The Wardman Wire

In the Polly column today, a couple of sensible ideas:

Go hell-for-leather for a fair party funding bill. Let no one donate more than £1,000 or so a year. Let the state put in around £30m more - peanuts for getting dangerous donors out of politics. Use Unlock Democracy’s proposal for matched funding, forcing parties to seek new members. Trade unions will have to mail their members aicnnually to confirm individually that they wish to stay Labour party members: a small price to pay for rescuing politics. Britain is virtually the last country in the west not to clean up funding. It won’t stop all scandals, but it will purge the worst.

That’s only the start. Parties are dying on their feet, contempt for politics is alarming and only radical change will jump-start its motors. When the Lords reform white paper appears in January, dash to implement a 100% elected small second chamber. At the same time, go for a referendum on proportional representation right now, so the next election doesn’t turn on just 8,000 indifferent votes, but makes every vote count. If necessary go for a simple multimember model, where in a matter of weeks constituencies can be bunched together, no MPs lose their seats and defy the Tories to oppose a fairer system. It would be a hard battle, but at least Labour would lead something worth fighting for.

If we leave out the government funding of politics (the Parties need an incentive to engage with the public), and the “dash for reform” of the Lords, which would give us another New Labour constitutional dog’s breakfast, there’s some potential here.

It needs to pick up the idea of enfranchising non-Labour supporting Trade Unionists to support their own parties through their Union, but it would be a couple of steps in the right direction.

Even Timmy the Expat is a bit quieter than usual on Polly today.

[tags]polly tynbee, labour crisis, party funding[/tags]