Public Funding For Political Sins

I do not find the subject of party political donations of particular importance or interest. It is a relatively minor and trivial issue when you consider just how much else is wrong with the way our country is being governed.

Yet, without wishing to dwell for particularly long on what has become a media soap-opera issue, I believe it is worth briefly reflecting upon the underlying consequences that this week’s events will undoubtedly have for us all.

Now, it seems quite clear that within the past few days, Gordon Brown and the Labour party have been attempting to switch the focus of media scrutiny from their recent illegal misdoings to that of party funding. The decision by the Prime Minister to discuss political ‘transparency’ strikes me as that of a man desperately trying to make the most out of a bad situation – but then really this is as much as to be expected.

As it stands, the Conservative party currently desires to break the longstanding link between the Trade Unions and the Labour party, while conversely Labour wishes to remove wealthy Conservative party donors including Michael Ashcroft and Irvine Laidlaw from the marginal seat equation.

Yet, while solutions to the supposedly urgent problem of illegal donations that were previously touted included a cap on individual donations and electoral spending limits, in shifting the media spotlight from solely his party to that of how all parties are funded, Gordon Brown has once again allowed the old idea of public funding for political parties to rear its head.

Inside the Westminster bubble the idea of asking, or rather as it would be, forcing the taxpayer to fund political parties has become an extremely popular option. Conveniently it represents a perfect opportunity for the careerist political classes that increasingly infest Parliament to further their stranglehold grip on the machinery of power, while wasting yet more of our money for their own ends – both of which are very much to our determent.

In an age when political participation is declining (for many varying reasons) along with membership and support of political parties rapidly falling, public funding would help prop up otherwise failing organisations that may have collapsed under their own weight and incompetence if left to their own devices and the erosion of time. Moreover, the desire by many politicians to have their parties subsidised has meant that they are effectively admitting that because they cannot be trusted to act within the laws they themselves created, the tax payer must bear the cost of their sins as a means to prevent them from committing further acts of illegally in future.

Unfortunately, this kind of reasoning is not unique to the ideas behind party funding, but pervades much of metropolitan liberal thought, especially on issues such as the consumption of illegal drugs – a subject on which I will probably go on to explore in a further post tomorrow.

However, it is worth remembering that public funding of political parties was created by politicians and party lackeys with little connection to reality or the people they are meant to represent. In short it is a solution that is good for them, not good for us, and should be opposed at every opportunity.

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