The Spectator

Subsidising tyrants

It would be easy, but wrong, to dismiss Live 8 as a grotesque irrelevance

issue 11 June 2005

A bunch of ageing rockers belting out their old hits for the supposed benefit of Africa’s poor (not to mention the hope of reviving fading careers) is such a tempting target for parody and scorn that it would be easy to dismiss Bob Geldof’s Live 8 concert on 2 July as a grotesque irrelevance. But it would be wrong, not least because of the seriousness with which the government appears to be taking the event. Seldom one to miss out on the chance to associate himself with a wave of public emotion, and eager to establish some sort of legacy now that his great project to take Britain into the euro lies in ruins, the Prime Minister has expressed support for the doubling of aid to Africa. So too has Gordon Brown, who has formed the mathematically illiterate equation that doubling aid will somehow halve poverty.

There isn’t, it has to be said, an awful lot of substance in the two-page manifesto of the Make Poverty History campaign, which the Live 8 concert has been called to support.

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