We Can Clean up Politics for the Price of a Bag of Crisps

One of Labour's biggest donors Dale Vince says the public's mistrust in "dirty" British politics can be cleaned up for the yearly price of a bag of crisps per person.

The green industrialist is calling for a ban on political donations and argues that campaigning should be paid for out of the public purse.

Vince, despite giving the Labour party more than £5million before the last general election, argues for the state to meet the "tiny cost" of "ensuring politicians make all their decisions in the national interest … and not in the interest of their own party donors".

The activist wants to spark a national debate on the funding of political parties after concerns were raised that the government needed to go further in curbing foreign influence and "dark money".

Thai-based billionaire Christopher Harborne donated £12million to Reform UK last year, approximately two-thirds of the party's entire funding, with leader Nigel Farage forced to deny he had promised the crypto investor anything in return.

Vince, 64, argues that the £60million-plus donated on average to all parties over the past five years equates to less than the cost of a small packet of crisps per year.

He said: "We have the opportunity to clean up politics once and for all at such a small cost.

"A packet of crisps each. That's it. There may never have been as great a bargain as this."

What the public thinks...by Dale Vince

Allowing political parties to be privately funded is fraught with risk and ripe with suspicion - for obvious reasons. Private money will always want something in return or at the very least be suspected of it.

And private money unarguably wants a certain political outcome, even if it's for what they might feel is the greater good. Why do we allow money to speak so loudly in our politics? We don't have to.

If you ask almost any politician however, they'll tell you the public does not want public money replacing private money. But if presented with the facts, the tiny sums involved to ensure the integrity of our politics, would the public object?

We asked them, the answer we got back was clear. Overwhelming support for a ban on donations.

A significant majority believe that private money has an undue influence in our politics and an even bigger majority supports the crypto ban. The public are with us.

They see private donations as a problem, wealthy donors having too much say and crypto as the dodgy currency it's designed to be.

The British public supports public funding of our politics. It's the only way to entirely rule out undue private influence based on wealth and to ensure all decisions are made in the national interest not the interest of donors.

It's the best way to restore trust and faith in our democracy that's sorely lacking right now for good reason.

Our politics is for sale to the highest bidder - we can see the extremes this leads to if we just look to the USA. Let's do something bold about it, let's ban private money from political funding, we can be the first country in the world to do this. And for sure not the last.