Michael White writes:
Once in a while the embattled Corbynite world view squares with what’s actually happening.
Today is such a day – as the House of Lords debates its second reading of David Cameron’s trade union bill, as vindictive and partisan a measure as any the unfettered Tory government is likely to produce this side of 2020.
Lord Kerslake sports a beard and is probably a suspect lefty in Tory eyes – their press pack certainly worked him over.
But that does not invalidate his experienced testimony on the importance of trade unions, both to the country – as an important intermediate institution between individuals and the state – and, especially, to the Labour party whose chief donors are unions.
All this would be bad enough were it not for the fact that the real scandal in the funding of British political parties is not the union cash for Labour – it’s all out in the open and they are idealistic enough to spend it on Jeremy Corbyn’s project – but the very untransparent way the Tories hoover up cash from some pretty debatable characters.
That’s my focus today.
First that bill. Patrick Wintour warns in the Guardian that the proposed changes to union funding (whereby members must “opt in” to paying the political levy rather than opt out) may cost Labour £6m a year. Wintour and Nicholas Watt provide some background here.
Owen Jones weighs in with customary energy on the wider context – boundary redistribution and electoral registration – to detect a systemic plot. Read about the disappearing voters here.
I don’t regard a Conservative government as an organised conspiracy against the poor, let alone the majority. That’s too glib; it’s also patronising.
But governments do foolish things (Dave’s does plenty), mostly out of ignorance or naive overconfidence.
Sometimes they do destructive things, wrecking delicate structures and balances, a milder form of the temple-wrecking Islamic State’s teenage hotheads do after school.
The trade union bill is one of those foolish things.
As Kerslake points out, the opt-in change for the political fund is only one of four harsh measures, certainly not justified by the current level of strike militancy – junior doctors and transport workers – which is a pinprick compared to the 60s and 70s.
Tory donors do far more harm to society in 2016.
Another is the proposed threshold for turnout and support for strike action, far higher than elections for councils, police commissioners or governments (SNP included) get.
Worse, the use of electronic voting will be expressly banned.
A third is the power that a minister would acquire to curb union officials’ activity in working hours, the fourth a national certification officer who can penalise unions.
Both centralising impulses support Kerslake’s worry about an “authoritarian” strain in Cameron’s make-up.
It is his Flashman side that wise advisers (not Sir Lynton “Dog Whistle” Crosby obviously, he’s merely crafty) should curb, not encourage.
What about the Tories’ money operation?
It’s a permanent and sleazy scandal which robust papers like the Daily Mail (the Torygraph is more compromised) routinely expose alongside liberal papers like the Guardian, Observer and Indy. The FT and Channel 4 News get stuck in, too.
Here’s a starting point on party funding from the Guardian, another from the Indy and some Channel 4 fact-checking.
The Guardian has also written about other cuts to funding for opposition parties, which mean a £1m reduction for Labour, a £200,000 cut for the SNP and £100,000 less for the Lib Dems.
The “Short money” is there to fund opposition parties and is vital to the accountable functioning of politics. It’s named after Ted Short, a long dead Labour deputy leader, not because they’re meant to be short of cash.
Let’s look at all that money the Tories get from the City and the hedge fund operators in Mayfair and elsewhere?
Here’s some LSE research and here’s confirmation. Still not persuaded? Try this from the bankers’ pink paper.
If you can’t get behind the FT paywall, the piece is dated 4 February 2015 and called Number of big City backers for Tories doubles.
You get my drift.
Labour sometimes gets questionable donors, too, the Lib Dems took a fat wodge from a fraudster who gave them £2.4m before being jailed (the party didn’t give the money back, either).
By the same token all parties, Tories included, have donors who give for noble and disinterested reasons. I sometimes meet them.
Assorted Sainsburys throw their cash at politics and other good causes: they don’t need any favours from government.
But donations buy access, via dinners or “research” sessions, and donations can be parcelled up between family and friends (if you have that kind of cash) in small packages – below £5,000 – to slip under the radar of the Electoral Commission’s monitoring.
Just read this Daily Mail account. Or this one from the Mirror. Head not spinning yet? How about this then?
Yes, I realise they all do it, but it is the scale of the Tory operation coupled with its parallel assault on Labour’s “white wine and sandwiches” operation that makes it so scandalous.
Throw in the “lobbying act”, which hits charities lobbying harder than it does the sleaze balls, and it makes it even worse.
A lot of donors are engaged in economic activities that do us harm, either by crashing their banks into debts from which the taxpayer has to rescue them or by working for institutions that have diddled their customers through assorted frauds – interest rates or mis-selling – for which their institutions have been heavily fined but no one jailed.
Others engage in financial engineering of real assets, which (sometimes) hurts the poor and vulnerable.
Do you remember Stefano Pessina? He was that Boots executive (you remember sold-off Swiss-relocated Boots?) who attacked Ed Miliband.
I’m sure he had a point, but do we need to hear from an Italian who lives (for the sunshine, I’m sure) in Monaco?
But two further points.
Reform of party funding, long sought by all sides, is stalled because Labour won’t concede on union cash (Miliband’s “reforms” on trade union membership of Labour made it more fragile still) when the odds are so heavily stacked against it on City money.
You can find the background in an official Commons library research paper – always good stuff.
Democratic Audit offers a wider view, one in which the trend across Europe is towards more state funding, in Britain and (far worse) the US to private, often oligarch, financing of elections.
Last but not least, it is poignant to note that from 1832 onwards British elections got cleaner and the franchise steadily expanded until 1970 (votes at 18).
In the 21st century, it’s starting to shrink as voter lists get smaller and fewer bother to vote. Corruption will get bolder, too, unless we make more fuss.
Once in a while the embattled Corbynite world view squares with what’s actually happening.
Today is such a day – as the House of Lords debates its second reading of David Cameron’s trade union bill, as vindictive and partisan a measure as any the unfettered Tory government is likely to produce this side of 2020.
Lord Kerslake sports a beard and is probably a suspect lefty in Tory eyes – their press pack certainly worked him over.
But that does not invalidate his experienced testimony on the importance of trade unions, both to the country – as an important intermediate institution between individuals and the state – and, especially, to the Labour party whose chief donors are unions.
All this would be bad enough were it not for the fact that the real scandal in the funding of British political parties is not the union cash for Labour – it’s all out in the open and they are idealistic enough to spend it on Jeremy Corbyn’s project – but the very untransparent way the Tories hoover up cash from some pretty debatable characters.
That’s my focus today.
First that bill. Patrick Wintour warns in the Guardian that the proposed changes to union funding (whereby members must “opt in” to paying the political levy rather than opt out) may cost Labour £6m a year. Wintour and Nicholas Watt provide some background here.
Owen Jones weighs in with customary energy on the wider context – boundary redistribution and electoral registration – to detect a systemic plot. Read about the disappearing voters here.
I don’t regard a Conservative government as an organised conspiracy against the poor, let alone the majority. That’s too glib; it’s also patronising.
But governments do foolish things (Dave’s does plenty), mostly out of ignorance or naive overconfidence.
Sometimes they do destructive things, wrecking delicate structures and balances, a milder form of the temple-wrecking Islamic State’s teenage hotheads do after school.
The trade union bill is one of those foolish things.
As Kerslake points out, the opt-in change for the political fund is only one of four harsh measures, certainly not justified by the current level of strike militancy – junior doctors and transport workers – which is a pinprick compared to the 60s and 70s.
Tory donors do far more harm to society in 2016.
Another is the proposed threshold for turnout and support for strike action, far higher than elections for councils, police commissioners or governments (SNP included) get.
Worse, the use of electronic voting will be expressly banned.
A third is the power that a minister would acquire to curb union officials’ activity in working hours, the fourth a national certification officer who can penalise unions.
Both centralising impulses support Kerslake’s worry about an “authoritarian” strain in Cameron’s make-up.
It is his Flashman side that wise advisers (not Sir Lynton “Dog Whistle” Crosby obviously, he’s merely crafty) should curb, not encourage.
What about the Tories’ money operation?
It’s a permanent and sleazy scandal which robust papers like the Daily Mail (the Torygraph is more compromised) routinely expose alongside liberal papers like the Guardian, Observer and Indy. The FT and Channel 4 News get stuck in, too.
Here’s a starting point on party funding from the Guardian, another from the Indy and some Channel 4 fact-checking.
The Guardian has also written about other cuts to funding for opposition parties, which mean a £1m reduction for Labour, a £200,000 cut for the SNP and £100,000 less for the Lib Dems.
The “Short money” is there to fund opposition parties and is vital to the accountable functioning of politics. It’s named after Ted Short, a long dead Labour deputy leader, not because they’re meant to be short of cash.
Let’s look at all that money the Tories get from the City and the hedge fund operators in Mayfair and elsewhere?
Here’s some LSE research and here’s confirmation. Still not persuaded? Try this from the bankers’ pink paper.
If you can’t get behind the FT paywall, the piece is dated 4 February 2015 and called Number of big City backers for Tories doubles.
You get my drift.
Labour sometimes gets questionable donors, too, the Lib Dems took a fat wodge from a fraudster who gave them £2.4m before being jailed (the party didn’t give the money back, either).
By the same token all parties, Tories included, have donors who give for noble and disinterested reasons. I sometimes meet them.
Assorted Sainsburys throw their cash at politics and other good causes: they don’t need any favours from government.
But donations buy access, via dinners or “research” sessions, and donations can be parcelled up between family and friends (if you have that kind of cash) in small packages – below £5,000 – to slip under the radar of the Electoral Commission’s monitoring.
Just read this Daily Mail account. Or this one from the Mirror. Head not spinning yet? How about this then?
Yes, I realise they all do it, but it is the scale of the Tory operation coupled with its parallel assault on Labour’s “white wine and sandwiches” operation that makes it so scandalous.
Throw in the “lobbying act”, which hits charities lobbying harder than it does the sleaze balls, and it makes it even worse.
A lot of donors are engaged in economic activities that do us harm, either by crashing their banks into debts from which the taxpayer has to rescue them or by working for institutions that have diddled their customers through assorted frauds – interest rates or mis-selling – for which their institutions have been heavily fined but no one jailed.
Others engage in financial engineering of real assets, which (sometimes) hurts the poor and vulnerable.
Do you remember Stefano Pessina? He was that Boots executive (you remember sold-off Swiss-relocated Boots?) who attacked Ed Miliband.
I’m sure he had a point, but do we need to hear from an Italian who lives (for the sunshine, I’m sure) in Monaco?
But two further points.
Reform of party funding, long sought by all sides, is stalled because Labour won’t concede on union cash (Miliband’s “reforms” on trade union membership of Labour made it more fragile still) when the odds are so heavily stacked against it on City money.
You can find the background in an official Commons library research paper – always good stuff.
Democratic Audit offers a wider view, one in which the trend across Europe is towards more state funding, in Britain and (far worse) the US to private, often oligarch, financing of elections.
Last but not least, it is poignant to note that from 1832 onwards British elections got cleaner and the franchise steadily expanded until 1970 (votes at 18).
In the 21st century, it’s starting to shrink as voter lists get smaller and fewer bother to vote. Corruption will get bolder, too, unless we make more fuss.
Over to you again, unelected
peers!
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