Let’s get political… political… I wanna hear your party talk! (with apologies to Olivia Newton-John!)
I’ve thought for a long time that the way politicians and political parties obtain funding is a problem – it’s so obviously bringing with it a risk of politicians being in the pockets of their wealthiest and most generous donors. In order to at least try to make things transparent, there are rules members of parliament are expected to follow, including registering any financial interests, including gifts.
It is, however, a system based on trust. It’s a matter of trust that things are declared correctly and honestly, and if they aren’t we just have to hope that someone finds out and reports about them – just as we have seen with Nigel Farage. For as long as I’ve known of the man, I’ve considered him to be a political grifter who people should just ignore, but sadly don’t. Thanks to people listening to the likes of Farage, the UK has become a State that’s in a state – okay, a State that’s in more of a state than it was before – and still people listen to him, and they even voted him in as an MP in Clacton.
Hopefully, with the recent news about his dodgy donations, though, a few more people might wake up and see through his “man of the people” façade (just look at his background, FFS – he’s anything but that) and fewer will be gullible enough to vote for him. Sadly not all who have done previously, though, because to some there are certain questionable attributes of the man that resonate with them.
Considering all of the above and more, I’ve had a bit of a lightbulb moment, and have thought of a possible solution to the problem of political donations – to both parties and politicians; how they could be handled in a way that has transparency built in by default. This is only a morning muse – something that came to me while drowsily laying in bed a few days ago, having woken up far too early, and to which I’m thinking back now – so it’s not fully fleshed out, and I may have forgotten a few details over the last few days. But for what it’s worth, this is what came to mind:
Political parties receive income from donations, and from memberships. There may be other sources as well, but those are the two obvious sources that spring to mind, and the two that need to be covered. For politicians, there are bribes sorry, donations and gifts, and income from other jobs – all of which need to be registered (and declared – a separate thing to registering them – if they are relevant to parliamentary proceedings that the MP may be involved in).
You’ll notice I deliberately used the word ‘bribes’ and put a line through it above, correcting it to donations and gifts. This is because,
“taking a payment in return for advocating a particular matter in the House is strictly forbidden. Members may not speak in the House, vote, or initiate parliamentary proceedings for payment in cash or kind. Members may not make in approaches to Ministers, other Members or public officials in return for such payment.”
To do so is, politely, called Lobbying for reward or consideration – but realistically, if an MP is doing that, anyone who doesn’t see the ‘donation’ as a bribe is a fool.
I think it should be strictly forbidden for MPs and political parties to receive donations directly – noting that I’m not suggesting donations themselves should be forbidden; directly is the key. I think an independent authority should be set up tasked with being the sole initial destination of all political donations – whether for party or politician.
There is legislation about who donations may be accepted from – contained in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (2000), but each party has to ensure themselves whether donations fall within the rules.
The independent authority could handle that – and if that’s part of their mandate, we members of the public should be able to better trust that, say, the “Dodgy as Fuck Party” isn’t being funded by dodgy fuckers.
Once a donation – be that for a party or an individual politician – has been approved, it can be passed on to its intended target (minus a commission for the authority, because it needs to be funded somehow, so why not from the money that is flowing through it, so that we tax payers don’t have to pay for it?)
Now, my first thought – remember, a drowsy morning muse – was that the parties and politicians could just receive the money, and not be told the original source. My thinking was that anonymising donations this way would flat out prevent any risk of politicians being in the pockets of their donors. However, as I woke up more, I realised there’d be nothing to stop Mr Dodgy Fucker from quietly saying to the higher ups at The Dodgy as Fuck Party (or the MP that owns the company – sorry, is the party leader) that he’d donated five million to them/him. (This amount is, of course, purely coincidental to any similar amount that may have been mentioned in the news recently).
So, instead, the authority would not anonymise the donation before handing it over. Instead, the authority has all the information needed to publish it on behalf of the party/politician, for all to see.
There would be no need to do that for all donations, because parties do receive small amounts from ordinary folk; no need to list those, so a lower limit can be set, and anything below that limit (so long as there’s nothing to indicate an attempt to bypass the rules) doesn’t have to be published.
A potential loophole here might be party memberships – I can well imagine The Dodgy as Fuck Party offering ‘special’ membership tiers for ludicrous amounts, so Mr Dodgy Fucker can “donate” by buying one of those special memberships. To avoid this, there would either have to be rules in place restricting membership tiers and prices, or memberships would also have to be handled by an independent authority. Possibly even the same one.
The obvious problem here is how to ensure politicians and parties aren’t receiving funds behind the scenes, bypassing the independent authority.
That’s simple – the authority handling all this must be granted the ability to access all accounts used by the political parties, and all bank accounts used by individual politicians.
I seem to recall reading about recent changes to the benefits system in the UK, such that people who receive certain benefits can have their bank accounts checked to ensure they’re not committing benefit fraud – and a quick search turns up this explanation. Well, what’s good for the goose and all that! I would suggest politicians (and political parties) could be subject to similar but more stringent checks – regular and detailed. After all, we’re talking potentially larger sums of money.
If anything appears in those accounts that should have gone through the authority that handles donations/memberships? That’s fraud.
And if it emerges that there are bank accounts that have been hidden from the authority? That’s fraud.
And the sanction for such fraud? For a party, it must be disbanded – and any serving MPS for that party should lose their seats and be disqualified from standing again, with the party leadership facing criminal charges of fraud. For an individual MP, it should be similar; they should lose their seat, be disqualified from standing again, and face a criminal charge of fraud.
Although I mentioned gifts above, this doesn’t cover them – I’m not sure how it could, but like I said, it was just something that popped into my head a few mornings ago. I don’t have a solution for that.
There’s also the issue of MPs having second jobs, which I also think should be restricted (there’s a potential loophole otherwise – if Mr Dodgy Fucker wants to donate five million to the owner sorry, leader of The Dodgy as Fuck Party, what’s to stop him “employing” him for the amount he wants to donate? The only solution I can see is to stop MPs having second (and third, fourth, fifth… etc) jobs.
As for what this authority should be called, because I’m quite childish I was thinking the “Funding Authority for Politicians and Parties” – or FAPP for short. It’s appropriate, because it’s about dealing with some of the wankers involved in politics.