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UK leader unveils ‘moral’ alliance

Gordon Brown, British prime minister, on Tuesday unveiled a “moral” alliance of leaders of governments and multinationals to tackle global poverty, telling the United Nations that globalisation could be a force for justice.

Many of the corporations in effect endorsed by the new leader through inclusion in his initiative have come under fire from pressure groups and Labour activists back home in the UK.

The heads of more than 20 companies on Tuesday signed up to a statement calling for “urgent action” to help the developing world. They included Riley Bechtel of Bechtel Corporation, which has come under intense media scrutiny over its lucrative reconstruction contracts in Iraq, and Lee Scott of Walmart Stores, which has aroused anger among Labour grassroots for its non-unionised workforce.

Other signatories to the US-dominated list included Bill Gates of Microsoft, Eric Schmidt of Google, Jeff Immelt of GE, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo and Arun Sarin of Vodafone.

“I want to summon into existence the greatest coalition of conscience in pursuit of the greatest of causes,” the prime minister, whose father was a Scottish church minister, told the UN. “When conscience is joined to conscience, moral force to moral force – think how much our power to do good can achieve.”

But some campaigners questioned what the new partnership would actually achieve. “One should welcome any turning of companies towards the path of pursuing some higher moral purpose but not a great deal seems to have resulted from all the other initiatives of this nature – and there are a lot,” Jeremy Carver, a board member of the anti-corruption campaigning group Transparency International UK, told the FT.

Full story at the Financial Times.