To a penniless student waiting to go off to theological college it was a dream offer. Except he wasn’t there to meet me. A curfew started in an hour and a number of intimidating looking technicals – civilian pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns – patrolled the airport grounds. That was the beginning of the first adventure. The first of many. Welcome to Yemen.

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My final destination was Taiz, a city over 150 miles to the south, up in the mountains. My friend made a living selling large cartons of Rothmans cigarettes to the locals, touring the middle part of the country in a Toyota land cruiser packed with fags. With our gnarled-looking local guide and protector, who lost an eye fighting the Israelis in the Yom Kippur war, we travelled into every out-of-the-way village, every part of a town or port, flogging our cancer sticks to absurdly grateful locals.

Some children had never seen westerners before and would run out to greet us. Rothmans, Toyotas and Kalashnikovs – these were gestures of acknowledgement to the twentieth century, everything else felt like the Middle Ages. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. The smells, the sounds, the flies, the Qat, the gun souks (markets), the in-your-face intensity of the temperature and humidity.

In the day I would wander over to the leper colony and play chess with men and women, who would grasp the pieces between their wrists because they had lost all their fingers. No doubt Edward Said would accuse me of the worst kind of sentimentalised Orientalism as I lay on the roof at night and listened to the call to prayer waft over the town. But aesthetically, I still find Islam the most beautiful of the world’s religious traditions. And I fell in love with Yemen and with Taiz.

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Today, however, Taiz has been flattened, obliterated. Photos of it look like the surface of the moon. Or like Dresden after the Second world war. And while I recognise a few of the local natural landmarks in the photographs, I recognise none of the town itself.

Since 2015, Taiz has been one of the major front lines in a complicated civil war that turned into a proxy war between regional rivals of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Tens of thousands of people have been killed. And it’s not just Taiz, the whole of Yemen has been on the edge of collapse, with food supplies so disrupted that an estimated 14 million people are close to starvation. It is a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. Death is everywhere.

Earlier this year, the UK government announced a £170 million aid package to Yemen, to address this growing humanitarian catastrophe. Sounds quite a lot of money, I suppose. But there is something more than a little ridiculous about the UK giving aid to Yemen, when so many of the bombs and weapons that have destroyed it have originated in our country. According to a new Christian Aid report, over the last five years, the UK has sold over two thirds of its major arms exports to Gulf states, 49% of these to Saudi Arabia.

The Yemeni gun souks I visited as a student, with their cheap knock-off Russian weaponry, reminds me that Yemenis have probably been fighting each other for as long as anyone can remember. But never has such a sophisticated level of technological weaponry been trained on the small towns and villages of this beautiful country. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia spends a whopping $69.4 billion a year on its military – that is $12,000 per household. This sucks in the ever-eager arms dealers from all over the world, including from Britain. And we sell more weapons to the Saudis than to anyone else.

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I know the murder of the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul shocked many; it gave the victims of Saudi murderousness a face and a name. But the British-made bombs that rain down on residential areas, and on markets and hospitals, in Yemen represents a moral crime that is so much greater in scale and more horrific in nature even than this.

And it’s all justified under the rubric of trade. At this year’s annual general meeting at BAE systems, the chairman, Sir Roger Carr told shareholders that he does not know if his company’s weapons are being used to commit war crimes in Yemen, adding weakly that the company has an “impeccable record on values”. The technical and philosophical term for this is sort of PR puff is ‘total and utter bollocks’.

Christian Aid’s important report calls out Britain’s “double standards” of supporting the arms industry in selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, and then patting itself on the back for giving aid to the Yemeni government to clear up the catastrophe that we have helped to create. This is genuinely absurd. We build the bombs, we massively profit from the deaths of Yemenis, and then we make out that we are the good guys by giving them back a few million quid in aid. The UK gives half it its aid to conflict areas. Fine – but what’s the point of that if we are the ones supplying the very guns that people are using to kill each other?

The world is now spending more on weapons that it ever has. In 2017, that figure was up to $1.7 trillion, which is $231 dollars a year for every man, woman and child on the planet. That is what we should be thinking about this Christmas. Instead of just singing blithely about the Prince of Peace and angels delivering a message of peace and goodwill to all, we ought to be doing something a bit more practical about it.

And man, at war with man, hears not

The love-song which they bring;

O hush the noise, ye men of strife,

And hear the angels sing.

This revelation highlighted the shamefully low priority given to people with autism and learning disabilities even in the supposed sanctuaries of specialist units run by mental health trusts. A subsequent national review found their health was being “adversely affected” by issues such as abuse, incompetence, neglect and sluggish treatment. It disclosed the depressing statistic that median life expectancy for people with learning disabilities is more than two decades less than all other British citizens.

So whom should we thank for exposure of this damning data and this long-overdue reform? Not the self-serving medical establishment, nor all those politicians shouting at each other over the despatch box at Westminster. More strangely, nor is it all those noisy big charities with senior executives on six-figure salaries, a ceaseless flow of press releases and carefully-natured brands. No, these breakthroughs are largely down to one grieving mother, whose beloved teenage son drowned in a bath following a series of mistakes.

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Sara Ryan was so distraught over the needless death of her son Connor, whom she nicknamed Laughing Boy for his zestful spirit, that she became a formidable campaigner. Desperate to stop other families suffering, and aided by a small group of activists and parents, the academic launched a social media campaign around the hashtag #JusticeforLB. It has had a remarkable impact. Yet ask her about those powerful charities and she tells me I have touched a sore nerve. “They are parasitic, partial and controlling in terms of the families they get behind,” she said. “They are shameful corporate entities more concerned with reputation than the impoverished lives – and deaths – of ordinary people.”

Harsh words. Sadly, however, they ring true. I know her view is shared by other traumatised parents since I have heard this again working on a recent series of articles exposing how people with autism and learning disabilities are locked up in barbaric conditions – forcibly sedated, violently restrained and fed through hatches in solitary confinement – simply due to their conditions. It is reminiscent of Bedlam. But once again, the campaign was led by families, not charities. So why is this?

I fear the answer is simple, if disturbing: many major charities have been captured by the state, becoming so reliant on government funding they have forgotten their purpose and forsaken their roots. Ryan told me a small charity called My Life My Choice fought alongside her from the start – but one household name just wanted her to sit holding a picture of her dead son behind them in a parliamentary meeting while another only jumped on the bandwagon once it took off.

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It is easy to fire out a few tweets when someone with Aspergers appears on I’m A Celebrity… Far harder to snarl and snap at the hand that feeds you so richly, since part of the problem is how organisations are compromised by their activities. So Mencap, despite posing as the key voice for people with learning disabilities and their families, ended up attacking the bereaved parents of Danny Tozer, a man who died in their ‘care’ amid evidence of failures. You might think this famous charity is a campaign group. Yet most of its funding – £163 million out of £191.9 million income last year – comes from running services as an offshoot of the state.

At least the National Autistic Society issued a report on unacceptable in-patient care for people on the autism spectrum last year and has highlighted how families are ripped apart by these revolting policies. But it has also recently shut a residential home it ran in Somerset amid a police probe into hideous abuse and bullying of people with complex needs. Note again that more than eight in every ten pounds of its income comes from statutory bodies. Meanwhile Scope, in a landmark move, has sold off its residential and daycare services to focus on campaigning – yet still insists its voice was not muted when receiving some half its income from the public sector.

I have seen the same situation in the development sector, where ideals have been corroded by the torrent of cash flooding from Whitehall’s coffers. Now household names collude with their paymasters to fend off criticism of profligate aid policies. The most outrageous example was the IF campaign, created six years ago by charities in harness with politicians who were purported targets of their pressure.

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Key players included Save The Children, which receives huge sums from the government and whose chief executive Justin Forsyth, a former Labour adviser, worked hard to woo influential Tories before admitting to inappropriate behaviour towards women employees.  One source at another charity told me it was made clear “either you do this or there might be repercussions”.  I am also told of routine meetings to plot joint fightbacks against media criticisms, not to mention all those questionable junkets for MPs.

The legacy of such self-serving and supine behaviour is the sickening sight of aid charities covering up sex abuse and corruption to protect their valuable brands. This symbolises how they have become powerful corporate entities posing as cheery do-gooders while they flit around the planet preaching their patronising creed and networking with politicians. Note also recent revelations in The Times exposing how scores more charities were signing agreements not to criticise government justice and welfare policies to ensure they could carry on sucking contentedly at the state funding teat. This is contemptible behaviour on both sides.

No wonder public faith in charities has plummeted following a series of scandals from Kids Company to Oxfam, two organisations proved to have moved far from their edgy beginnings as they cuddled up to politicians. Kids Company was found to have taken £46 million in public money after it imploded and the claims of its well-connected founder turned to dust. Trust in Britain’s 168,000 charities stands at its lowest level since checks began in 2005 due to issues such as aggressive fund-raising, high pay, abuse of vulnerable people and greedy growth obsession. Many also overlap each other’s work, especially in areas where state funds flow readily.

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An important report this month by the Civil Society Futures inquiry highlighted how charities are seen by a sceptical public as disconnected from their communities and the people they claim to represent. Some are simply brand-obsessed as they chase expansion, others too dependent on their local and central government contracts. “Collectively we must transform ourselves or risk becoming irrelevant,” it concluded rightly. “Some in civil society knew of abuse at Oxfam and elsewhere, and others knew that Kids Company would fail: there is a culture of silence and this undermines shared accountability.”

This was a damning but accurate report, calling for a return to radicalism by putting power back in the hands of the people. It is the latest alarm call for the big players who have become – with a small handful of honourable exceptions – corpulent and complacent corporations with their carefully-buffed brands, shallow campaigns and clutching of celebrities. The big question is whether they will heed the message before it is too late and start standing up for those they profess to serve? Or are they so in hock to the state that activists, families and communities must simply ignore them or even fight them if they seek real change?

His influence has been amazing. In 1985, just two years after taking tenure, he was advising a Bolivian government confronting hyper-inflation. Sachs devised a strong austerity package that hurt many citizens but reined in inflation. This ‘shock therapy’ became his trademark, exported first to Poland as it emerged from the Soviet communist straitjacket and then to Russia with dire consequences. The nation’s economy shrunk by half, state assets were pillaged and, ultimately, the ravaged nation turned to a nationalist strongman to restore stability. As we survey today’s turbulent world, it is arguable he bears some responsibility for Putin’s rise.

By time the impact of his ideas became apparent, Sachs had found a fresh cause after a trip to Zambia: the elimination of global poverty. This crusade might have seemed ambitious, but not for such a brilliant and self-confident fellow. He decided the problem was a poverty trap that left impoverished countries unable to tackle core problems – and the solution was giant dollops of foreign aid to solve issues such as disease, illiteracy, lack of jobs and antiquated agriculture that held back development. “We can banish extreme poverty in our generation”, he said in 2005.

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His simple, uplifting gospel coincided with the rise of a new generation of Western political leaders, especially in Washington and Westminster. They were influenced by Live Aid, desperate to show they cared about the world and susceptible to such arguments. Among those who befriended him was George Osborne, then a young Tory shadow chancellor, who travelled with him to Uganda, penned joint articles on aid and pushed the idea of ring-fencing the discredited UN aid target in law. The New York Times called Sachs “the most important economist in the world”. Bono gushed that “his voice is louder than any electric guitar, heavier than heavy metal.”

For many years, those that dared question such tactics were dismissed as callous xenophobes. The political class largely closed ranks, demonstrating the worst kind of groupthink and ignoring evidence of consistent failure. The aid industry became bloated as budgets soared, especially in Britain where they surged even as public services were slashed by austerity. Now we see the consequences: a scandal-plagued charity sector focused on protecting lucrative brands, fat-cat private firms creaming off huge sums and vast flow of funds into pockets of repellent regimes. The estimated poverty trap is now half the size of annual development aid spend.

Some voices have emerged in recent years to question this ‘big bang’ approach promoted by Sachs. They range from African leaders and activists through to Western academics, including a Nobel-winning British economist lauded for his expertise on global poverty. Yet still few politicians question the frittering away of vast taxpayer sums on aid, let alone the dubious morality of donor-dictated policies being inflicted on poor nations. Besides, they are terrified of a backlash from self-serving charity chiefs accusing them of selfishness. And this is why a new report ordered by the department for international development (Dfid) is so significant.

For at the heart of the Sachs mission lies the Millennium Village Project (MVP), a giant experiment designed to prove that drenching places in cash can solve entrenched problems and lift people from extreme poverty. This is, of course, just one more example of how a sense of arrogant entitlement allows the aid industry, in tandem with Western donors, to use sub-Saharan Africa as a testbed for its theories. Yet this scheme was set up by the sector’s guru, pledged to prove huge cash injections can transform deprived rural communities, was endorsed by leading aid advocates and backed with £230 million in ten African nations.

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This scheme encompasses half a million Africans. Yet far from proving aid works, it has done the precise opposite. And it has failed even on its own terms. Ever since it started in 2005 with villages in Kenya, there has been fierce debate over its bold claims, the inadequacy of comparison sites and independence of evaluations. One study published by Sachs and some colleagues in The Lancet was even found to be making misleading claims after other development experts highlighted a basic error in compiling child mortality comparisons.

So when Dfid decided to back the idea, they agreed in a phone call with Sachs to do so only on the basis that they would carry out a proper, independent evaluation of the project. Although they should not have spent £11 million in northern Ghana on an idea already taking severe flak, this demand for proper review – unlike other donors – was greatly to their credit. Now we have the results, which are scathing – and to my mind, largely demolish the case for development aid.

They concluded the scheme “did not achieve its stated goals of achieving the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals]” on time and “far from breaking the poverty trap, the project does not appear to have reduced poverty or hunger at all”, while it had “fallen short of producing a synergistic effect.” The authors admitted they were surprised “the project did not improve some of the outcomes explicitly targeted by the intervention such as child mortality, immunisation rates, antenatal care, access to drinking water and usage of mobile phones.”

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Their report found scarce difference on many indicators between the 35 villages soaked in British cash – to the tune of £2,906 per household – and others in a struggling savannah region where farmers say they earn £160 in a decent year. It found “a few attributable effects”, such as better attendance at new health clinics and schools, higher incomes (“probably temporarily” and strangely without rising consumption) and decline in child stunting – but even these were not cost effective since “what has been achieved could have been attained at substantially lower cost.” Meanwhile 31% of funds went on management and overhead costs.

The results have disturbed even aid supporters, alarmed by resources being diverted to such causes. One, for instance, questioned the ethics of spending so much public money on these kind of flashy, celebrity-endorsed projects when smaller sums going on simpler ideas such as insecticide-treated anti-malarial bed nets would be cheaper and more effective. These could also be run by local groups, rather than dictated by outsiders.

Sachs disputes some conclusions, telling me in emails that five years was “too short a time horizon” for achievement of all targets, dismissing concerns over cost effectiveness and clutching at straws offered in Dfid’s report. “It says that income went up and multidimensional poverty went down. It says that the income was saved, not consumed.” He pointed me to an “independent analysis” offering more favourable conclusions that he co-authored with his wife and others in The Lancet.

Yet the MVP was promoted to donors as “an integrated development initiative providing immediate evidence that, by empowering communities with basic necessities and adequate resources, people in the poorest regions of rural Africa can lift themselves out of extreme poverty in five year’s time.” And in response to a report I wrote from the region in 2012, Sachs responded on the MVP website that “the real test” would come by 2015 when it could be seen if this scheme achieved the Millennium Development Goals set by the UN. Yet this report found “statistically significant impact” on only seven of the 28 targets.

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This project shows herd mentality can be a powerful force. It is not the first attempt to impose ‘big push’ aid ideas on small areas; there was even a series of ‘integrated rural development’ schemes tried four decades ago across Africa, including Ghana, with little lasting effect. But politicians love to look compassionate, and it is safer to follow the crowd even if heading in the wrong direction than challenge conventional wisdoms. So the political, charity, corporate and media elites readily closed ranks around flawed policies. And the result is further corrosion of faith in politics as huge sums are squandered on vanity projects abroad, especially when domestic public services are struggling or even being cut and the money achieves so little.

This is far from the first blow for Sachs, now based at Columbia University. The journalist Nina Munk wrote a devastating book called The Idealist after trailing him around and spending time in two Millennium Villages. As Bill Gates wrote, “It’s a valuable– and, at times, heartbreaking – cautionary tale.” The billionaire decided against investing in MVP after hearing the sales pitch, concluding there were valid questions over the speed of proposed gains, progress measurement and impact of funding withdrawal. Both Munk and Michael Clemens, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, said last week they have been threatened with lawsuits by the project’s lawyers after voicing criticisms.

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The ego has crash landed, yet as Sachs offers his own nation a new foreign policy blueprint in his latest book, it is telling that until now there has been so little accountability for the vainglorious MVPs despite being lavished with public money.

Earlier in the month I revisited the Ghana villages and found people grateful for new clinics, schools and street lights. Yet far from seeing sustained development, already there were clear signs of declining services and decaying infrastructure now the cash taps have been turned off. And not one person with whom I spoke said there were was the slightest sign of rising prosperity.

Finally, after 13 years, we have an independent verdict on this landmark project – and it is a crushing indictment of failure. Sadly, I fear this report will be ignored as the sector simply switches to fresh experiments on poor people, dressed up in the usual talk of innovation. And when do you ever ever hear politicians admit they were wrong, especially when they are spectacularly wrong and billions have been blown? Yet these impoverished Ghana villages serve as a damning indictment of simplistic development ideas that swept the west, demonstrating the corrosive impact of groupthink and the insidious influence of an ambitious academic.