Political Donations
The Electoral Commission wants to close a loophole that allows donations to political parties without declaring their name - by doing it under a corporate guise. The new proposals would make organisations such as the Midlands Industrial Council list their donors and the amounts given by them.
To be honest, the proposals seems pretty fair. If people want to donate to political parties, they should do so under their own name, and certainly not someone elses.
However, this proposal should also apply to trade unions, who receive funds and pass them on in pretty much the same way. Except these are not purely voluntary, as trade unions are not advertising the fact that members can opt out of paying a political levy, and are made up of a much larger number of smaller amounts. But apart from that, what is the difference? Both do exactly the same thing, in exactly the same way.
Personally, I think the best way to reform party funding would be to allow anyone on the electoral roll to donate as much as they like, but their name has to be recorded publically however much they donate - rather than allowing anyone who donates less than £5,000 to hide their names. If we are to have a truly transparent system, this is the only way to do it.
Categories: Political Blogging, Politics
Thunderdragon,
It’s funny you say that unions aren’t advertising that you don’t have to join the political fund. When I joined Amicus, it was made abundantly clear on the first letter, the payment form and the welcome letter.
The difference, by the way, is that a trade union is an explicitly small-p political organisation and not a front group.
I think that we’d be better off having stricter spending limits on elections and an agreement between the parties not to use billboards. They’re expensive and I dislike the slogan-as-politics style of campaigning.
Ultimately, I think everyone would prefer a large number of small donors; to do that, the parties have to be reinvigorated. While there are structural issues that do need to be addressed, we should take on board one of John McCain’s points at the time of the Campaign Finance Reform bill - there is no perfect legislative framework but we need to keep legislation nimble enough to deal with new methods of campaigning and fundraising as they emerge.
xD.
Dave Coles last blog post..What were you doing when you heard about…
I haven’t joined a trade union, and am going purely on newspaper reports, so I ma happy to accept that they are. But do they repeat this statement whenever they ask for money?
Dave, but what trade unions do is use their member’s money to buy influence for themselves. At least the “front groups” are just giving money and not direction with it. Personally, however, I dislike both groups.
I agree that there should be spending limits, but these should only come in during an election campaign - ie after the election is called - and b based on a days approach, so that a short campaign has a lower limit than a longer one.
But as for billboards, I completely disagree. I think that the opposite should occur, that parties should be able to use any marketing means going, including TV advertising. To get people to know what is going on, we need to interest them first. And we’re not going to do that unless they can see who we are and what we stand for, which applies to all sides. Slogan-as-politics is annoying, but essential to get the message - any message - across to an electorate with a short attention span and a lack of time. Even I get bored with and/or ignore long detailed stuff.
A large number of small donors would of course be best - but that’s not likely to happen.
But what do you think of state funding for political parties?
ThunderDragon’s last blog post..Educated Slavery
Having done a study into this, the sad fact is that the record of trade unions in actually telling their members about the purpose of the political fund is lamentable. We only found two unions that actually mentioned it on their membership form (Amicus wasn’t one of them - perhaps you’d like to point out where it is mentioned on their online membership form?). The average person on the shop floor doesn’t know who their MP is; how are they expected to know if their union is affiliated or not?
I don’t go all the way with ThunderDragon’s analysis but the only way to make fundraising via trade unions acceptable is to individualise donations and make payments conditional on individuals giving their informed consent. Far from reducing union power, the experience in Canada is that this would strengthen it. The losers? National Secretaries, which is why the plonkers threaten to disaffiliate every time the idea is even mentioned.
UPDATE: Interesting search result. Such openness!