1. Blair, Brown and the Gleneagles agenda: Making poverty history, or confronting the global politics of unequal development?
- Author:
- Anthony Payne
- Publication Date:
- 05-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Australian National University Department of International Relations
- Abstract:
- Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer respectively, set out a highly ambitious 'development' agenda for 2005 when it was the UK's turn to hold the Presidency of the Group of 8 and thus host than annual summit, held on this occasion in Gleneagles in Scotland. This agenda embraced issues of aid and debt, trade and climate change. It was given additional prominence by the activities of the Making Poverty History campaign. However, the G8 could never have worked to 'make poverty history' because such an achievement was not remotely within its compass. The details of the agreements reached at Gleneagles and at subsequent international meetings reveal a much less impressive record than the initial hyperbole suggested. The global politics of development is not animated any longer—if indeed it ever was—by what the 'North' is willing to do for the 'South'. It is driven instead by a complex 'global politics of unequal development' into which Blair and Brown's Gleneagles agenda has been swept up. The outcome may represent significant change in some of the patterns of global politics, but it will not mark the ending of poverty.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Globalization, Human Rights, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- United Kingdom and Scotland