It appears that some kind of MAGA group has floated the idea of supporting Reform. If Reform were to get in the group would its policies enacted probably
Reform have come out top in an early voting intention poll. They won by a tiny margin. Not enough to form a government on their own. Even if they can get a partner from the smaller parties that may not be enough. This early is not really going to affect the National Election, but should make Labour and the Conservatives take note. If the two of them up their game they should ride this out. Also there is a good chance Farage would not be PM as he may not get the approval of most of the House.
Andy Burnham could have stopped that by capping donations but refused to - the utterly useless twerp.
So long as Labour keep bringing, not even knives, but chocolate teapots to a gunfight we're in serious trouble. They're absolutely useless against the far right.
( thread necromancy because thought better of putting it in Purgatory)
Aside from the natural disgust, these huge donations calls into question the whole idea of political donations above a trivial amount.
In some places democracy is treated so seriously that it is funded centrally. It could be possible to link voter registration to donation, with the funding for voters that do not express a preference going to independent candidates.
I'm not at all keen on a central register of party supporters. A ban on donations from organisations unless they're membership organisations with a verifiable approval process or opt-in for political donations and an individual cap of, say, £1000 annually ought to do the trick. Heck, I'd forego membership organisations being able to donate if it meant shutting down billionaire ownership of parties. Even if the unions can't donate they can still organise volunteers and run issue-based campaigns.
I’d rather import a system than make our own “world beating” one.
Right, but importing one particular point from a completely different context is liable not to work particularly well. Most of the places with government funding adopt a PR system (which makes sense, because historically funding parties proportionately flowed out of proportionally and centrally), a number of other systems have just ended up with various forms of cartel politics, which you would want to avoid.
How about making a rule that any donations over £1000 must be matched by a donation to a charity (from an approved list)? There are so many worthy causes out there: Mermaids, Care 4 Calais, the RNLI...
People donating over 1 million to any political party must submit their financial affairs to a forensics audit so we can be assured our ruling class is not being paid for by the proceeds of crime.
Interesting to note that, yesterday in Wales, one Reform Senedd member defected to Plaid Cymru only a few months after the elections, and the Welsh leader of Reform resigned his position after being arrested (and released on bail) on suspicion of assault and coercive behaviour.
Comments
I am slightly surprised that he did not use his favourite magic number of £350M when suggesting a flat rate for them all to pay.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clye9nldd7do
Andy Burnham could have stopped that by capping donations but refused to - the utterly useless twerp.
So long as Labour keep bringing, not even knives, but chocolate teapots to a gunfight we're in serious trouble. They're absolutely useless against the far right.
( thread necromancy because thought better of putting it in Purgatory)
In some places democracy is treated so seriously that it is funded centrally. It could be possible to link voter registration to donation, with the funding for voters that do not express a preference going to independent candidates.
Yeah, importing a particular point solution without looking at context and also pitfalls of those other regimes would generally be a very bad thing.
When it comes to public sector IT projects we don’t have a good track record.
Right, but importing one particular point from a completely different context is liable not to work particularly well. Most of the places with government funding adopt a PR system (which makes sense, because historically funding parties proportionately flowed out of proportionally and centrally), a number of other systems have just ended up with various forms of cartel politics, which you would want to avoid.
Certainly amounts to a fair few pints of Stella and Wetherspoons breakfasts.