More Labour Sleaze

In the last few days Lord Levy, the Prime Minister's principal fundraiser, had had further conversations with police about the "Cash for peerages" row and another wealthy Labour donor, Christopher Evans, has been arrested. By all accounts he is furious with the Labour party for landing him in this position.

There are also questions about the funding of other political parties, though those affecting the Labour party are far and away the most serious.

This is going to cause a collapse in funding for political parties which will be a real problem, not just for Labour, but for Britain. Wealthy people who might once have given money to the political party they support for honest motives are just not going to want to risk being accused of corruption.

I don't think it adds anything to the effectiveness of democracy to spend the vast sums of money which is associated with political campaigning in America. However, it does cost a few million a year to operate and maintain a reasonably competent national party capable of offering a serious choice to the electorate as a body capable of forming a government.

That money has to come either from lots of membership subscriptions from a large number of people - say half a million members paying £10 a year each, or from a few very rich people or organisations making large donations, or from the taxpayer.

The ideal would be the former, but I don't see it happening while politics has the poor reputation it has at the moment. A deal between the parties to help themselves to taxpayer's money without reference to those who are providing that money would be even worse.

As I argued a few weeks ago, the least worst option would give voters the option to provide a modest sum of taxpayer's money to the party for which they have just cast their vote if they tick a box on the ballot paper. That way the parties would get some money from those taxpayers who think they deserve it, while those who think that even the party they have voted for doesn't deserve a penny could ensure that they don't have to pay it simply by not ticking the box.

In my view the sort of sum provided should be about £5 a year per voter who does tick the box, split 75% to the national party and 25% to the constituency party. All voters pay much more tax than that, so effectivly those who ticked the box would be earmarking a small part of their own taxes to support the party of their choice and nobody else would be paying tax to support a party they disagree with.

Whether you agree with me or not, if you have views on this please make them known to the review chaired by Sir Hayden Phillips. Their official website is here

(The URL is http://www.partyfundingreview.gov.uk/)

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