Hands off taxpayers’ hard earned cash.
If a political party cannot fund itself through membership fees or donations then it should wither and die.
That is one of the more sensible comments that left in response to a typically sycophantic outburst from Steve Richards in the Guardian.
People have the freedom to join political parties or not, to donate money to them or not. However it seems that if we use that freedom to reject the parties and withhold our money from them, the establishment will remove our freedom by compelling – through a law to which we will not be asked to give assent – the confiscation of our money for their own private, party political use. They will attempt to justify this in much the same way Richards tries with this appeal:
We need parties. The alternative is nightmarish […]
[…] Virtually every dark story in British politics over the last 30 years has a connection with the funding of politics, but without funding parties cannot function.
In other words, they want us to believe there is no alternative to the parties bar anarchy; and all the examples of dirty dealing and misbehaviour by the parties to hoover up cash have only happened because of our unreasonable refusal to voluntarily hand over our money to subsidise their vested, tribal interests. It is only the because the parties have made themselves irrelevant, by treating the electorate as if we are irrelevant that they find themselves in this position. And now they are going to compound the problem.
The softening up process of preparing the way for theft on an industrial scale – not for purpose of providing essential services, but for nothing more than the maintenance of parties with agendas that run contrary to the wishes of most people – is well underway. Richards’ piece is just the latest call from within the establishment for state funding of parties. Its inception would represent a staggering abuse of power.
Do you think such an obscene state of affairs could ever come about in a democracy? It must be opposed aggressively.
Longrider has a post on this subject saying much the same thing, in his own inimitable way…
Autonomous Mind 
“It is only the because the parties have made themselves irrelevant, by treating the electorate as if we are irrelevant that they find themselves in this position. ”
Spot on, if they actually represented their followers rather than their own agendas they might not have such a problem. They have to make themselves relevant so people support them, it’s really that simple.
State funding, although attractive in some respects has many more negative and pernicious aspects. It also treats the symptoms and not the problem, that parties are having to scramble around for “dirty” cash because they don’t represent the public who might donate. It’s up to them to become more relevant.
In many respects, politics might become much more honest if there is less money in it too, less spin and nonsense.
Richards seems to be a little upset by the idea of ‘donors’ but as the parties no longer work in the interests of the electorate and, in his fantasy world, will soon not represent ‘donors’ either then I have to ask… Exactly who will they represent once their funding is guaranteed? State funding would finally free them from having to represent anybody, dodgy or otherwise.
The alternative is nightmarish. No, the nightmare here is that the current snapshot is cemented in place for all time. Politics needs to evolve and ‘state funding’ would stop that evolution dead in its tracks.
If the main Parties are haemorrhaging members and donors then they need to evolve and if they are unable to do that then they need to go.
Yep.
Been watching this one a long time. It’s always the comforting definition ‘State-funding’.
Not the one which has the obvious implications. The more accurate definition.
‘Taxpayer funding’.
So.
You have a political system under which the respective party leaderships can select your local candidate in the teeth of opposition to that of the local party. Require that candidate to supplicate to the party political line at any and all times on pain of deselection at the next election. Has no legal obligations to present that local electorate with an accurate manifesto. Operates under a party whip which can abrogate its own declared national and international manifesto at any time. Has the literal facility of actively presenting a false manifesto to that electorate prior to any form of local or national election without any possibility of legal sanction.
Your candidate has no obligations in any respect to that electorate other than presenting that constituency for elections again in a maximum of five years time, at which point the constituency will be subject to an election where the contestants compete to wield the same post-electoral blank cheque. They can compete under a party whip as declared to their respective electorate and the nanosecond subsequent to being elected, transfer their allegiance to a wholly opposing party whip – and again, there’s nothing the electorate nor the previous party of that incumbent can do about it. If voters request of that candidate prior to that – or any – election if they would intend to transfer their party whip to an opposing party, that candidate can wilfully, knowingly and intentionally mislead that questioner with a wholly inaccurate retort, and still not be subject to legal sanction subsequently.
And so the number of people who refuse to vote declines – as does party membership, and thereby party funding. But the responsibility for that decline in party funding is not adopted by the Party{ies}, nor to the system which they have sustained – the fault is compulsorily borne by the electorate, and in a punitive measure, it is they who must supplicate to the party system that otherwise to whom they would not willingly give the literal steam from their bodily effluent in donation to that party cause.
And of course after taxpayer funding comes compulsory voting – in which the electorate are compelled to endorse that malign system.
There is, also of course the fact that system and its inhabitants will be writing the terms of reference under which a new party can be funded. It is they who will be deciding under which terms an opposing political ethos can be given legitimate existence.
It’s brilliant!
I just literally cannot see how any of that could possibly go wrong?