Shroud waving over the #gagginglaw

Notwithstanding Chloe Smith walking away, the government have attempted to pacify the opponents to the Transparency of Lobbying, Non Party Campaigning, Trade Union Administration and Whatever It Takes To Stop You Talking About The Real Issues Bill with a string of amendments to be debated at this afternoon’s report stage of the bill in the House of Commons. By all accounts, it hasn’t worked. I’m actually surprised by this as I would have thought they’d be able to mollify the larger charities.

The government still isn’t admitting defeat however, and the Lib Dem wing are continuing to issue dire threats about what might happen if this bill does not become law as quickly as possible. John Thurso wrote last week:

But there is nothing liberal in permitting vast fortunes to be spent in the pursuit of electoral success. If there were, we would be arguing for the repeal of the 1883 Prevention of Corruption and Illegal Practices Act which has limited candidates’ expenditure at elections for 130 years. No one is making that case: not 38 Degrees, not Friends of the Earth, not the Countryside Alliance, not Hope Not Hate.

The Bill will ensure that no millionaire’s cheque book can outgun the voices of small organisations or of election candidates with a good case to make. We cannot allow that simple principle to be blown away in a gust of hot air about “gagging”.

That is simply nonsense. For starters, Unlock Democracy – who I worked for until September – have been making precisely that case for many years, and have more recently been joined by the Electoral Reform Society. Simply omitting the organisations which campaigning on this issue because they are inconvenient does not make a case true.

And it is simply not true that a single millionaire will be prevented from buying the political process if that is what they wish to do so. The government has repeatedly refused to legislate for a cap on donations, and however draconian this bill is on campaigning, it doesn’t include a cap on donations to non party campaigns. There is nothing whatsoever to prevent a donor from making donations of £400,000 to a dozen different organisations, all of whom would be free to campaign up to the spending limit as long as they did not work in concert.

Sound fanciful? Possibly, but then far too much of this debate has focused on hypothetical scenarios, so why not raise this one. David Boyle goes further than John Thurso, by bringing up the US Koch Brothers and their campaigning techniques:

So you might reasonably ask why the UK should have legislation about electoral activity by non-candidates at all. The answer is summed up in one word: Koch.

The reason why this is so important is because of the Koch Brothers and their activities funding ultra-conservative election support in the USA, and those like them.

They set up lobby groups and non-profits to intervene, most of them well below the radar – but tax returns show that they spent $230 million in local interventions in the USA in the year before the last presidential election, and that was just through one of their organisations.

Look at the government shut-down, the blinkered oppositionism that has degraded American politics at federal level. That isn’t just about the Koch brothers, but we don’t want it here – we don’t want an open door to every oligarch who thinks they can intervene in our elections.

The tl;dr version of that quote is: “if you don’t support this bill then you support oligarchs shutting down the government!” It’s a nice bit of propaganda, but once again it omits certain inconvenient truths. Specifically, we already have our UK Koch Brothers. The difference is that, because they are free to fund parties directly, they opt for that instead.

The Stuart Wheelers, Michael Ashcrofts and, yes, James Palumbos of this world know that you are far better off putting your money into parties either directly or influencing governments by establishing think tanks and setting the political agenda that way. In terms of getting bang out of their buck, they would be insane to do otherwise.

So the real question is, why are the Liberal Democrats shroud waving about this non-issue while doing nothing whatsoever to make the case for taking the big money out of the UK political system where it is actually being spent?

Image credit: Unlock Democracy.