@emildauncey thanks for the prompt. Some thoughts on DFID being folded into the FCO - a thread.

DFID has been technically as good as any donor, with excellent, committed staff. The UK is right to be proud of it. The merger is for the wrong reasons, and will weaken the mission of reducing poverty...

… it will damage the work that DFID was doing through focus on security, diplomatic and trade interests. Getting a poverty-focus right is hard enough to begin with.

DFID also had its flaws. Aid was technically driven and too often apolitical and acontextual. This can work better in some areas - but where confronting complexity, technical models are often ineffective.

Aid delivery was often not just apolitical, but depoliticising - we reproduce ourselves, a basically neoliberal vision of market-state relations - neglecting or instrumentalising local politics.

Important strides were being made to improve how DFID worked to contextualise its models through adaptive management and thinking politically movements, but this remained inconsistent and in my view the prioritisation of technical expertise over context made the change hard

Given DFID's institutional hinterland and the constant changes in overarching policy, I was never sure it would be able to make a shift beyond technical aid delivery, with the strengths and flaws that entails.

My hope is longer term that a progressive vision can be framed for a coherent foreign policy addressing how the UK engages with extreme poverty beyond aid - migration, tax, &c

@DaunceyEmil even