Another day, another great stink arises from Westminster. Now the Liberal Democrats are caught apparently offering to bend rules on party donations. Money contaminates politics yet again – nothing new here.
This might be funny in its pathos. A party on the verge of extinction is caught offering “help” just as its power evaporates. Ibrahim Taguri, the party’s former chief fundraiser, standing in Brent Central, currently (but not for long) Lib Dem held, told the Telegraph’s fake donor that the money would “open doors” – though the party has only trap-doors ahead of it. Nonetheless, a private meeting with the present (if not for long) chief secretary to the treasury, Danny Alexander, is a serious matter.
Taguri talked about “cheeky” ways to cheat the system and hide his identity by spreading donations among cousins and back-dating cheques. What might he get in return for a suggested £100,000 donation? The party treasurer “will have a good range of networks that you can access”. What about help with housing grants for property investments? “If I’m elected,” said Taguri, “I can then start doing things … I can do things to help you.”
That is exactly what too many people think politics is all about – cash for favours, honours, influence and in their pockets, as with Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind. I was speaking at a book festival in Ely last night where an eloquent woman got up and rounded on the whole political class, disgusted by it all – corrupt, idle, unprincipled place-persons. It is happening at every political event, with only eight weeks to go until an election and voters more alienated from traditional politics than at any time in living memory, as they thrash around for anyone pretending to be an outsider – even Nigel Farage, the greatest pretender of them all.
The Lib Dems once disguised themselves as the clean outsiders (though they never gave back to his victims the £2.4m donation from convicted conman Michael Brown). Nick Clegg briefly pulled off the pretence of being a fresh insurgent until he destroyed it by leading his party into the lobby to vote for every state-shrinking, poverty-creating, rich-rewarding, NHS-crushing, local government-wrecking, public servant-sacking austerity measure that David Cameron and George Osborne put to them. So watching them peddle “help” in their dying days is quite funny.
Paddy Ashdown was at his most pompous when absurdly saying his party had “done absolutely nothing either illegal or improper”, because the money was never paid. Having met the fake donor himself he said it was “normal” for party donors to meet senior party figures.
Yes, indeed, it is. You can meet the prime minister too if you pay enough. It’s “normal” to expect an honour if you donate enough; Michael Farmer, hedge funder and Tory donor of £6.5m, told the committee on standards in public life: “You cannot get away from the fact that the word ‘peerage’ is connected to large donations, so if you are giving a large donation there is a part of your mind somewhere that every now and then thinks about it.” He received his peerage last September. The Guardian’s revelation this week of the Smythson purchase by Tory donors that yielded a bonanza to Samantha Cameron reeks of cronyism.
Ed Miliband has had too little credit for risking Labour’s funding base by insisting that in future all union donations must come from individual members opting in to party affiliation, which will lose Labour slabs of money. The committee on standards in public life suggests a £10,000 cap on individual gifts – the public opts for less. But this latest scandal shows how donors would cheat by spreading gifts across a family.
What drives voter-rage is that so many in parliament still don’t get it: the Electoral Reform Society finds three-quarters of voters say money has too much sway in politics, 65% think donors buy honours and the system is corrupt. There has to be a new “normal”. Many in parliament got that long ago. As leader of the house, Harriet Harman tried to persuade Labour to pass a rule preventing MPs from taking second jobs. Who barred it? Jack Straw, that serial blocker of any parliamentary reform.
This time, Labour should declare that if it wins it will push through an instant clean-out of all contamination of politics with money. The New Labour days of schmoozing for cash – personal or party – must be over. Let voters on ballot papers allocate, say, £3 of state funding each to the party of their choice: politics does need to be paid for. Let other parties object to a clean-up – and see who the voters side with.
