Strangled by the Duopoly

The collapse of UK Democracy, 1975- 2012 and some proposals for its revival. A Green House report on party-funding.

This report goes beyond the narrow ‘traditional’ domain of party funding to consider the funding question in the context of the broader crisis. The public are being utterly consistent in seeking to end the corrupt culture of the big donors and to refuse to give further money to the governing parties that have ceased to represent anything more than a small minority of the population. John Hare and Rupert Read’s recommendations are consistent with that consistency.

A long and seemingly escalating series of scandals of sleaze are one palpable sign of a crisis surrounding the way that political parties in this country are funded. But this report argues that any discussion of party funding that does not examine the wider crisis of UK democracy – including questions of electoral system, participation -rates and corporate power -- is an exercise in deckchair rearrangement. For this reason, this report goes beyond the narrow ‘traditional’ domain of party - funding to consider the funding question in the context of the broader crisis.

Hare and Read argue here that there is nothing contradictory about the public being opposed to both large donations and opposing increased state funding; to see a contradiction is to assume that the public want to see more of the same in their politics. But they do not: they have been voting with their hands and with their feet, for a long time now, against acquiescence in two -party ‘business -as -usual’ politics.

The public are being utterly consistent in seeking to end the corrupt culture of the big donors and to refuse to give further money to the governing parties that have ceased to represent anything more than a small minority of the population, and who show little sign of being uncomfortable about this.

Our recommendations are guided by the following principles and aims:

1. Actively promote the construction of deeper and closer ties between parties and the electorate.
2. Divert funding away from party central offices and to local constituencies or regions.
3. Encourage greater participation by all UK citizens in terms of voting, party membership and activism.
4. Stop facilitating the Duopoly and recognize that it is now a historical relic, incapable of articulating the aspirations of the UK electorate in the 21st century.