Will Gord try to stop Ashcroft without agreement?
October 30th, 2007
Is there a political risk in taking unilateral action?
According to the First Post online magazine tonight Gordon Brown is planning to take unilateral steps to stop the Tory multi-millionaire, Lord Ashcroft from pouring money into marginal seats between elections. At the same time there will be no constraints on the amount the trade unions can give to Labour - something that the Tories offered in exchange for agreeing to the marginal seats proposal.
This looks set to be a major row with the Tories claiming that Labour is trying to fix the election spending rules in its favour and not do anything in return.
There’s a huge danger in Labour being seen to act partially in this way and the move could provide the Tories with another stick to beat the government with.
It could be that the downside of the row is greater than the benefit of restricting Tory spending in the marginals.
Mike Smithson
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This whole party funding kerfuffle came from the cash for honours affair
It does look like Labour, having been caught breaking the law, are now changing the rules to load the dice in their own favour
Re. ICM. Another poll showing a Lib-Dem recovery seemingly at the expense of Labour.
This is typical of the way Labour think this is a one party state. This goes back to legislation which effectively stopped companies making political donations, but left the unions to do as they please.
It is not only money that the unions give, trade union officials are drafted into run elections and that is without the millions spent on third party campaigning by Trades Unions.
Is it not about time that Labour learnt that the public have seen through them. How many more lies and then apologises must we hear in a day, yet alone a week.
3. is the poll out tonight? Is anything published on the web yet?
Oops 2. I mean
4. See the final post in the last Blog.
There will always be loopholes whatever scheme on limiting political income/expenditure the government comes up with.
For example, there is no limit to the political content of newspapers (which is why, given the current ownership of our major newspapers, I am personally against limits on the expenditure of political parties).
So could a party re-define its local literature as a registered newspaper and get round limits that way?
Though I understand a newspaper has certain constraints (the PCC?)on libel/defamation/general untruths that don’t apply to political campaigning.
Off thread but…Caroline Flint is being given a really hard time on C4 news re migration figures. Frank Field sticks the boot in too.
If Brown does this, it gives carte-blanche to the Tories to retaliate once in office. Individual donor limits of £5k per person and £25k per organisation, and it to be a criminal offence to knowingly donate over the limit via ‘front’ organisations or third parties. All state funding of political parties to be stopped.
The legislation won’t even have to be enacted, just threatened in opposition: the Labour MPs interested in their future will know the effect it would have, as will the Labour Party officials. If put forward as a balancing programme to redress the bias in the government’s policy, the public would accept it - indeed, the loss of state funding would be popular. Brown is playing with fire on this one.
I would think that ICM poll is a pretty fair reflection of the situation at the present. The Libdems are seeing some improvement for dropping Ming, Labour will be pretty relieved if they bottom out at 35%.
I’m watching C4 now ,Flint is fighting back well, she’s a pretty feisty lady, Labour could do with a few more like her, they seem to be in short supply.
9. And then there is the state funding to the Trade Unions. Do you think they might look at that too?
I think British people value fairness above nearly everything else. If Brown went forward with this, regardless of the facts of the matter, it would look terribly unfair. It would look like he was 2-0 down at half time so was changing the rules to give himself a 3 goal head start.
He would look like a cheat, and I really believe he could never recover from that. Surely he can’t be stupid enough to go forward with this…
I don’t really see how they can specifically target money spent in the marginals. And simply banning large donors (whilst doing nothing about the unions) is just a recipe for trouble.
9. If Brown does this then I see no limits at all on what we do when we come into office. The gloves will be gone. To act in this wholly partisan way will demand, and will receive, full retaliation. We can ban union funding altogether.
AFAIK The action Brown can take is to limit spending in a constituency by each party each year.
That brings problems because MPs spend money in a constituency on staff and buildings and whilst these things should be separate to “running the Association” the lines are blurred.
As David Herdson writes, if Brown does something preemptive, when the Conservatives get back into power union money will simply be capped at £50k and Labour would lose 2/3 of its funding, impairing its ability to come back.
The real benefit of Ashcroft is organisational, something that a few Tory MP bedblockers cannot see comprehend in the world beyond their glass of port.
10,
Flint did well looks good to.
They certainly need more like her.
11. Indeed. These are all good methods of getting people on the Labour side to put pressure on Brown to drop or amend the proposal.
7. If the money to fund a newspaper was coming from a local association, I’m sure it would count as expenditure as any other literature does. Even if it was somehow self-funding, if the ownership and management came entirely from a local party, I can’t see the authorities considering it outside the spending rules.
Compared with the Last ICM Guardian Poll (4th October) the figures are:
Con +2
Lab -3
LD +2
14. A £25k a year limit on a union the size of Unite and all its subgroups is as near as makes no difference a complete ban. It’s just easier to justify to the public.
And compared with the most recent ICM poll in The Sunday Telegraph (11th October), its CON -3; LAB 35% -1 and LDEM +4
14 ,
Try it when you get into power, think you might have a fight on your hands.
You will certainly need 100 majority!
And someone behind Cameron holding him up.
Back to calling all Labour voters the enemy within, and under cover organisations, like the economic league trying to stop non conservative voters getting a job.
Cant wait to live in such a delightful country again.
Back to the future 2.Nightmare on Cameron street.
Is it more correct to compare this Guardian ICM poll with the last ICM poll or the last Guardian ICM poll?
This seems a fair bit more credible poll than the Comres figures.
Gordon Brown shows more of his Stalinist tendencies. Let’s hope he doesn’t get away with it or we may be on the road to, what is effectively, a one party state.
As for Flint on the 7pm news, she was dreadful.
Hey test! don’t want to worry you… but, you ought to pop across to Guido, Boris could be in trouble with the ladies again!!
ICM? What a shock!
I was expecting Con 45 Lab 30 LD not much!
Still we know this will be the highest Lab will poll before the next GE. Given the usual under estimation of the Con vote we are 15% clear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is just another stupid idea that Brown will have to U turn on anyway.
You will just end up with local ‘non political’ groups campaigning instead of the candidate him or herself - organisations like the Countryside Alliance running leaflet campaigns saying “we urge you to vote for Candidate X and here is why…”
Or there will be new organisations “The friends of candidate X” or “Torbay Residents against a Labour Government”….
Unless you want to make massive restrictions against free speech this would be a complete non starter.
As I have said all along if people want to donate money to get rid of a Government they don’t like they will find a way to do it.
It’ll be interesting to see the media take on this story. Will they report it as tories refuse to stop funding marginal seats, or gordon refuses to stop being funded by the unions
It is interesting that if you apply ICM’s weightings to Comres raw data the reported figures would have been roughly Con 39 Lab 34 LibDem 18 all figures + or - 1 % .
New thread on the ICM poll
It’s important in the discussion to distinguish between donation limits and spending limits, since the Tory case rests on blurring the two. I don’t personally care much if Ashcroft gives the Tories £100 trillion and they spent it on refining ever-more glorious polices. Similarly it’s none of the Tories’ business if unions consult their members and vote to have a political fund that’s given to Labour. The problematic bit is that the spending limits per constituency which apply during elections don’t apply at any other time. In Ealing Acton, for instance, it’s estimated that the Tories spent £25,000 in a week before the non-election - that’s double the constituency spending limit in election periods.
Why is that problematic? Because if we accept that lots of leaflets and phone canvassing influence outcomes, it makes it essential to be rich or have rich allies to fight a marginal seat. We see the end of that road in the US - politics is dominated by personally wealthy people, and Congressmen spend much of their time from the day after elections desperately trying to drum up funds for the next one. A further effect is that the system becomes impenetrable for third parties. Finally, the British experience is that the parties can only raise the sums requured from a few rich individuals, which puts politics into the hands of a score or so people, who gets disproportionate influence in return.
The Ashcroft machine is an impressive creation and Tories here have often gloated about it. But I think it’s been a bit too successful for its own good.
31
Nothing to stop Labour from spending the £ 16 million it received from Lord Sainsbury in the same way as Ashcroft if they wanted to;the only reason for this fuss is that Labour is broke and funding from wealthy individuals has dried up since the cash for honours scandal.
Lets not try to pretend its anything else.
32 I don’t think that is quite true . There is little point having spending limits in election campaign time if a week before it starts Ashcroft/Sainsbury or Huhne money can be poured into 1 or more constituencies without limit .
But Nick my point at 27, which you have not addressed, is that if people want to use their own money to campaign to change their Government there is little you can do about it except restrict their right to free speech, which it seems you just might be stupid enough to contemplate.
What is even more irritating is that you complain about this as the recipient of more taxpayers money to fund your own work as an MP than any MP in history.
You have enjoyed cash allowances for staff and communications your MP forebears could have only dreamed of and that you would have dreaded having to compete with when you were trying to wrestle the seat for yourself.
27/34: if 27 were true, there would no point in having spending limits during elections: it’s basically saying that limits don’t work. As you’ll be aware, there are very tight limits on ostensibly non-party groups assisting the candidates. While it’s clear that parties manage to do things on the edge of the limits, they are a clear constraint during elections.
I agree that MPs have lots of staff and communications funding, but neither can be used to engage in party political debate. If I send out a newsletter, obviously it raises my profile and perhaps makes people think I’m a good MP, but because I’m not able to discuss the merits of Labour or the drawbacks of the Tories, it doesn’t compete with party leaflets. I would be open to argument that the Comms Allowance should be extended to allow commentary under the same non-partisan rules to the runner-up in each seat.
To respond to Mike on the other thread: if there’s a real arms race I don’t think the LibDems have much chance of competing, even for the smaller number of marginals. We’re talking perhaps £100K per seat - can the LDs lay their hands on several million *extra* quid? If the Americanisation of politics does take over, the tories will have a built-in edge, Labour will be second (with a few big donors and the unions), and LibDems and Nats will be massively disadvantaged.
34
Couldn’t agree more and last week’s publication of MP’s expenses just rubbed more salt in the wound.It’s no more than legalised theft from the taxpayer by a political elite that is completely unaccountable.No wonder there was full government backing for the private members bill that attempted to ‘block’ the publication of MP’s expenses.
These same MP’s then express amazement at how low the turnout is at elections.
I read that Labour out spent the Conservatives at the last election.
One reason they need more cash is they only have about 40% of the volunteers that the Conservatives can deploy. Labour has to use more paid people, a problem that will be worse in 2009.
The Tories don’t actually need large amounts of cash, since most of the work is done by volunteers and they have far more of them than Labour or the Libdems. Thus restricting political spending will ultimately hurt Labour far more than the Tories. I somehow get the feeling that Brown is about to shoot himself in the foot, again.
“People in glass-houses shouldn’t throw stones…..”
37/38: eh? That is emphatically not the case in Broxtowe and most other seats that I know about - it’s the Tories that have to pay for deliveries. There are precisely six really active Conservatives (i.e. people they can regularly get out for a leaflet drop or a canvass) in Broxtowe, and the most active of them resigned all his campaigning posts this month.
Do the Broxtowe Conservatives have to seek your permission before they go out?
37, 38, can you produce evidence of that? If not, I’ll conclude you’re talking utter c***.
Perhaps a fair system would be to allow every single individual shareholder to opt out of their share of profits being used for political donations, just as the Conservatives made sure that every single trade unionist has the right to opt out of the political levy.
Dave H October 30th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
can you produce evidence of that? Yes.
Simply check with the Electoral Commission for the numbers of members of each Party. The Tories have more members than Labour and the Libdems put together.
As for your comments about shareholders, I thought that the Tories got virtually no money from companies. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
39 In other words Nick, you have more Government paid assistants than your local Tory campaining machine. Seems a good case for redressing the balance (with private money not from the tax payer)
It seems to me that you have only begun to get hot under the collar about this now that the balance is beginnning to get addressed.
Why don’t they just introduce legislation to ban the Conservative Party? That’s what they’re really after anyway
Forgive my ignorance, but would not Brown agreeing to Tory amendments work in his favour in the long-run - by freeing him from overbearing obligations to the TUC? As the parties drift to the centre, rich donors will begin to even out - after Clause IV, the only thing that stops Labour from truly being the ‘party of business’ (at least as much as the Tories) is their continued reliance on the Trades Union movement.
Compared to the US, where each Congressman needs to raise more than $10,000 a week to win re-election, and the 2008 election will probably cost in excess of $1bn (even without a Bloomburg-esque third-party candidacy), the sums of money spent in British Politics are not particularly huge. One or two additional donors (another Sainsbury) could easily provide the required sums necessary for a campaign. Whilst I have concerns about exceedingly influential individuals, would not the Labour Party benefit, with respect to party funding, from freeing itself from undue reliance on the TUC?