2 private donations of £36m each to one political party - is this the future of democracy in a world at the mercy of tech bros?

[IwantToRetire]

Not particularly interested in discussing Reform. As anyone who wants to do that could set up a thread just like there is one about the Greens.

Of course the money could just be frittered away, but do these donations create an imbalance in terms of other parties having a voice, not just now, but when there is the next General Election.

For info (and there may be others) short bios about each man who has donated. Although, if as stated, they don't expect to decide party policy, maybe their personal history doesn't matter.

https://news.sky.com/story/ben-delo-and-christopher-harborne-who-are-reform-uks-two-mega-donors-13584792

Edited to add: I would ask this question if such donations had been made to any other Party, whether Labour, Tory, Greens etc..

Union members can opt out of the political donation part of their union fees.

By the way, elections are “the tyranny of the masses”.

Between 2010-2015 Labour received 67m quid from the unions.

For context….

Over-ruled!

(Joke…)

So less in five years than Reform got in two days. Great context, thank you. ☺️

Ah, another emoji ‘queen’….

Yes, seems Labour are as shit at running their own finances as they are the economy.

Running a 2.5m quid deficit YTD.

And in those same years the Conservative party received £106.8 million, largely from businesses or those made wealthy by being in business. I'm not sure what your point is. This is such old news!

Why else would one be in business, other than to make money/generate a P&L?

Not disputing the rationale for being a profitable business @Greyrock79 .

I'm wondering why we are discussing Labour being supported by the Unions, which they have been since they were formed as a party and why we are talking about the Conservatives being supported by business interests, which they have been for even longer.

When actually the topic of the thread is the huge donations to Reform - the party of the working man, according to Nige! If traditionally donations have been given to political parties that represent the interests of who the party stands for - I ask who does Reform stand for?

I ask who does Reform stand for?

AI, maybe the donation is really come from SkyNet.

Didn't you know - that's different?

Following your logic, Reform should be permitted to have a core donor group, too, surely? Perhaps I missed it, but I didn’t see Labour getting quite so worked up over the Tories level of donations.

As to what Reform stands for, I think they are simply the monster to Labour’s Frankenstein.

It is so, so telling that the only defence anyone seems to have of these obscenely large donations is “other parties do it too”, when in fact no other party have ever had donations of this size over a single weekend. It is unprecedented.

And whichever party it was receiving this amount of money in one go - I think most of the electorate would be equally up in arms, I certainly would be.

It really, really isn’t a party political opinion to believe that enormous donations from extremely wealthy private individuals is bad for your democracy. Many people think it’s especially bad when that money comes from people who until very recently didn’t even live in this country. Many people also think it’s especially bad when that money comes from an industry so unregulated that we can’t even type the word for fear of setting off the spam filters.

No one who cares about our democracy should want to see it corrupted by big money in the way America’s politics has been.

@Greyrock79 I think donations, loans and gifts need to be openly declared. I think that there is probably a compelling argument for capping the amounts, but I haven't fully considered the mechanics of how that would work.

At the moment, I think that clarity on who is making the donations is working largely as it should be. As long as people are under no illusion as to where the financial support base for a political party lies and who their financial backers are and therefore the interests that they are likely to represent, then we all know where we stand.

I'm hoping that what is being exposed (albeit painfully slowly) is that Farage and Reform have NOT been clear up to now. I think that they are so power hungry that they are pretending to be "for the people / anti-establishment / for the man in the pub / for the under-privileged and ignored Clacton electorate / for true Brits and similar" when actually nothing could be further from the truth.

Which was going to be paid incrementally in the same way Labour receives funds, but for Labour's attempts at preventing a new party from levelling the playing field by gerrymandering the donor system. While refusing to cap donations from the unions who are their own biggest donors.

Ironic isn't when the approved person brought themselves a peerage!

Exactly.

I think the unelected unions can do an immense amount of harm to the national interest by the power they wield to push special interests. A union baron is an extremely powerful individual and is getting more power under Labour.

How is it gerrymandering when every party is subject to the same rules?

I think the whole point of a union is power through collective action? Its just that decisions and policy are made by the union barons with the collective power of the threat of withholding funds and the threat of strikes at their disposal.

If the unions want a cap they can except it on them too.

People can pay Labour directly outside that.

Not really if you look at it practically. Both the Conservatives and Labour have decades of spending on party infrastructure for example. Its very hard for a new party to build up the same ability to run a party and compete in an election without similar investment. The Conservatives and Labour can quite happily draw the red line now on donations and still have the party infrastructure. No other new party could say the same.

I don't think parties should receive these vast sums. But if they are capped they should be capped for everyone. Including the unions. And it would still be unfair to new parties. Bit of a Hobsons Choice unfortunately.

The cap should also apply to donations from businesses and other organisations too, then. That would really level the playing field.

Spot on.

I don’t say that the two Reform donations are illegitimate but had vanilla onshore donors made them, Labour would still be bleating about the size of individual sums etc. It’s what Labour do, so desperate are they to cling on.

I have a feeling this make backfire on them.

They are massive donations, the like of which have never been seen before in British politics. Even the Sainsbury
donation to the Tories was a 3rd of the size.

The donors are not giving that money out of the goodness of their heart (neither do the Unions nor the businesses who have always supported the Tories). So, what do these huge donors want? How does their support align with the aims and membership of Reform?

No one is in any doubt what the Unions want, nor the business supporters of the Tories. But what does these huge donors to Reform want?

Why do they need to want anything?

Your naivety is touching.