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Shameful cut in UK aid to Yemen is indefensible

<span>Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA</span>
Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA

When Andrew Mitchell says that “cutting aid to Yemen by 50% is unconscionable” (Somalia health clinics will close due to UK aid cuts, charity warns, 2 March), and adds that “this is not who we are”, John Crace disagrees, and is right up to a point (The Politics Sketch, 2 March).

It is what this nation has become, largely because of what can only be described as brainwashing. Being told constantly by the media that the national debt needs repaying urgently and foreign aid has to be cut leads to a gradual acceptance of such falsehoods – as Boris Johnson well knows when claiming to have popular support, and mocking Keir Starmer for devoting all six of his questions at this week’s prime minister’s questions to the subject of a poor country’s imminent famine.

Similar backing from the media in 2010 meant that George Osborne’s unnecessary austerity – based on the ridiculous notion that the country was near bankruptcy, and leading to untold misery for thousands while the rich were given tax decreases – went through with little opposition.

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Related: War and famine could wipe out the next generation of Yemenis

Having too many low-paid public servants and key workers, a “forgotten third” of our children underachieving in underfunded state schools, top universities dominated by students from private schools, and the number of those relying on food banks increasing daily – all of these things are, it seems, also what “we are”.

Perhaps if the media repeatedly insisted that we are the world’s sixth richest economy, with enough untaxed wealth to pay everyone a living wage and provide everyone with a decent home, who “we are” would change dramatically.
Bernie Evans
Liverpool

• The appalling decision to reduce grant aid to Yemen by nearly 50%, when the UN is pleading for an increase to stave off a humanitarian disaster, demonstrates the immorality and hypocrisy of Boris Johnston’s government.

They want to play a leading role on the global stage, yet fail to meet the first real challenge. Your harrowing story (War and famine could wipe out the next generation of Yemenis, 1 March) graphically demonstrates that the direct consequence of this callous action will be the death of many thousands of children.

This should not be a party political issue. Andrew Mitchell and David Cameron have spoken out, and members of all parties in parliament should join them, and seek to reverse this “stain of shame” on our nation
Michael Gwilliam
Norton-on-Derwent, North Yorkshire

Related: The Guardian view on Saudi Arabia: on Khashoggi and Yemen, the west too must answer

• As famine looms and more than 16 million Yemenis face hunger this year, we were devastated to learn that the UK is more than halving its aid budget to Yemen.

At the start of this year, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, declared that the UK wants to be a “problem-solving, conflict-resolving and conflict-management country”.

If “global Britain” is to live up to its name and its bold ambition, the UK government should urgently reconsider these cuts, lead by example, and not leave millions of Yemeni people behind.
Selena Victor
Senior director of policy and advocacy, Mercy Corps

• Why are we surprised at the British government cutting aid to starving children in Yemen? It would have been happy to let British children go hungry, had it not been for a campaign by a young footballer.
Michael Peel
London