Last Word: The Time has Come to Take the Money Out of British Politics
| DOI | 10.1177/20419058221091639 |
| Author | Sam Fowles |
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
40 POLITICAL INSIGHT • APRIL 2022
Last Word
In Britain, 2021 was a year of political
scandal, much of it centred around a
single theme: the role of money in politics.
Ministers were accused of awarding
lucrative COVID contracts, favourable planning
permissions, and peerages to government
donors. Further, MPs’ attempts to block the
suspension of Owen Paterson (prompting
revelations about other parliamentarians’
second jobs), and the publication of the
Pandora Papers
, revealed a global network of
secretive donors with access to the very top of
government. Ian Hislop spoke for many when
he told lawmakers that the public is ‘sick of
being taken for fools’.
Yet 2021 was not some sort of unique
annus horribilis. Our democracy has been
blighted by these sorts of scandals for
decades. And, despite many ne words, the
problems persist.
This is a constitutional issue. Politicians
have a greater structural incentive to respond
to donations than to votes. Take the 2019
General Election: that year, the winning
Conservative Party received £56 million in
donations. Courting donations is an essential
pre-requisite for winning votes.
Even if we assume politicians will behave
entirely ethically, there is always the risk that
donors will exert outsize inuence. Donors,
unsurprisingly, tend to support parties and
politicians whose policy positions chime
with their own. Political donating also an
overwhelmingly rich man’s sport: donors to
political parties represent less than 10 per
cent of the population. The vast majority
are men. The average donation to the three
largest parties is around £17,500: more than a
person on minimum wage will make in a year,
and around half of the average UK earner’s
annual income.
Do donations directly buy inuence? It
is certainly easy to point to examples in
which donations have been followed by
favourable consequences for the donor.
Donations of £60m from property developers
to the Conservative Party coincided with
the rolling back of planning regulations and
new subsidies to that sector. Donations of
£3.5 million from Russian interests coincided
with the decision to ‘actively avoid’ looking
for evidence that Russia interfered in the UK’s
democratic processes. Donations of £1m
from fossil fuel companies coincided (despite
government ‘green’ rhetoric) with the highest
level of fossil fuel subsidies in the G20.
Correlation does not necessarily equal
causation. But a healthy democracy must not
just be free of corruption, it must be seen to be
so. When the public sees donations coinciding
with policy outcomes that benet the donor,
we lose faith in our democratic system.
How do we respond to this problem? We
have tried complex rules requiring politicians
and parties to declare (some of) the
donations they receive. We have tried various
committees, commissions and quangos to
police politicians’ behaviour. The fact that
scandals keep on coming shows that these
don’t work. This is because they fail to address
the fundamental issue: our political system
is incentivised by money and only a small
number of people can aord the level of
donation that can buy inuence.
The obvious solution is to cap donations
themselves. France, the USA, and Canada all
impose some sort of cap on donations. This
limits the incentive (both real and apparent)
for corruption. At the same time, every
citizen should have an equal opportunity to
inuence the behaviour of the government.
The cap must, therefore, be set at a level at
which even the poorest can aord to make
the maximum donation. This will ensure that
the nancial resources available to politicians
reect their appeal to voters, rather than the
tiny percentage of the population who can
aord £17,500 a year.
This may sound like a radical proposal. But
it is in line with the views of the majority of
voters. Fifty-six per cent support some form
of cap, with a third in favour of banning
donations altogether. Some may suggest
that the parlous state of the poorest in this
country means the cap would inevitably
be set at a negligible gure. Those people
may wish to reect on how this might focus
legislators’ minds on the plight of the poorest.
While it will certainly leave politicians with
reduced funds, even the smallest parties
in Parliament will still enjoy seven gure
incomes from state support.
The problem with attempts to combat
political corruption is that those with the
greatest inuence have the least incentive to
do so. To restore faith in our democracy, many
politicians must act against their personal
interests. Proposals, such as this, for genuine
reform, may well provide the ultimate litmus
test for whether politicians are prepared to
put the interests of voters rst.
Sam Fowles is a Barrister and Director of the
Institute for Constitutional and Democratic
Research. His book, ‘Overruled: Our
Vanishing Democracy in Eight Cases’ will be
published in June by Oneworld.
The Time has Come to
Take the Money Out of
British Politics
After a wave of scandals, Sam Fowles argues that there is only one way
to rebuild trust in politics – by curbing the role of money within it.
Political Insight April 2022 BU.indd 40Political Insight April 2022 BU.indd 40 01/03/2022 10:2801/03/2022 10:28
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