Who Needs To Know?

The most pressing question to come out of this whole Peter Hain business is that of why anyone needs to know who funded a campaign for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.

I am sure that those who work for the Electoral Commission are delightful people personally. But that Commission itself is profoundly objectionable. In return for an annual fee (yes, a fee!), its approval is required for any political party’s name, logo, constitution (including aims and objectives), Leader, and sources of funding. If it just says no, then it just says no, you can’t have a party because we, an arm of central government, do not approve of it. What sort of country have we become?

And the financial requirement, at least, apparently also extends even to something like individual candidacies in a Deputy Leadership election. What next?

In any case, when it comes to things like this, why don’t political parties just give each duly nominated candidate a fixed sum for campaigning and then ban all other expenditure?