Enough is enough.
The British public is furious – and they have every right to be. Because what we’re seeing, again and again, is a political system where consequences depend not on what you’ve done, but on who you are.
That sense has only sharpened this week, as the now sacked Sir Olly Robbins – until recently one of the most powerful civil servants in Whitehall – spoke to MPs of the pressure No 10 put him under to confirm Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to Washington, despite vetting concerns.
You’d be forgiven if, like me, you’ve got a bit lost amidst the confusing, complicated and contradictory tales of who said what when in the Mandelson scandal. But zoom out and you can’t miss how Mandygate perfectly illustrates the threats to our democracy.
In Westminster, scandal rarely behaves like scandal should. It does not always end careers. Sometimes it delays them. Sometimes it even accelerates them.
Meanwhile, the rest of the country lives by a very different set of rules. Families are choosing between heating and eating. NHS waiting lists stretch on for months, even years. And yet, at the top of politics, influence still too often flows to those who can afford it.
The system is not working as it should. It’s a system that has stopped feeling shame.
Take the House of Lords, which Labour promised to reform but to which it has so far done almost nothing. Roughly a quarter of its members made significant political donations before taking their seats. Even those within Westminster struggle to defend how that looks. An unelected chamber is one thing; one that rewards financial patronage is quite another – and it is hard to argue that this doesn’t matter in a democracy already struggling for trust.
Then there is political funding and the role of big money more broadly. In 2025 one man who is based in Thailand gave £12m to Reform UK, one fifth of all donations to political parties that year. When a single wealthy individual can so dominate the funding of our politics, it raises a basic question: how equal are our voices, really? At the very least, it creates a system that risks access and influence tracking wealth, not public consent.
None of this is about assuming bad faith from every individual involved. The deeper issue is structural: a set of rules that allows the appearance – and too often the reality – of unfair advantage to persist unchecked. And where that perception takes hold, trust erodes quickly.
That is not sustainable. A democracy cannot function properly if large parts of the public believe the rules do not apply evenly. We need to clean up Westminster to channel that growing public anger into concrete reform rather than resignation.
If political influence is being distorted by large donations, then we must put a cap on what any individual can give. No more mega-donors. No more shadow cash. If you want to support a party, fine — but there has to be a limit.
And if the second chamber continues to look like a place where patronage and proximity to power matter more than democratic legitimacy, then we must replace the House of Lords. Britain’s most exclusive VIP lounge has had its day. We should replace it with a smaller, more democratic second chamber where seats are earned, not purchased. No more peerages for donors. No more Lords lobbying Parliament for personal profit.
None of this is extreme. In fact, much of it reflects what the public already assumes is in place.
Britain does not lack capable people willing to serve in public life. What it lacks, at times, is a system that convincingly separates public service from private advantage – and demonstrates that power is held on behalf of the public, not above it.
Until that changes, the gap between Westminster and the country it represents will continue to widen. This is our democracy. It’s time to take it back.
Olly Buston is the Director of Clean Up Westminster
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