How to campaign about the recent UK aid cuts

This seems superficially like a great idea, but I think it works better for, say, the centre for effective aid policy (if it still existed).

• It's easier to decide which things to prioritise if you've gone through the things that UK aid actually does and worked out which are better and which are less good.
• Your ask will be more effective if you have a good handle on which deprioritisation are a no-go politically (eg are you suggesting deprioritising work in Gaza or Ukraine? Would the politics of that work? Does any of your suggestions bump up against anything the politicians have said publicly?)
• You're more likely to be effective if you can access the right channels. Simply emailing your MP is a very indirect way of getting through to the right people. 

All of the issues look surmountable to me if you're deciding time to this. I don't think I can do a decent job of this in my spare time. Especially since the window is very tight - these decisions will be made quickly, I suspect.

But if you think you can, please do so and share your thinking with the rest of us :-)

Maybe this is weird but I prefer sending more customised emails from the point of view of authenticity or self-expression or something. Like it feels weird to send people things that are not my words. But then again, this squeamishness is in fact a big barrier to political action, as I don't usually have time and energy to form nuanced, informed takes on issues, so I just don't write even when I have a strong opinion about the issue.

Sorry I didn't see this sooner. Yes, I do believe that an email will be more likely to be effective if it looks like it's not copied and pasted. My basis for this is that when I supported a group of people to campaign on ODA about 4 years ago, I asked several people, including veteran campaigners and people who have worked for an MP replying to emails for them. Those people explained that if the email looks like a copy-and-paste/boilerplate email, they will assume that it was driven by a campaign group, which carries less weight than if you do it yourself.

I'd also bear in mind that this email is unlikely to be a particularly impactful action. (but also not a zero-impact action either). So I'd be sympathetic to people putting in less effort on this email (and saving their efforts for other effective ways of making the world a better place :-)) 

I've written to my MP, James Asser, with something very similar to Sanjay's linked template.

Good question, I'm sorry nobody has replied yet. I don't feel like I'm much of an expert on this, so others may be better positioned than me.

My sense is that yes, this may well be impactful, especially if it is clearly communicated. This is a meaningful move, and one that the party will feel -- all parties need financing.

To maximise effectiveness, you likely need to inform the right people. By all means, do tell your MP (assuming your MP is a Labour MP). Saying that you're willing to leave the Labour party makes you less likely to vote for them in future, and they will care about this. In fact, if it's true that it would make you less likely to vote for them in future, do tell them this explicitly, as that's probably what your MP cares about.

Cancelling your Labour membership matters to the people responsible for the finances of the party. I believe those people are probably the Treasurer and General Secretary of the party. I don't know how you would reach out to them, but if there were some way of communicating this to the right people, you could increase your impact. 

Good point here:

Another lever to consider, rather than ‘punish government for cutting aid’, is ‘telling the government that effectiveness matters to me when they decide what to cut’. Don’t know how to compare those.

If I'd given more thought to the draft letter, I might have said more on this.

I'm conscious that Jenny Chapman (who is taking over from Anneliese Dodds as Development minister) doesn't seem to have much background in development. 

If someone wrote an email which conveyed acceptance of the reality (cuts are going to happen, whether I like it or not), and which suggested that effectiveness matters, this might be viewed as a much more constructive email, which might land better and be more influential.

I've upvoted this comment and disagree-voted it. I was initially prone to be dubious of the suggestion. I think lots of us are motivated by important outcomes like children not dying, and linking aid to national self-interest seemed problematic, because children not dying (or other good outcomes) are not the same as national self-interest. Optimising for one is likely to lead to different aid interventions than optimising for the other. 

However I've warmed somewhat to the suggestion.

• Nick rightly pointed out that politics risks toggling the supply up and down. (or rather down!) A clearer link to self-interest does indeed help.
• For those of a GiveWellian mindset, part of the reason for believing that some interventions are more effective than others is a "sceptical prior" - ie a default assumption that interventions don't work in the absence of evidence to the contrary. Aid which has a hard-nosed link to self-interest (eg better enabling markets for donor country exports) might be more likely to have the evidence needed.

On balance, I still think I disagree with the suggestion, mostly because a hardnosed link to self-interest probably won't be compelling for those who are politically opposed to aid. But I appreciate the prompt to give this some thought.

Thanks for the question. Happy to set out how I think about this, but note that I haven't researched this deeply, and for several parts of this argument, I could imagine myself changing my mind with a bit more research.

• Firstly, we’re not considering the aid spend in isolation. Rather, the impact of our actions may be to redirect spend from one usage to another, so we're comparing to some counterfactual spend, which is typically likely to be some sort of spend which leads to (probably) some sort of economic activity in a developed economy.
• Secondly, I think it’s useful to consider three levels of impact

Part of the reason why I consider the meat-eater problem to be only a "moderate negative" (as per "second order" row) is because I'm inclined to believe it's not always bad for animals. If the aid targets the poorest of the poor (which doesn't always happen) these are likely to be rural poor, who live in areas where land is cheap, and animals have lots of space to peck around, graze, and seem, from what I've seen, to have a nice time (source: hanging around in poor parts of sub-Saharan Africa, not that I'm an expert at judging animal welfare just from looking at an animal, so my judgement may be off). These animal lives appear (to me) to be net positive. On the other hand, I do expect the effect of aid will be to accelerate the rate at which people become middle class. This is more likely to lead to consumption of factory farmed animals, which is a negative.

The third order effects are much more speculative. To what extent does greater economic development spur moral circle expansion? There's lots to say on this, and I don't want to lengthen this comment further. 

To my mind, the second order effects are very speculative, and the third order effects even more so. But they are potentially more important in the long term.

Putting together all the second order and third order considerations, I don't think it's clear which outcome leads to be better outcomes for animals, so I'm inclined to treat the effects on animals as a neutral factor.

If I spent more time looking into this, I may still change my mind.