So the Tories have announced their new international development policy. Apparently it’s going to be “results-based” and fit for a “post-bureaucratic age” (this latter being, mind you, the kind of phrase coined by bureaucrats). Iain Dale likes the sound of it and so does Tory Bear. I’m sure there are plenty of good ideas lurking in the new paper, but I’m also pretty sure that there’s not much sign of the Tories moving towards a truly radical approach to international development: open borders.
Actually, it’s not quite open borders, more a question of creating a worldwide guest-worker programme. Harvard’s Lant Pritchett is perhaps the leading proponent of this sort of idea. He calculates that increasing the developed world’s labour force by 3% could be worth more than $300bn to citizens of the Third World and their families. That’s a hell of a lot more than OECD countries spent on foreign aid last year.
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