Boris Johnson has not created a Centaur, with the hindquarters of a development agency and the head of a diplomatic service, but a puggle: an entirely new animal.  Merging two departments does not create a ‘hybrid’ department or a ‘super’-department; it simply creates a new department.

The FCDO should have the ambition to be a new, fully-formed entity, and requires an approach commensurate to this. It offers an opportunity to improve the effectiveness of the UK’s development work, both in the interest of countries and people in the developing world as well as for the UK.

Abolishing DFID is unlikely to have been a necessary (or even good) starting point for this aim, but it has happened. Pretending that DFID’s approach will simply now move under a new letterhead is misreading the tea leaves. Ian Mitchell has commented and offered concrete suggestions of what to retain and more. Here, our focus is on how to make it a success, better than what existed. And we think this is possible.

Report by the Centre For Global Development