‘Money, Money, Money, must be funny in a rich mans world’, so sang Madonna. One has to wonder if any of
Britain’s major political leaders are laughing today, the day it was disclosed that in total they are collectively nearly £60 million in debt. David Cameron’s Conservatives top the debtors list with £35.3 million in outstanding loans. However, it is Tony Blair’s Labour Party, with £23.4 million worth of debts, that is by far the more serious political and financial position. It issued a statement admitting to “acute financial problems” and that it had been a “difficult financial year”.
Politically it is still mired in the ‘cash for honours’ quagmire. Labour stands accused of breaking a 1925 law prohibiting the sale of peerages to the House of Lords for money. Several loaners, kept secret from the public at large, were later nominated for peerages by Tony Blair’s government. This ‘scandal’ would not be half as damaging as it appears to be if it wasn’t for Blair’s much vaunted attempts to clean up politics. It is supremely ironic that, as in other things, Blair’s chief prosecutors are exactly the expectations he created.
The reality of nominations for the House of Lords is that the peers nominated by the party leaders often include financial donors to the party. It rather emphasises that the problem is not with the undoubted cronyism of doing such a thing but the fact that the House of Lords as it is structured offers such an opportunity; those who claim it is an essential part of parliamentary democracy would be wise to take note. For its most part unelected and for its most part a creature of the same parties that are in the Commons, the House of Lords is an affront to democracy. Peers represent nobody but themselves or their party political masters; at least they avoid the tiresome business of actually submitting themselves to a popular vote.
It is absolutely true to say that the financial problems of the parties are partially due to them failing to engage the population into political activity; engaging them to vote is hard enough work. This has to be largely down to the consensual atmosphere of party politics which often seems to be more about style than substance. It is a widely held belief that the reverse is true; however, common sense and the recent practical example of the American mid-terms settle the argument. People turn out to vote when there is something worth voting on and question of style are largely not. Questions of fundamental importance are; and for there to be a proper debate there has to be two or more fundamentally opposed sides to vote on.
Political parties should not be rewarded, in the form of state-funding of parties, for this failure to connect. State funding is possibly one of the worst options presented by Sir Hayden Philips inquiry into possible reforms for party funding. In general, it should be a point of democratic principle that parties derive as much money as possible from the people they represent; they should not be provided with monies that will, in part, come from people whose views they are never likely to represent. Proportionality does not change that fact. State-funding further separates politics from the people and is democratically unacceptable.
Capping of individual donations is about the best way to ensure that parties are forced to re-connect and reengage with the people. Ultimately, however, it is that reengagement that is the answer in itself; its not something that can be forced. It involves the people themselves realising that democracy is what you make of it, you cannot expect it to lay dormant and unused and remain in good shape.
