Party Funding

There is simply no simple solution to the issue of party funding. Because we don’t have a true democracy, party politics has to take a prominent role in parliament. Whilst this is far from ideal, I have accepted that it is here to stay. Thus we must aim to limit the influence of party politics.

My biggest problem with party politics is the issue of funding. We are in a stupid situation where multi-millionaires aim to pump money into political parties in order to fund their election campaigns. This is a very clear attempt to use their money to sway voters to supporting the party they wish to win. It is the funding of deliberately coercive material to attempt to skew election results. This is anti-democratic, and morally repugnant.

Surely we cannot allow political parties to alter their policies according to a small number of wealthy donors, who hold far more power than the smaller-walleted members. Every political party must offer some incentive to get several million pounds from rich donors. Fortunately for the Labour Party, 9 years in government has allowed them time to sell peerages to every single one of their £1,000,000+ donors. Unfortunately for the Lib Dems, they have nothing to offer anyone, so do not attract many donations.

The problem is, there are few sensible alternatives.

The use of taxpayers’ money to fund political parties seems increasingly likely, much to the chagrin of practically everyone outside party politics. If we had public money funnelled into political parties, I suspect we would see a big rise in election-time advertising and the indiscriminate wasting of taxes on lengthy campaigns. With every party in on the act, we would snowball down a slippery slope to 5-year-long election campaigns, a healthy minority of funding coming from an increasingly apathetic electorate. This is very dangerous territory, and we should steer well clear of it.

It seems, then, that the only truly sensible option is to force party members to pay for their own party’s funding. Only party members should be allowed to donate to a political party. Members should have an annual cap on donations, set at a reasonably low rate (eg £50,000), to discourage mega-donors from influencing parties. If parties found it difficult to survive financially under this system, it is all for the better. They should be stripped back to their bare bones, encouraging less internal bureaucracy and more influence from their members.

The status quo is anti-democratic and downright wrong. It is clear that radical action is needed if we are to retain democracy in this country. Public funding would ruin our whole electoral process, and open the nation up to permanent party propaganda. To prevent this, parties must learn to fund themselves through their “loyal membership”. Otherwise, we have manipulation from major donors or legalised thieving from the electorate to manipulate the electorate. And, come what may, we simply cannot allow that to happen.