Brown's "Marshall Plan" posted by Richard Seymour

Lord, but The Guardian loves Gordon Brown . So much so, in fact, that they will even repeat old news stories on his behalf and plaster them on the front page with a large, adoring photograph. In particular:

Gordon Brown launched Britain's campaign for a Marshall plan for Africa yesterday when he called on the international community to harness the "passion of compassion" generated by the Asian tsunami disaster to make 2005 a breakthrough year for the world's poorest continent.
Unveiling the government's three-pronged plan for greater debt relief, more generous aid and better trade access, the chancellor said the global response to the tsunami disaster was an expression of the public's demand for action to tackle poverty.

What is this three pronged plan? Why, just this:

· Debts owed by the world's poorest countries, including Sri Lanka, to institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund should be written off

· A doubling of aid to $100bn (£55bn) a year

· Better trade terms to help poor countries to build up their export capacity while rich countries dismantle their protectionist barriers.

The first is an old policy , and its extension from Britain to the IMF and the World Bank would hardly be a result of Gordon Brown's Olympian efforts, while the second is two years old and not a specifically British policy. The third platform is again a policy aimed at other countries rather than Britain, and is almost three years old . In fact, all of these policies represent aspirations for what other countries and international agencies might do, with varying degrees of plausibility and laudibility. They don't even have the virtue of recycling old money as the Chancellor is wont to do, because he isn't proposing any specific funding from Britain. And, however you judge these policies, they are all rehashed from some years ago.

There is practically no news content in The Guardian's story whatsoever. All that is new is that Gordon Brown and the Prime Minister are taking advantage of the tsunami to make a great fuss about an old policy on aid which is both flawed (because of trade conditions attached to it) and unlikely to succeed even on its own terms (because it will rely on raising the money from financial markets. Unsurprisingly, the Chancellor and Prime Minister's remarks on the subject are quoted at great length and without the slightest criticism.

You may as well be aware that post-World War II Marshall Plan aid amounted to a total of $100 billion in today's money. None of it was ever intended to be paid back.