QUICK MESSAGE FROM WILL
My new book (The Fair Necessities: Why We Need a Fairer Britain and How to Make It Happen) is out tomorrow, 8 September, so today is a great time to pre-order a copy from your favourite bookseller, whether that’s Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles, Blackwell’s, Bookshop.org or anywhere else. And there are a few in-person places left at tomorrow evening’s launch event, or you can watch the livestream.
Last week, Parliament debated the Representation of the People Bill and considered the case for a domestic cap on political donations. As we’ve described previously, our levels of economic inequality are matched only by a political inequality that runs throughout the system, whereby money buys access, prestige and influence, and where democracy comes with a price tag attached. Over recent months, we’ve been supporting organisations working on this issue to make the case that a cap on political donations is needed to clean up our politics and unrig our democracy.
Unfortunately, that opportunity was missed by the Government last week, and as a result, progress on this issue will be slower than it might have been otherwise. However, thanks to the work of Stella Creasy MP and others, there was the welcome news that a new task force will examine the role of big money in British politics. Now, politicians are being urged to ensure that any changes introduced as a result are in place before the next election.
Whether we like it or not, obscene wealth is increasingly dictating who is heard, what issues are being prioritised and whose interests shape policy decisions.
Stella Creasy, 02.09.26
The case for a cap on political donations is well-evidenced and long-established, backed by the independent Hayden Phillips Review of party funding and by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. In introducing one, the UK would be joining Australia, France, Ireland and Canada, all of which limit political donations to stop democracy being skewed towards the interests of the very wealthy.
The principle was also accepted last week. It is right that the Rycroft Review prompted a new annual cap of £100,000 on overseas donations. But if we accept that the super-rich should not be able to buy influence over our politics from abroad, why do we accept it at home? Which passport someone holds should not determine whether the cap applies.
So why hasn’t it happened? Academic research has concluded that two blockages are particularly damaging: the inability to agree on how to handle party funding from trade unions, and a lack of public support for increased state funding for political parties. In many ways, the wider failure is a textbook case of what our CEO Will Snell described recently when he set out the four reasons that policies to dismantle inequality stall. Two of them conspire to frustrate progress directly here: the power of vested interests, and short-termism.
There can be little doubt of the level of public support for change. Polling from Transparency International UK showed that 84% believe that wealthy individuals use political donations to advance their personal interests. Our own research at the Fairness Foundation has revealed that 75% of people think the very rich have too much political sway, while polling by 38 Degrees last year found that 57% of people support a cap on donations, with only 7% against. There is a strong, cross-party popular mandate for action on this issue, which organisations are rightly mobilising to agitate for change.
Vested interests are the harder problem. Politicians are understandably reticent to legislate against what they may see as their own parties’ financial interests. But as Transparency International UK has demonstrated (including with the help of their modelling tool), a sensible cap would still allow parties to be able to fund competitive election campaigns without additional public money.
Short-termism means that the cost of delay is rising. As TIUK has outlined, in 2015, just one per cent of private donations came from individuals and companies giving £1 million or more. By 2024, this had risen to 35 per cent. This problem compounds with each election cycle and is only likely to increase, but each Parliament has left the problem to its successors to grapple with. And as the wealth gap continues to widen, the ability of a very small number of people to shape the outcome of elections will only grow.
The new Prime Minister is committed to a fairer democracy, and he understands the link between the economic inequality that he has campaigned against and the political inequality that sustains it. He supported a cap on donations in correspondence with campaigner Shaun Bowler. It sits squarely within his agenda of political reform and his stated desire to do politics differently.
A donations cap is a test of that commitment. If the Prime Minister wants to introduce a circuit breaker not just for our economy, but for our democracy as well, he must show that our politics is not for sale – that it still belongs to ordinary people, and that we can have hope for a system in which everyone has an equal say. That demands a domestic cap on political donations.