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Crypto crisis proves case for donations shake-up
Reform UK's £72m from crypto billionaires has Labour MPs demanding a cap on political donations. Dale Vince says £50m a year could clean up British politics.
Pressure is growing on Labour to harden its position on capping political donations in the light of the £72million donations to Reform UK by crypto billionaires.
MPs are urging the Prime Minister to "go further", which he himself has indicated may happen in response to increasing disquiet over the influence of big money in politics.
"There is a stench hanging over our democracy and we desperately need disinfectant in the form of much tighter legislation to get rid of it," said one Labour backbencher, adding: "This is no time for faint hearts."
Dale Vince, who is campaigning to end political donations, said: "Ridiculous sums don't level the playing field, they distort it. British democracy is increasingly up for sale to the highest bidder, and nowhere is that clearer than with Reform UK; a party with no track record and precious few real policies, being bankrolled to a level of prominence beyond their merit, a handful of super-rich donors have simply bought this for them.
"And perhaps have bought the party – a party with no defence policy or spokesperson, but with a fully formed crypto policy ready to deploy within 24 hours of getting into No. 10, they say.
Transparent
"As a donor myself, I've been calling for a ban on all political donations for some time. For £50million a year, less than the cost of a packet of crisps per person, we could make our politics squeaky clean and genuinely representative. The end goal has to be a fully publicly funded system. We already partly fund politics, by the way, let's finish the job."
A new report from the Autonomy Institute, commissioned by Dale Vince's Green Britain Foundation shows here why policical donations must end and sets out a plan to remove private money from politics entirely, replacing donations with transparent public funding.
The report, Politics is No Longer for Sale, argues that the current model has become a mechanism through which private wealth buys political influence. It points to Reform UK's recent donations as evidence of how concentrated political funding now is.
Dr Will Stronge, Chief Executive at the Autonomy Institute, said: "Our research has shown time and again that the system is unfair and structurally corrosive."
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said: "The reform of political party funding should be the start of a major clean-up of our political system."
He highlighted comments made by Andy Burnham in the Guardian over a limit on donations, shortly before he became PM, in which he said his "gut feeling would suggest somewhere in the region of £500k".
Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite union, told Babelfish: "The idea that two crypto billionaires woke up one morning and said, 'I must make the world a better place, I must give tens of millions to Farage…' is fanciful."
Olly Buston of campaign group Clean Up Westminster said: "This is not about one party. Labour has its own millionaires and billionaires. And the Tories normalised the idea that if you paid a few million pounds you could get a seat in the House of Lords. This is about the principle that the size of your bank balance should not determine the size of your political voice."
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