Why do political parties even receive donations? It doesn't make sense to me that this is even a thing. It's just open corruption.
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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UK Politics
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How else would they be funded?
I am always amused at how normalized it has become that political leaders need to advertise themselves as if they are a bottle of coke or some other brand.
We don't pick leaders anymore, we pick brands so of course they need vast sums of money because how else does one push brand awareness and convince people they need to choose a brand.
The main alternative would be state funding, proportional to vote share. The big question would be how one establishes a new party
The issue there is it benefits the current largest party
A system where all parties with >1% vote share get a fixed budget, with parties lower than that being required to source their own funding but not being allowed to spend more than the budget would be better as it'd allow for any realistic contender to not be as corrupt
Update:
I realised this would screw over regional parties like plaid & all Northern Irish parties... A system where funding is given per-seat but with a threshold of 5% of votes in that seat (same as to get your deposit back) would be better
I feel like this could be dangerous, the government could just not fund a rival party or at least make it awkward to a point of being a hindrance.
There should probably be a spending limit per candidate and all their donations and finances just be fully open and audited by an independent body.
I had assumed they were, it's just a surprise that the tobacco industry isn't lobbing them cash too.