A major shitstorm erupted over the weekend after a sting by the Sunday Times, in which one of their journalists posed as a potential donor to Tory party funds. The then Tory party treasurer Peter Cruddas, who has since resigned, was filmed explaining that a donation of £250K would buy access to the Prime Minister and influence on government policy.
Shock horror! People who donate huge sums of money to political parties end up having influence on the party! Who knew?
David Cameron's initial reaction to this was to go with his gut instinct as a politician, and do what any seasoned politician would do in these circumstances: he lied through his teeth. He said that this was unacceptable and not all all how they do things. Oh no.
That's bollocks, of course. It's not exactly a secret that donating large sums of money to the Tory party gets you access to the Prime Minister. In fact, the Tory party website itself advertises dinners with David Cameron as one of the perks of making large donations.
But really, how much of a surprise is any of this? Surely no-one is naïve enough to think that people would donate a quarter of a million quid to the Tory party just for fun? Why would you donate that sort of money if you didn't expect anything in return?
Well, the Labour party were quick to get on their high horse and say how shocking it is. As if they'd ever let their funders influence them. Oh wait, didn't Ed Miliband only get elected as party leader because he was the choice of Labour's funders, the trade unions? The Labour party MPs or members didn't want him.
But hold on, I hear you cry, that's completely different. At least trade union funding of the Labour party is based on deep historical reasons and is completely transparent. Well, maybe. But do we really think that individual wealthy donors don't also get to influence Labour party policy? Remember Bernie Ecclestone? He was the boss of Formula One racing, and donated vast sums of money to the Labour party. When the Labour government introduced a ban on tobacco sponsorship of sporting events, amazingly, Formula One was exempt from the ban. Coincidence? I don't think so.
So for the Labour party to look shocked at this and pretend it's a party political issue is the height of hypocrisy.
And let's not pretend the LibDems are exempt from this. The Tories let them share the chocolate Hobnobs at cabinet meetings, which in percentage terms represents a gigantic contribution to LibDem funds. And in return, the Tories get to dictate LibDem policy on tuition fees, the NHS, and a whole host of other things.
It's not as if the latest revelations are a one-off for the Tories. Doesn't it seem a little fishy that Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, received significant donations from a private healthcare company shortly before introducing a bill that seeks to dramatically increase the role of private providers in the NHS? The fact is that of course donating large amounts of money to party funds buys you influence. Why would anyone do it if it didn't?
The response of the mainstream media doesn't really seem to have recognised this reality. It's gone for the knee-jerk reaction of “Ooh, here's a scandal! Shock horror! How terrible!”, and I haven't seen much attempt to look at the wider issues. Yes, many in the media have started talking about the wider issue of political party funding. Banning donations above a certain amount is back on the agenda, and rightly so. But I think there's a deeper problem that even a thorough clean-up of how parties are funded wouldn't solve.
The problem is that an elite group at the top of political parties, whether or not they are influenced by outside donations, has too much power. This isn't democratic. In theory, we vote for an MP, and the MP who best represents a constituency gets to vote on the issues of the day in parliament in accordance with the wishes of their constituency members. But it doesn't work like that in practice, because of the whipping system. Most MPs vote the way their party whips tell them to. On the whole, it's not good for an MP's career to defy the whips. So we don't really get the policies of the person we voted for, we get the policies that are imposed on them by their party elite. I'm pretty sure most of the Labour MPs who were elected in 2001 weren't belligerent warmongers, but nonetheless they mostly voted to invade Iraq in 2003 because Tony Blair told them to.
Many LibDem MPs promised before the 2010 election to vote against increasing student tuition fees, but many of them broke that promise because Nick Clegg (having presumably been bribed with some chocolate Hobnobs) told them to. This isn't democratic. The LibDems have traditionally prided themselves on being more democratic than the other parties in the way they make policy, but they can't pretend that that's true any more. Their recent conference voted against supporting the controversial Health and Social Care Bill, but the LibDem leadership told LibDem MPs to support the bill, and most of them did. This is not democratic, and LibDem voters have every right to feel thoroughly betrayed.
So what we have is a system in which an elite few get to make policy, and the votes of the electorate have only a limited effect. Obviously it's completely wrong that wealthy individuals should be able to buy influence over that policy, so if recent events push reform of party funding up the political agenda, then that will be a good thing. Personally, I would like to see a ban on large donations to political parties just to be sure that people cannot buy influence. And I'd define “large” fairly meanly. £500 sounds about right to me.
Of course, this will leave the political parties short of money, and some will argue that they should receive taxpayer funding to make put the shortfall. That would be a travesty. Using our money to prop up the political elite would be completely indefensible. It makes the assumption that political parties serve a public good. They don't. They serve only their own purposes. Political parties have no automatic right to exist. If they do not have a wide enough appeal that they can get the funding they need from modest subscription fees from their own members, then frankly, that's their problem. It simply reinforces the point that they do not appeal to the general public, and only strengthens the argument against taxpayer funding.
I hope that recent events will result in progress being made on cleaning up our political system. But please let's not fall into the trap of thinking that how parties are funded is the only problem.
Cash for Cameron
Cash for Cameron
A major shitstorm erupted over the weekend after a sting by the Sunday Times, in which one of their journalists posed as a potential donor to Tory party funds. The then Tory party treasurer Peter Cruddas, who has since resigned, was filmed explaining that a donation of £250K would buy access to the Prime Minister and influence on government policy.
Shock horror! People who donate huge sums of money to political parties end up having influence on the party! Who knew?
David Cameron's initial reaction to this was to go with his gut instinct as a politician, and do what any seasoned politician would do in these circumstances: he lied through his teeth. He said that this was unacceptable and not all all how they do things. Oh no.
That's bollocks, of course. It's not exactly a secret that donating large sums of money to the Tory party gets you access to the Prime Minister. In fact, the Tory party website itself advertises dinners with David Cameron as one of the perks of making large donations.
But really, how much of a surprise is any of this? Surely no-one is naïve enough to think that people would donate a quarter of a million quid to the Tory party just for fun? Why would you donate that sort of money if you didn't expect anything in return?
Well, the Labour party were quick to get on their high horse and say how shocking it is. As if they'd ever let their funders influence them. Oh wait, didn't Ed Miliband only get elected as party leader because he was the choice of Labour's funders, the trade unions? The Labour party MPs or members didn't want him.
But hold on, I hear you cry, that's completely different. At least trade union funding of the Labour party is based on deep historical reasons and is completely transparent. Well, maybe. But do we really think that individual wealthy donors don't also get to influence Labour party policy? Remember Bernie Ecclestone? He was the boss of Formula One racing, and donated vast sums of money to the Labour party. When the Labour government introduced a ban on tobacco sponsorship of sporting events, amazingly, Formula One was exempt from the ban. Coincidence? I don't think so.
So for the Labour party to look shocked at this and pretend it's a party political issue is the height of hypocrisy.
And let's not pretend the LibDems are exempt from this. The Tories let them share the chocolate Hobnobs at cabinet meetings, which in percentage terms represents a gigantic contribution to LibDem funds. And in return, the Tories get to dictate LibDem policy on tuition fees, the NHS, and a whole host of other things.
It's not as if the latest revelations are a one-off for the Tories. Doesn't it seem a little fishy that Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, received significant donations from a private healthcare company shortly before introducing a bill that seeks to dramatically increase the role of private providers in the NHS? The fact is that of course donating large amounts of money to party funds buys you influence. Why would anyone do it if it didn't?
The response of the mainstream media doesn't really seem to have recognised this reality. It's gone for the knee-jerk reaction of “Ooh, here's a scandal! Shock horror! How terrible!”, and I haven't seen much attempt to look at the wider issues. Yes, many in the media have started talking about the wider issue of political party funding. Banning donations above a certain amount is back on the agenda, and rightly so. But I think there's a deeper problem that even a thorough clean-up of how parties are funded wouldn't solve.
The problem is that an elite group at the top of political parties, whether or not they are influenced by outside donations, has too much power. This isn't democratic. In theory, we vote for an MP, and the MP who best represents a constituency gets to vote on the issues of the day in parliament in accordance with the wishes of their constituency members. But it doesn't work like that in practice, because of the whipping system. Most MPs vote the way their party whips tell them to. On the whole, it's not good for an MP's career to defy the whips. So we don't really get the policies of the person we voted for, we get the policies that are imposed on them by their party elite. I'm pretty sure most of the Labour MPs who were elected in 2001 weren't belligerent warmongers, but nonetheless they mostly voted to invade Iraq in 2003 because Tony Blair told them to.
Many LibDem MPs promised before the 2010 election to vote against increasing student tuition fees, but many of them broke that promise because Nick Clegg (having presumably been bribed with some chocolate Hobnobs) told them to. This isn't democratic. The LibDems have traditionally prided themselves on being more democratic than the other parties in the way they make policy, but they can't pretend that that's true any more. Their recent conference voted against supporting the controversial Health and Social Care Bill, but the LibDem leadership told LibDem MPs to support the bill, and most of them did. This is not democratic, and LibDem voters have every right to feel thoroughly betrayed.
So what we have is a system in which an elite few get to make policy, and the votes of the electorate have only a limited effect. Obviously it's completely wrong that wealthy individuals should be able to buy influence over that policy, so if recent events push reform of party funding up the political agenda, then that will be a good thing. Personally, I would like to see a ban on large donations to political parties just to be sure that people cannot buy influence. And I'd define “large” fairly meanly. £500 sounds about right to me.
Of course, this will leave the political parties short of money, and some will argue that they should receive taxpayer funding to make put the shortfall. That would be a travesty. Using our money to prop up the political elite would be completely indefensible. It makes the assumption that political parties serve a public good. They don't. They serve only their own purposes. Political parties have no automatic right to exist. If they do not have a wide enough appeal that they can get the funding they need from modest subscription fees from their own members, then frankly, that's their problem. It simply reinforces the point that they do not appeal to the general public, and only strengthens the argument against taxpayer funding.
I hope that recent events will result in progress being made on cleaning up our political system. But please let's not fall into the trap of thinking that how parties are funded is the only problem.