ike many people who care about tackling global poverty, I was dismayed by the timing of Boris Johnson’s decision to merge the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. How could this be a priority when the coronavirus is set to push an additional half a billion people below the breadline – and countless people in the poorest countries are already starving as a result of the pandemic’s economic impacts? For me, there was something else distressing about the timing. In the midst of public discussions about slavery and colonialism prompted by the Black Lives Matter protests, his decision and the language the prime minister chose to justify it with in parliament felt tone deaf at best, deliberately inflammatory at worst. The glib use of offensive stereotypes about overseas leaders decapitating their opponents was as revealing as it was depressing. He claimed that British aid “has been treated as some giant cashpoint in the sky”, but now needed to serve the national interest. And he repeatedly asked why several African countries get more aid than eastern European countries. “We give as much aid to Zambia as we do to Ukraine, though the latter is vital for European security,” he said. The imagery is stark: poor black Africans waiting for handouts that bring us no benefit on one side; aid money to strike trade deals and buy influence with our white near-neighbours on the other. The comparison between Ukraine and Zambia is particularly unfortunate. As statues of Cecil Rhodes are taken down across the world, the British prime minister chooses to deprioritise the country, once called Northern Rhodesia, that sent vast amounts of copper to the UK during colonial times. Aid has to be about helping those most in need – the clue is in the name. Yet while almost no one in Ukraine lives in extreme poverty, more than half of Zambians live on less than $1.90 a day. Zambia’s growing debt has held back its progress, with repayments siphoning off valuable resources needed to protect its population from Covid-19. Many other countries in Africa and beyond are seeing their progress threatened by the pandemic. DfID’s expertise, its track record in delivering results and its focus on tackling poverty is needed now more than ever. Yet Johnson has misread the British public. This is one of the most generous societies in the world, especially when it comes to fighting hunger, disease and homelessness. Charity may begin at home, but the British public has consistently shown that it does not stop there. Aid is also a way for us to project a truly compassionate global Britain: a force for good on the world stage. Aid is not a cashpoint; it is a lifeline that provides medicines, food and shelter, vaccines, bed-nets and clean water for millions around the world. It funds the infrastructure that businesses need to grow, and protects the poorest people from a climate crisis they did not cause. History suggests that too closely aligning aid with foreign policy goals risks turning it into a credit line for the UK economy. DfID was created in part as a reaction to the Pergau Dam affair, when British aid was provided for a project that made no economic sense in order to secure an arms deal. I agree with the editor of Conservative Home, Paul Goodman, who wrote this week that he was “unconvinced that it is necessary to reinvent this particular wheel”. Avoiding that outcome would require the prime minister to either reverse his decision or take strong action to ensure that the 7p the UK allocates to aid out of every £10 of national income is spent both ethically and effectively. We can all learn lessons from the past. A key part of Oxfam’s journey over the almost 80 years of our history has been a growing understanding of how our attitudes and actions are rooted not just in our desire for a better world, but also our assumptions about it – assumptions that, given our British roots, are inevitably coloured by colonialism. We haven’t always got it right – far from it – but as a result we are more aware than ever of the need to ensure we challenge, rather than reinforce, existing imbalances of power between north and south, black and white, and men and women. The best aid is about empowering others. It is about offering a hand up: a way to redress historical inequities rather than reinforce them. Boris Johnson’s decision this week takes UK aid in the opposite direction and is likely to lead to many more people dying unnecessarily from hunger and disease. The language he chose to describe his decision adds insult to injury and, at a time of widespread support for Black Lives Matter, makes it harder for us to confront the lingering injustices of our colonial past. It is not what the rest of the world would expect of a “global Britain” worthy of the name. • Danny Sriskandarajah is chief executive of Oxfam GB