Brown's Marshall Plan for Africa

12.00.00pm GMT Fri 7th Jan 2005

Although Blair and Brown held their speeches at the same time, Brown had some important things to say. I have now looked at what he actually said when calling for a Marshall Plan for Africa and I have to say I agree with virtually everything in it. Much else of what he said made perfect sense - my only criticism is with what he did not say - he did not go nearly far enough.

His first two proposals - writing off debt and double aid, are almost impossible to disagree with. No one can object to the debt being written off. On the subject of aid my only disagreement is that is does not go far enough and in fact aid should be at least tripled, tripling the UK's aid will take it to around 1% of GNP - which is not a lot to ask surely?

Brown's third proposal is a fairer trade policy - again not much to disagree with there, but it not just about reduced trade barriers on the developing world but a fundamental restructuring on the subsidies paid in the developed world - Brown should be calling for the complete abolition of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). CAP encourages farmers to over-produce and dump cheap or free food on the developing world which has the knock-on effect of driving farmers in those countries out of work.