The Conservative donor scandal shows why public funding of all candidates at elections would save taxpayers a fortune

I’m about to say that all candidates at elections should have their campaigns publicly funded and that we should make taking private political donations a criminal offence. This usually brings on the ‘not a penny more of my money for politicians and political parties’ response. I can understand why, but this response ignores the fact that by paying that money you would save 10 or 100 or 1000 times as much, because as long as parties can take private donations the super rich and big banks and companies will keep on being able to buy political influence with which to get themselves big government subsidies – which mean higher taxes or cut public services for taxpayers – and big tax breaks and toleration of tax havens – which mean the same.

When someone very wealthy or a big bank or company donates to a political party’s campaign funds they are usually making an investment. By funding a party for £50,000 or  £250,000 they may well end up getting subsidies or tax breaks of millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, sometimes even billions – or deregulation of their industry which lets them make big profits in the short term at the cost of a crisis and recession in the long term, like the financial crisis and subsequent recession, caused by banks and hedge funds being able to lobby for deregulation with the aid of big donations.

A cap on private donations to political parties or to candidates’ campaign funds will leave lots of loopholes. Where it’s been done in the US the billionaires and big firms just split a big donation up among 10 or 100 or 1000 employees to get round the cap.

The only way to avoid loopholes and end the influence of big money on politics is to have a strictly limited level of public funding of all candidates in all elections – enough to get one single colour, double sided A4 election communication leaflet printed for every household in the constituency, ward or list area, plus enough to run a website and maybe petrol costs for canvassing.

One of the reasons the government hasn’t re-regulated the financial sector properly is that donations from banks and financial firms to the Conservatives have doubled since 2005 (according to research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism).

In addition we’d need a ban on elected officials and civil servants who are regulating an industry being employed by any company in that industry for say 5 to 10 years after leaving office – and similarly banning anyone employed in an industry regulated by a government body from being in any elected or government body involved in regulating that industry for the same period. This would eliminate the “revolving door syndrome” in which big companies buy influence with government by offering paid employment or cushy jobs to people in government who do them favours.

Then make it a criminal offence for any elected official or political party to accept any donations to their party or election campaign – and similarly a criminal offence to break the rules on ‘revolving doors’ between government and business.

That might all cost millions at each election, but would save between hundreds of millions and tens of billions between elections.

The big parties will be opposed to this, because it would eliminate their funding advantage over small parties and independent (non party) candidates.

We can expect that the Conservative donations for access scandal will lead them to suggest a ‘reform’ which would benefit them – one putting a maximum cap on donations from organisations, but not from individuals, aiming to reduce trade union funding to the Labour party while maintaining their own donations from big banks, hedge funds and some of the very wealthy.

Labour and the Conservatives and Lib Dems will all keep suggesting greater transparency – making large donations known to the public through the register of members’ interests. That would be an improvement, but wouldn’t eliminate big money’s influence on politics, it would just make it better known.

The future business, the big society and efficiency savings – political euphemisms and what they actually mean

Morlocks - Is Gordon Brown's policy of only travelling forwards through time ignoring the seriousness of the Morlock menace?

Listening to the party leaders’ election campaign speeches reminds me of great euphemisms from the near and distant past, like “strategic interrogation” and “tactical questioning” (both used as euphemisms for torture by Coalition forces’ press officers in briefings to journalists in Iraq).

“The Future Business”

Good to hear that Gordon Brown is “in the future business”. That’s lucky because as yet no means of travelling backwards in time has been discovered, though it may risk losing him the Dr. Who vote.

I also have a policy of travelling linearly through time - and solely in a forwards direction.

It’s hard to imagine that any candidate or party leader is likely to say “No – i disagree – we should go backwards into the past as fast and as far as possible and damn the inconvenience, the dangers, the costs and the sheer impossibility of doing so –it’s the only way to counter the Morlock menace, which the other parties and candidates are dangerously complacent about”.

What Gordon is really saying is “don’t judge us on our record in government, judge us on what we promise we’ll do in future.”

“The Big Society”

David Cameron’s Big Society policy of encouraging volunteer work would be great if he was suggesting it as an addition to well funded public services rather than as a replacement for them. (Volunteers do some amazing work and are often as good as professionals at it – sometimes better).

The reality of the Conservative ‘encourage volunteering’ policy though is that the wealthy and well educated will be allowed to set up their own schools and run their own local services. Having done so are they likely to be willing to pay enough tax to fund public services for others which they won’t use themselves, but are for people who aren’t so fortunate? I doubt it. The usual conservative ideology is to ask why those struggling in poverty or on low incomes don’t do everything for themselves.

As a result state schools and hospitals will become hugely over-stretched and under-funded – like those in America, while those who can afford it get private care or run their own schools – a two tier health service and a two tier education system.

‘Big society’ in this case is just a euphemism for ‘small, underfunded public services, which most of the well-off but selfish people i represent don’t want to pay for so unwashed oiks can use them’.

To be fair Alastair Darling has also said that if Labour are re-elected there will be a 25% cut in public spending, cuts, in his own words, bigger than those under Thatcher. So neither main party can be trusted not to cut vital public services.

“Efficiency Savings”

While talking a great deal about necessary cuts and efficiency savings none of the leaders of the three biggest parties – Labour , Conservatives or Liberal Democrats – have said a word about scrapping Private Finance Initiatives or Public Private Partnerships, which are the equivalent of hugely over-priced hire purchase schemes, resulting in increased costs along with service cuts.

None of them have suggested renationalising the railways, nor even ending massive public subsidies to the privatised rail companies.

Nor has there been any suggestion of cracking down on huge cost over-runs on British Aerospace contracts for the Ministry of Defence, nor of ending the ‘Export Credit Guarantees’ which ensure that if BAE sells arms to a foreign dictatorship which then doesn’t pay for them taxpayers foot the bill.

No “efficiency savings” in the world could save taxpayers as much money as scrapping these three main areas of waste. Every government and opposition in history has claimed it could save huge amounts of money but running public services more efficiently – what happens in practice is some cuts and un-necessary reorganisation which merely causes temporary chaos.