When it is said, as it often is, that where America goes, Europe (and particularly the UK) will follow soon, it is worrisome that we do not have our own self-confidence and our distinctive vision.   When it is said about the funding of politics, it is deeply disturbing.

It has just been estimated that spending in the current US Congressional elections will exceed $3.7bn (£2.5bn).   In one State alone, California, $100m (£69m) has already been spendt by two multi-millionaires in the race for the Republican nomination – that’s before the real battle starts against the Democratic candidate.   Such huge sums of money are spent, not only on saturation TV coverage with personal attack advertising, but also on chartered jets, hotels, political consultants (charging up to $90,000 a month), and vote delivery.   Is this where we’re heading?

The Centre for Public Integrity in Washington (we need one here too) has already lambasted this as ‘legalised corruption’.   The link between such massive campaign funding by industrial corporations before the elections (often in support of candidates on both sides, in order to hedge their bets) and the voting pattern of the successful candidates after the elections in favour of their sponsors is manifest and corrupting.   It is the cancer in US politics.

Do we want the same here?   Probably not, though the Tories wouold generally favour it.   But the real point is that, in a more modest but certainly alarming way, we are already going down this route.   New Labour (unaccountably) raised the amount that could be spent by candidates from about £11,000 per constituency to some £28,000.   The Tories are now clearly about to change the balance of political funding by almost eliminating trade union funding without any proportionate restriction on company donations.   They may even be extending the idea of primaries to British politics, having already used it to select one of their MPs in the current Parliament, and that route opens wide the door to money-driven politics.

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