I was invited on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire earlier to talk about the story of the day, cash for access to the Prime Minister David Cameron.
I said the scandal which broke over the weekend didn’t come as a surprise to me. The Conservative Party website has been open about what you get for certain levels of donation for years. The donor club pages list what you get for five, twenty-five, fifty thousand points, with the latter being membership of the “leader’s club” which buys invites to dinners with Cameron and members of the cabinet.
What we’ve found out is what you get for a couple of hundred thousand pounds, it’s an extension of the same kind of thing.
This is a problem as influence follows money. Funding political parties via a small number of large donations results gives a lot of influence to those at the top of the party structure, rather than the grass roots membership.
The underlying issue here is that party membership is at a historically low level. Parties are struggling to survive. The most popular have a couple of hundred thousand members. That’s easier to comprehend in a local context. In Cambridge it translates to a couple of hundred Liberal Democrats, whose party runs the city, and only about fifty or so active Conservatives, based on the turn out for the open meeting they held to select their parliamentary candidate.
If parties don’t have a large membership base to support them and we don’t like people making huge donations, which will always have the appearance of buying influence, then there will be calls for state funding as an alternative. That’s could well be the direction this story takes today, or later this week. I’m concerned that state funding would entrench incumbents, it would be a way of the current political parties seeking to stay in power longer than they would have done without such funding propping them up.
I don’t think the death of political parties would be a great loss to the UK, I’d much rather see them die a natural death than be forced to prop them up through my taxes. I think independent MPs coming together to form alliances on a topic by topic basis, with all debates open and in public (as we’ve seen to an extent with the recent budget debate due to deliberations involving just two parties) would be an excellent thing for our democracy.
You would still need, and be able to have, a cabinet, and an overarching economic plan. I think debating the major strategic questions first, like the desired levels of taxation and size of the state, to come up with such a plan, would be a positive thing. I don’t think making other, perhaps more detailed, decisions in a deliberative fashion over time within an agreed framework would be impractical or undesirable. The opportunity to have the best MPs for the job in cabinet positions could well result in a government which better reflects the country. A moderately conservative chancellor, a liberal home secretary and a socialist in health perhaps?
I’d like to see a political system where the most important currency is ideas for making the country, and the wider world, a better place to live. One way of reducing the influence of large donations is regulate spending on campaigning. If more elections were run in the manner some are proposing for police commissioner elections, with a booklet of manifestos distributed to voters, the cost barriers to entering elections (with a chance of winning) could be reduced. I think we should try very hard to stay away from a USA style of politics where fundraising rather than ideas, appears to be the core.
15 responses to “Cash for Cameron”
My interview on the radio:
Party membership levels in Cambridge don’t seem to have fallen in the last decade, on the limited information available. Where are all these independent candidates going to come from, and how are they going to organise campaigns effective enough to defeat the parties?
On a related topic, are you still prepared to be nominated for a City Council seat this year, as you indicated you were last year? My offer to collect nominations still stands. The nominations deadline is noon on April 4th, so there’s still time. I’ve mentioned this on Twitter a couple of times in the last few weeks, but you haven’t responded.
While party membership may not have fallen dramatically over the last ten years in Cambridge, it is at a very low level. Only a fraction of a percent of the population are a member of the party which runs the city.
As for standing for the city council, I will if nominated.
One question is which ward. I’m currently living in Arbury Ward and have done for around a decade (before that I lived in Market Ward for a couple of years). I live very near the City Centre spend a lot of time in Market Ward. I’m currently looking for a house to buy and have an offer accepted on one in Kings Hedges but progress is slow.
Other considerations include the sitting councillor in Arbury, where I live, Mike Todd-Jones not being terrible, and a thought that my efforts might be more effectively directed towards the debate on who ought be Cambridgeshire’s Elected Police Commissioner.
“As for standing for the city council, I will if nominated. ”
Richard this is exactly the problem! If you, as a politically interested individual, aren’t willing to put yourself forward, having had Phil’s offer of support, how do you expect other Indepedents to?
I’d been assuming Arbury, but I’m happy to collect nominations in the Cambridge ward of your choice. I’ve forwarded you a set of nomination papers by email for your information. What I am offering to do is collect the ten signatures needed on the nomination form, and then deliver the signed form to the Cambridge letterbox of your choice. You will need to sign the assent to nomination, deliver the forms to the Guildhall, and deal with the other legal requirements such as appointment of an agent and declaration of expenses.
Incidentally I have heard from a Lib Dem source that they aren’t certain whether Mike Todd-Jones is restanding in Arbury this year – can any Labour reader confirm?
Mike Todd-Jones is canvassing in Arbury and all the materials have his name and picture prominently on them, it certainly looks as if he’s the candidate.
Well if you do decide on a ward to stand in, post it here and I will start collecting signatures.
As you know I think your views on political parties are madness. But just to correct you on a factual point CCCA has membership in the high two hundreds. I believe lib dem membership is also far higher than you think.
Thanks for publishing the number of Conservative members in Cambridge.
Phil Rodgers has linked to recent numbers for other parties.
A couple of hundred members is in-line with everything I’ve written. It’s a tiny fraction of the population of Cambridge. Also not all Conservatives get to influence policy; the membership numbers of each party are not really directly comparable as being a member means slightly different things in each.
Richard, all party members are members of the Conservative Policy Forum, which in Cambridge meets weekly in the De Freville area and makes a submission to CCHQ. Someone remarked recently with regard to a national policy announcement that it seemed to reflect a recent discussion and submission of the local group.
Members of sufficient standing (presumably three months) will get to vote on our nomination for the police and crime commissioner, too.
I meant to say that the CPF meets monthly, not weekly.
Have you considered that the reason only a few percent of Cambridge’s population are members of a political party is that most people are not particularly interested in politics in general?
Distaste for party politics only becomes significant when people organise in non-party campaigns. Given the paucity of independent candidates Cambridge has seen in recent years, and the lack of anything resembling organisation for those candidates, your suggestion that political parties are going to die off seems as wide of the mark as ever.
All the low proportion of party membership proves is that parties can still be effective without high memberships. Undoubtedly it would be better if a wider spectrum of the population was involved, but you can’t beat something with nothing and nothing is what challenges them right now.
I’d also note that parties exist because people of similar views will tend to congregate together to support each other. Your hypothetical parliament of independents would not elect the mish-mash cabinet you suggest. It would divide along the lines of the pre-existing beliefs of those elected, who would endeavour to get into power those who agreed with them. In other words, you would get a re-creation of parties, just without the ordinary membership that gives them their claim to a measure of democratic legitimacy. Don’t believe me? Look at any council in the UK with a plurality of Independents. Most of them have more than one ‘Independent’ group and some have four or more.
Richard, I’ve offered to collect nominations in the Cambridge ward of your choice, but you have not yet named a ward. Time is running out as I will need to get hold of the relevant electoral register as well as do the door-knocking; the completed forms should be handed in to the Guildhall a few days ahead of the final deadline so that any last-minute hitches can be resolved. So if you haven’t named a ward by noon on this Thursday (29th) then my offer will lapse.
Since you haven’t named a ward, my offer has now lapsed. You are of course free to collect nominations yourself…