem Perspective: Aid should not be a bargaining chip

This approach to greatness is just about bullying, using strength or power to frighten or hurt weaker people or countries and bend them to your will.

Others regard qualities such as magnanimity, compassion, selflessness, benevolence as demonstrating greatness. The far right would no doubt see these qualities as part of the 'woke' agenda. But they are the sort of qualities that led the previous US administration to disburse $72bn last year in foreign aid that will have saved or improved millions of lives around the world. In the UK we gave about £15.3bn in overseas aid, or just 0.58% of gross national income, putting us ninth in the international league table. We are told this will halve to fund the increase in our defence budget. After successive Conservative governments oversaw a 35% decrease in the size of the regular army and consistent failure to invest in the best modern equipment there is undoubtedly a need to boost defence spending significantly and to reduce our reliance on US armaments rapidly.

Whatever it's merits the UK's reduction in overseas aid does at least result from an enforced change of priorities, not just a cruel and capricious whim, based entirely on seing life through the prism of the balance sheet. Helping to feed a starving child in the Sudan doesn't help the USA's profits so they won't do it. Look up the 1986 Comic Relief sketch with Messrs Geldorf and Ure asking merchant banker Stephen Fry for a £1 donation. It's very funny, but a somewhat disturbing foretaste of the current US President's apparent attitude.

As well as being a short term investment in saving and improving lives, overseas aid is a powerful long term investment. It can help to spread the social and democratic values that underpin a stable and caring society, and counteract the forces of extremism. It can help to remove the need for tens of thousands of the persecuted and fearful to seek refuge in other countries. It can also help to restrict the growing influence of repressive regimes that are seeking to achieve through the funding of major capital projects what former empire builders did by force two centuries ago.

The harsh reality is that our total overseas aid budget is not enough to provide the defence investment we now need. Given all the other urgent spending requirements needed to get our services back on track the government needs to grasp the nettle, face down its critics, and be brave enough to introduce a package of tailored tax increases.