Some thoughts on cynicism and the G8

After my post of this afternoon, assessing the outcome of the G8 summit, I got a comment from a reader who said: “I didn't expect anything more as I think the G8 meetings are just a grandstanding event for the leaders involved. Also I believe that for Tony and Gordon it was a way to divert attention away from other Labour problems. Cynical, yes, but I've yet to see anything more from politicians than their own self interest.”

I don't think the comment was a cynical one. It struck me as a fairly realistic assessment of the situation, unfortunately. It also raises fundamental questions that go to the heart of the debate about the Make Poverty History campaign and the G8 summit. The below was intended as a quick reply but having written it, I think it ought to have a post of its own. So here it is....

The debate over the G8 deal will, I suspect, be framed in the following terms: most aid agencies and campaigners, myself included, will say that the outcome fell short of what was required because there was a lack of will on the part of world leaders. Those world leaders, and their supporters, will counter by saying that the will was there, but this was the first step on a very difficult journey.

How difficult was that journey? I think a simple mathematical exercise will go someway towards answering the question. The G8 have pledged to boost aid by $50bn over the next 5 years. Try calculating the GDP of these 8 wealthy countries over the course of the next five years. Then work out what percentage of that the much-trumpeted $50bn increase in aid amounts to. Here's a hint at what the answer might be: the UK, just one of those 8 countries and by no means the richest, had a GDP in just one year (2004), not five years, of $1.782 trillion - 35 times the pledged increase. That's in one year, not five. One country, not eight.

That being the case, I find the protestations of the G8 leaders - saying that its all so difficult but maybe, by 2015 or so, we'll struggle our way there - pretty hard to stomach. Particularly when 30,000 people died as a result of poverty today. Just as they did yesterday. Just as they will tomorrow, the next day and the day after that......right through to 2010 when that $50bn is paid in full.....right through to 2015 when we're meant to believe that the G8 will finally reach that fabled 0.7% of their GDP on aid they've been promising since 1970....all through that time tens of thousands of people will continue to die, needlessly, on a daily basis.

Its these raw numbers that we should use to judge the moral standing of our politicians; not the cheap pronouncements they make in interviews and speeches, pronouncements that, as far as I'm aware, have yet to save a single life.

Powerful people have assumed grand moral postures throughout history. If we're rational, we don't judge their actual moral character simply on the basis of the proclamations they make about their good intentions. If we're rational, we judge them by their actions. Today, the figures speak for themselves. To say that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are perhaps not genuinely driven by some personal moral crusade to save Africa, as they say they are, is not cynicism; its a rational observation concerning matters of fact. One hopes that the message of the Make Poverty History campaign, as transmitted to billions across the world by Live8, will, when contrasted with the measly outcome of Gleneagles, cause many people across the world to take a cold and realistic look at these eight men that represent us and the true costs of their actions. One hopes that many people will find cause to stop judging politicians by how they seem on TV and start looking at the real implications of their actual policies.

As I've said previously, activists and campaigners ought to be wary of cynicism. Cynicism, that is, on the part of politicians prepared to exploit the cause of combating poverty for their own political gain. That, it seems to me, is one of the principle lessons for us to take from the Make Poverty History campaign so far.