This week, two crypto billionaires announced that they would each be supporting the Reform Party with substantial donations worth £1 million per month, each month until the next general election. The combined total of £72 million – each greater than any earlier single donation to a UK political party – has enraged many commentators. But behind this rage are levels of hypocrisy and special pleading that are astronomical.
On Friday, Ben Delo announced in a Telegraph article that he was “giving Reform millions to make the next election a fair fight”. Labour, explained Delo, were burning nearly £4 million a month, and the Tories nearly £2.3 million. Reform, despite having spent most of the 25 months since the election leading in opinion polls, was only managing to raise £1.8 million. The party with a solid chance of forming the next government certainly needs to develop its policy platform and, at the very least, if it is to form the Opposition, also needs to communicate with the public. “I want a fair fight and a level playing field”, he concluded. Not to be outdone, fellow businessman Christopher Harborne announced on Saturday that he would match Delo’s contribution.
This has ignited much hostile commentary about British politics being biddable. The Sunday papers featured the stories on their front pages. “£72 million gift to Reform stuns politics,” claimed the Sunday Times. “72 million to buy Britain ‘could be illegal’,” whinged the Observer, adding that “Crypto billionaires’ donations to Reform may break new law, anti-corruption tsar says.” That ‘tsar’ is none other than Labour Party peer and former minister of a number of things under previous Labour governments, Baroness Margaret Hodge. Inside the paper, Hodge was revealed to have been “shocked, stunned and alarmed” and that the sum “represents a dangerous challenge to democracy when a couple of billionaires can capture one of the political parties”.
Speaking of corruption, however, it turns out that the “law” which would punish such outlandish behaviour as billionaires not aligning with Labour or Conservative parties does not yet exist. And even more curiously, it may apply retrospectively. It is remarkable, when one thinks about it, that an ‘anti-corruption tsar’ would be speaking about ad hoc, arbitrary legislation that suits the party of government of which she is a member, while invoking a “dangerous challenge to democracy”.
“With fears that the cash from billionaires could distort British politics”, explained the Independent, “[Angela] Rayner warned that Reform should not count on keeping all the money as new law Labour is pushing through parliament will be ‘backdated’ to cover all donations from March this year.”
One wonders whether it would be possible to buy propaganda that more successfully demonstrates that a corrupt political establishment has reached the point of defending arbitrary seizure to protect itself from challenge. How much would it cost to convince people that the rules are changed on a whim to suit the Government? More than £72 million, one would guess – and more than that sum spread out over three years i.e., £2 million a month. Nigel and his donors surely owe Ange and Maggie a thank-you note.
But worse than the press and establishment putting on this pearl-clutching performance is its insult to our intelligence. Their stories would require us to believe that a budget of £2 million a month is sufficient to “buy” British politics. The sum total of £72 million is roughly equivalent to £1 per person in the UK. Over three years, that is about 33p per person per year. How exactly is a sum of money equivalent to a second-class stamp per voter going to change that voter’s mind? What magic spells exist to turn such modest sums into governance of an economy worth £3 trillion and nearly 70 million people? The conception of “politics”, and indeed of “democracy”, that populate leftoid conspiracy theories about “funding” excludes any notion of the demos or the poli. And that is very telling.
My interest, of course, is in green politics, and I have – since I was first accused of being in the employ of “Big Oil” – been interested in the funding of the green movement. I have never received a penny from a company with coal, oil or gas interests to my knowledge. Yet “funding” became the major concept seemingly dividing pure science from its denial in the climate debate. I argued that the market for hydrocarbon energy did not exist merely for the benefit of the companies that produce it. So the conspiracy theory of “Big Oil” paying people to argue for abundant and affordable energy leaves out the entire public. And, it turns out that behind the cross-party Westminster consensus on climate policy, a very large amount of money had been invested in sustaining the democratic deficit.
