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Friday, March 17, 2006

Labour Party funding

The party funding row has done us immense damage and will also make people even more cynical about politics. So we have to resolve this - and fast.

As people don't like us taking large sums from Trade Unions or from business it is hard to find an alternative to state funding but people don't like that either. To add to the problem state funding hasn't stopped some abuse in those countries that use it.

The main expenditure goes into advertising and media presentations. We have already put a cap on party expenditure in one of our earlier Acts but we may need to focus on the high cost of election advertising. If we stop doing it then people are less aware of the election. The media don't like it if we don't have media presentations and I think they are necessary to allow covergae on policy issues.

A limited extension of state funding with tougher limits on advertising and spending generally might help.

We should have stayed within the spirit of the Acts we passed  and not just the letter of the law.

Finally reform of the Lords has to continue and is now firmly back on the agenda but I hope the Commons and Lords lead on this. They haven't done so far and in my view it is undesirable to have governments reforming Parliaments. Parliaments should take the lead on reform.

The following question came up on thursday before the full extent of the loans was known.

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld199697/ldhansrd/pdvn/lds06/text/60316-02.htm#60316-02_star0

It's like the dying days of the Major administration (not that it had much life in the first place). Back then, it was brown envelopes for questions. Now its loans that are kept secret from the party treasurer (or he was just crap at his job and should be fired), with lenders and donors mysteriously given peerages by one of the few people who knows the party's accounts.

This LABOUR party seems to think it can do very well without a membership. It's dispensed with the unnecessary structures of party democracy and replaced them with an oligarchy of plutocrats. Well, Baron Soley of Hammersmith, it doesn't seem to be a LABOUR party any more - the party set up by workers for workers representation in parliament. If the membership means nothing to the leadership, then why even bother having a membership card? Why call it Labour at all? Why not something more snazzy, more bourgeois?

Hello Clive, I saw you on BBC TV yesterday afternoon being interviewed on this issue and thought you came across really well. You say the media don't like it if political parties don't have media presentations and you think media presentations are necessary to allow coverage on policy issues.

So what if the media don't like it? I wonder how many voters like media presentations. I've yet to meet anyone who welcomes political media presentations or believes a word of what they say. Such a waste of money. Meeting and talking to voters on a one to one, getting on a soapbox and walking door to door with leaflets to explain policy issues still seems like the best way to campaign for votes. Media presentations are a turn off. Blogs are more interesting - and are FREE over at Blogger.com!

These days, in America one has too be very wealthy to run for the presidency - obscene amounts of campaign money are wasted/spent on media advertising. I hope we are not going the same route. So, yes, a limited extension of state funding with much tougher limits on advertising sounds like a good thing. I wonder how other European countries like Germany and France manage.

Dear Clive,

Thank you for drawing attention to the exchange in the Lords. In the current financial year, mainstream opposition political parties with cross-party support will be dipping into the public purse for some £7.38 million according to the House of Commons Library
http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/notes/snpc-01663.pdf

In the light of your remarks about the public perception of trade union donations to the Labour Party, I have some problems in condoning Short and Cranborne monies detailed in the HoC note refered to above.

The law states that trades unions have to seek approval from their members and companies from their shareholders to justify political donations.

It might help public understanding and informed debate if you could let us all know when the electorate/taxpayers were given an opportunity to specifically authorise Short and Cranborne monies.

Moreover, you could also help us all by letting us know when either House, or any registered political party debated the findings of the Electoral Commission (the political party regulator set up quite rightly by Labour) into the funding of political parties.

What on earth is the Prime Minister wasting more public money on this issue by appointing Sir Hayden Phillips as a so-called independent advisor, when the EC after a year long series of hearings and deliberations reported on this subject only 15 months ago?
http://www.electoralcommission.gov.uk/files/dms/partyfundingFINALproofs_15301-11394__E__N__S__W__.pdf

(Hint: there has not been a peep out of No. 10, Conservative Central Office, Cowley Street or to the best of my knowledge either House of Parliament on this issue. Why not? It suggested political parties should boost membership!)

The best thing the Labour Party NEC can do on Tuesday is wrest back control from No 10 and redirect scare HQ resources into modelling how the Party can remain solvent without rich individuals either making donations or lending money, which IMHO means only one thing - rebuilding membership.

I look forward to your response setting out how that is just impossible!

There are lots of organisations engaged in political campaigning and lobbying. People choose to donate time and money to organisations that campaign for things that they have an interest in - for example, various animal rights organisations vs the Countryside Alliance over the recent fox-hunting ban. Why should a political party be any different? If people like what you're offering, they'll join the party, make donations and volunteer for all the grotty jobs that need doing. If they don't, they won't.

In the case of Short and Cranborne monies, the party in government has the entire civil service available to it to conduct research and analyse the effects of particular policies. They aren't supposed to use the civil service for overtly political ends, but inevitably anything to do with implementation of government policies has a party political slant. Funding the opposition parties to enable them to do their jobs then seems quite sensible - the alternative would me to make civil service department workers available to the opposition parties, but that presents huge potential problems over compartmentalisation of information - if the same group of civil service researchers is preparing a study for the government and for the opposition, information is inevitably going to leak.

A proposal to limit the amount that any one individual or organisation can donate to a party is attractive. I'm not sure that that would really actually improve anything, though - if, say, the unions were limited to giving only a small donation to Labour, what is to stop a large union spending lots of its money on a campaign in favour of some policy that the union supports, that just happens to be official Labour party policy? I see little difference between a union giving the party a big cheque and the party running a publicity campaign, and the union running its own campaign supporting policy X, and pointing out that only one of the major parties has pledged to support policy X.

The ultimate answer has to be with the electorate. If people don't like parties being supported by large single donors, they need to vote for someone else. If there isn't anyone else, they should consider standing as that someone else.

State funding could only address the issue of sleaze if all other donations were banned. Otherwise, it would amount to little more than a handy little top-up.

But party members and supporters should have the right to put their money where their mouth is. So should trade unions, if their memberships mandate them to do so. And - let's be consistent here - businesses should be allowed to make political donations too, provided they ballot their shareholders on the question.

State funding would in practice be tantamount to state licensing of political parties, based on past electoral performance. Legitimate newcomers would be severely disadvantaged.

Worst of all, state funding offends against basic democratic principles. Political parties are voluntary organisations. If people want to support them, they do. If they don't want to, they don't.

This is how it should be. There can be no justification for forcing taxpayers to pay for parties they are at best indifferent towards, and at worst heartily despise.

A democratic socialist party with an enthusiastic mass membership and labour movement affiliations could raise all the money it needed from it committed backers.

If New Labour had a million members - and that was Blair's stated aim ten years ago - it wouldn't be forced cadge questionable loans off ex-Tory businessmen desperate to don ermine.

But perhaps the most damning point that can be made about the Patel-Townsley-Garrard affair is Blairism's endemic fingers in the till behaviour has lost the power to shock anymore. That surely must be bad news for democracy.

"If people don't like parties being supported by large single donors, they need to vote for someone else. If there isn't anyone else, they should consider standing as that someone else."

More likely, people won't participate at all. If politicians want to build up trust with the electorate and tackle apathy, they have to consider whether their own behaviour is responsible. Taking large donations or taking a wage from a group representing certain commercial interests (as Baron Soley here is doing - and there is no way we can vote him out of office) is not likely to build public confidence in the democratic process.

As for standing for yourself, it is unrealistic to expect individuals or new parties to win anything more than one or two seats given the fact that they cannot get the airtime or the media coverage. For a start, there is a £500 deposit that not everyone can afford.

Well 'Baron' Soley do you feel proud of the fact that your Labour Party has reneged on working people. The founders of the Party must be turning in their graves. Margaret Thatcher has finally won!

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