Alexander Woollcombe

You may have been following all of the developments around the UK’s election during the last 2 weeks. ONE’s Alexander Woollcombe offers his perspective from across the pond:

After several gripping days of negotiations, we finally have a new Government in the UK, which is a coalition of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties.

How the coalition will work in practice remains to be seen, but as the new Prime Minister David Cameron said in his video for our ONE Vote 2010 campaign:

“…the major political parties do have major differences but we are agreed on this: Britain has a moral responsibility to help the world’s poorest people. This is about the kind of country we want to be”.

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats who also recorded a message for our campaign, becomes Deputy Prime Minister.

ONE is glad to see the inclusion in the Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition agreement that “the target of spending 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid will also remain in place”. We will be asking that the commitment in each party’s manifesto to introduce legislation to make this promise legally binding, including a timeline for reaching 0.7 by 2013, be included in the new Government’s Queen’s Speech.

ONE also congratulates Andrew Mitchell on his appointment as Secretary of State for International Development and looks forward to working with him and his team in the future.

Over the last 13 years the previous Labour Government, and particularly former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, led the world in raising the fight against extreme poverty up the political agenda. This achievement should be built on by the new Government – by improving aid effectiveness and transparency; strengthening governance and accountability; making progress in international trade and climate change negotiations and keeping our aid promises to the world’s poor.

Last week, David Cole from ONE’s UK Office wrote about ONE’s UK general election campaign. Today Alexander Woolcombe has a bit more on what ONE is doing to get their leaders “On the Record”:

This week in London we officially unveiled the ‘On the record’ responses from the political parties in the UK as part of our ONE Vote 2010 campaign.

Each party answered the questions put to them by ONE, based on our manifesto.

The leaders of Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats also recorded a personal video message, which together with their written answers gives the public a chance to compare and contrast each party’s plans ahead of next week’s leaders’ debate on foreign affairs:

ONE Vote 2010 is about raising the profile of international development in the election campaign and beyond. Getting our leaders ‘On the Record’ allows the electorate to hold them accountable for what they’ve promised, whoever wins the election.

Weldon Kennedy, Campaigns Manager here in the UK, was involved in the award winning ONE Vote ’08 campaign in the US and spoke at the launch:

“Candidates were talking about our issues, going ‘On the Record’, taking positions. This had never happened before. It helped make candidates realise this is an issue voters really care and made a real difference in helping put development at the forefront of the election debate”.

ONE Vote ‘08 had Obama, Clinton and McCain we have Brown, Cameron and Clegg – the political context may be different but we hope that ONE Vote 2010 will have a similar impact here in the UK. Regardless of who wins the election next month, we need to be sure that development is at the heart of the UK’s international policies, and that the next British government continues our proud tradition of global leadership in the fight against extreme poverty.

With just 4 weeks to go before polling day it’s a busy time here for the ONE team in the UK. If you want to get involved there’s a lot you can do:

• Forward or retweet the videos to your friend
• Vote for the issue you think is most important
• Contact your candidate or find out more the Global Poverty Project who we are partnering with

Please spread the word, your help can really make a difference.