Reports that Elon Musk is considering a $100m (£78m) donation to Reform UK has sparked renewed debate about capping donations and the role of donors in British politics. But tempting as it might be, ministers should think very carefully before ordering a crackdown.
The first and most obvious problem is that whatever the high-minded and long-standing arguments in some quarters for capping donations, doing so now, and explicitly in response to this story, looks like the established parties rigging the game against Nigel Farage – exactly the narrative he thrives off.
But there is also the more fundamental question: if millionaires are no longer allowed to pay for our politics, who do we expect to do it instead?
The UK does not have state funding for political parties per se. Those that get elected to Parliament receive Short Money (if not in government), but this is restricted to supporting parliamentary activities and cannot be spent on campaigning. (An exception is, disgracefully, made for Sinn Féin: because it doesn’t have parliamentary activity, by dint of not taking its seats, it and it alone receives “Representative Money”, which can be spent more liberally.)
As a result, all parties depend on donations to fund their political campaigning, and the only way to get enough funding on a remotely sustainable basis is to rely on big donors – either individuals in the Conservatives’ case or the unions (and individuals) in Labour’s.
In an ideal world, we might be able to sustain national parties on small donations from enthused and engaged citizens. In reality, a simple ban on big donations would cause British politics to collapse.
That’s why when the Committee on Standards in Public Life proposed in 2011 to cap donations at £10,000, it also recommended introducing state funding.
It is difficult to imagine that going well. What government is going to ask voters, struggling with a sky-high cost of living and record taxation, to stump up for politicians? Even if they did, the outrage whenever the independent body suggests increases to MPs’ expenses suggests funding would struggle to keep pace with inflation.
“Get money out of politics” is an easy sentiment, but the fact is politics needs money, and our democracy would suffer for its absence. It is what allows parties to compete for our attention and our vote, to pay for leaflets and posters and digital advertising, focus groups and polling, and staff.
Much of this democratic infrastructure has already withered. The Conservative Party used to employ hundreds of full-time agents and even operate Swinton College, an education and training centre. Today, what is left of the central machine runs on a feast and famine cycle, the machinery of democratic campaigning blooming around elections like flowers after a desert rain.
What about volunteers? Well, both major parties already rely on volunteers. But the same disengaged culture that makes small donations an unrealistic model for politics hurts volunteering too. Local associations – the front-line infantry who do the door-to-door leafleting and intelligence-gathering – are shrinking.
This is only getting worse with Labour’s plans to overhaul local government through “unitarisation”, i.e. replacing multiple layers of local government (town councils, district/borough councils, and country councils) with a single body.
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Read MoreIt makes a lot of sense on an administrative level, and reformers have been pushing for such a change for decades. But successive governments have resisted because in many areas, councillors (and their friends and families) are the only dependable activists they have left.
My hometown of Berkhamsted currently has 15 town councillors, six borough councillors, and a county councillor. If Hertfordshire is unitarised, as proposed by a white paper earlier this month, all but one of those positions will cease to exist in any form. I fear that would do huge damage to the basic machinery of local politics.
The Government could offset this with state funding – perhaps mandating unitary authorities to fund political operations. But this would come at the expense of local services, and structurally disadvantage challenger parties who don’t have representation on the council.
Britain already takes a parsimonious approach to politics, with strict limits on what can be spent during election periods (when voters are paying attention). We arguably pay a price for it, too: American elections may be absurdly expensive, but they also feature lots of small donations and genuine public rallies. Spending on engagement increases engagement.
The US also offers a plausible idea of how Musk’s donation would play out. The Harris campaign had a billion dollars – and spent it so badly one megadonor claimed it may have been “legally” stolen.
Henry Hill is the deputy editor of ConservativeHome, a blog that is independent of the Conservative Party
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