Big donations and electoral rule changes may not be enough to save the Conservatives from electoral oblivion
The focus of recent Conservative worries about our democracy is on Chinese influence. This is a genuine concern and something we must guard against – because the current British government wouldn’t want a foreign power interfering in our decision-making processes. Unless of course that decision was the Brexit referendum.
Accusations of significant foreign influence over that campaign, including from Russia, remain remarkably lightly investigated. The source of the money coming from some major donors is particularly murky. What we do know is Garry Kasparov thought Brexit was the perfect gift for Vladimir Putin and that Putin was using social media to influence thought and action in the UK. Given that he is an expert on both chess tactics and Russia, Kasparov is in the perfect position to know.
Think tanks and dark money
Russia and China aren’t the only source of overseas influence over Britain. There is a great deal of overseas funding, much of it coming from shadowy hedge funds, that goes into supporting a large number of influential think tanks operating in this country. They get a lot of access to ministers and are routinely included in important programmes like Question Time – all without any clear explanation of where their money comes from or why they were chosen as representative of British opinion.
In just one year there were 22 people chosen to speak from right wing foreign owned non dom media outlets, and only six from left of centre ones. To put that into context, the Green Party, which has close to a thousand local councillors and is recording an average of over 6% in opinion polls, appears on Question Time an average of once a year.
Yet this issue pales into insignificance when it is judged against the enormous scale of the influence a few dodgy donors can wield if they provide direct financial support to the Conservative Party. It was recently revealed that the biggest single donor to that party gave it £10mn in donations in one year followed by another £5mn. It is a strange democracy where one single person can pump that amount of money into an election campaign. Once again, a comparison with the resources available to the Green Party is informative. It recorded just over £222,000 of donations in 2023 that came almost entirely from small contributions.
How can it be right that one person who says a black woman MP should be shot because she makes him hate all black women is allowed to have an enormous financial influence over an election campaign? Those of us who have to scrabble together a few quid to enable volunteers to push a leaflet through doors know very well how much difference big money makes. It enables a political party to buy expensive mock newspapers, pump out materials using other parties’ colours and designs, and pay delivery companies to get them into every home.
The impact of voter ID
This government is not content with permitting the wealth of very small clique of supporters to create a distorting influence. It has also indulged in what look like blatant attempts to fiddle the election results. It is not necessary to provide any ID in order to get a postal vote at the next election, yet the prime source of virtually all election fraud in the UK is postal votes. Almost no one who turned up at a polling station at the last general election tried to impersonate another voter. People will be turned away at the next election if they don’t bring along the right ID. Old people can just take along their bus pass. Young people can’t. These rules are a direct and deliberate attempt to distort the popular choice that dwarfs any impact from Chinese cyber warriors.
Then, of course, there is the small matter of proportional representation. It can’t be repeated often enough that more people voted left of centre than right of centre at the last general election. The popular vote was just under 53% for Labour, Lib Dem, Greens, SNP, Plaid, SDLP etc. It was just over 47% for the Conservatives, UKIP and parties to the right. That landslide election victory you keep hearing about didn’t actually happen because of the popular vote. It happened because of the first past the post electoral system. So, the Conservatives have insisted that all future elections for Mayors must also be on the first past the post system. Something that has a huge impact on voting patterns in elections for mayor as it discourages voting for smaller parties that have become increasingly popular with voters.
Sunak’s party still in trouble
It may give consolation to some readers to think about the impact of first past the post systems on a political party that records votes in the low 20% region, which is where the Conservatives currently are in the national polls. They tend to get very few seats despite winning a lot of votes. All these efforts to distort the system might result in the Conservatives getting significantly fewer seats than their share of the vote. They could easily fall below 100 seats in the next parliament if opinion polls don’t change.
Distorting the process may not be enough to override serious unpopularity. Money doesn’t always buy success. It just helps a lot.
