Will the coalition try to impose its party funding plan on Labour?
When the Committee on Standards in Public Life published its report into MPs’ expenses the main party leaders had signed up to it within minutes.
Today’s report on party funding got a very different reception – a pre-emptive strike from Nick Clegg (“no – not now” to state funding) and David Cameron (“no for all time ” to state funding and the donations cap should be £50k not £10k), and no warm embrace for the trade union levy changes from Ed Miliband.
Miliband sounds like a man who is trying to keep the door open to state funding of political parties for a debate in the next parliament. But he’s not greatly sticking his neck out in this one.
The committee thinks that a £50k limit on donations would enormously skew the battlefield to the Tories’ advantage and that they have serried ranks of business people ready to cough up £50k for the next election. The committee also expects the Tories and the Lib Dems to cook up some kind of cosy deal and try to impose it on Labour after the next round of failed party talks about party spending has gone the way of the last one and the one before that.
If that happened it could be lethal to Labour, and Tory strategists like George Osborne have long sniffed a great political opportunity here. Labour would have its trade union funding wings clipped if not amputated. The Tories would have a continued if not strengthened funding advantage over Labour even with a £50k cap.
Lib Dem President Tim Farron just told me that even a £50k limit would be something on the path to reform and could be linked with a promise to look at state funding again when the good times roll. He also said that no one party should be allowed to hold reforms hostage.
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There are 3 comments on this post
It just about sums up our politicians, doesn’t it? What’s good for us is good for us. Power at any cost. Ignore fairness and an equal opportunity to puts one’s case before the electorate. And meanwhile ignore the obscenity which is the rich massively avoiding tax (see Jon Snow’s latest blog)
Dead right, Philip. All that hand wringing when they were caught with the noses in the expenses trough was clearly bunkum.
I suspect that very few people in the country would object to paying 50p or even £1 towards political parties (as long as the book keeping was transparent) if it meant that lobbyists and trade unions ceased to have a disproportionate influence on our politicians.
But for all their fine words, none of them is capable of putting the country’s interests above their own. In fact, with sublime arrogance, they really believe the country’s interests and their own are always the same.
Gary,
The answer to your question is: Yes, of course they will. It would be naive to think otherwise.
It is a tedious matter-of-fact that neocons will always try to reduce the ability of labour to defend itself against capital – even when the union bureaucracy is as hapless as the modern Brit version. There’s nothing new or surprising about this. If the neocons had their way they would abolish unions completely, as they are presently trying to do with the NHS.
In fact New Labour only has itself to blame for the current state of affairs. Once they abandoned their roots, social conscience and socialist founding philosophy they were bound to come to this state.
As for Clegg and Cable etc….nothing but a dispensable irritant and bunch of hangers-on.
This has nothing to do with “reform.” It has everything to do with the survival of democracy, something neocons have no interest in.