Peter Kenyon

Democratic Audit 2012 - write off political parties? What a cheek!

Eye-catching headlines are stock in trade for any media. Yesterday, my attention was grabbed by British democracy in terminal decline, warns report in The Guardian newspaper. So I have read it. Not just the Guardian account, but the report itself from the Democratic Audit - How Democratic is the UK? The 2012 Audit . Not every word (yet) I confess. The expression 'terminal decline' only appears once, in the Executive Summary, and not at all in the main body of the report. But let's not quibble, it got people reading. To get through 463 pages asap, my technique was to use 'Find' on the keywords 'parties' and then in the key section for me: 2.2 Democratic role of political parties, where I switched to the keyword 'members'. Very revealing it proved too.

I immediately spotted a factual error about Labour Party membership trends in the mid-1990s. Part of the NuLab myth is that a recovery in Labour Party membership was brief and wholly attributable to newly elected Leader Tony Blair. The authors of the Democratic Audit (DA) repeated it, even though Figure 2.2f in its report shows Labour Party membership increasing from 1992 onwards until 1997, ie pre-Blair. (That prompted a brief exchange with DA on Twitter, in which my observations were acknowledged. My hope is this will lead to a constructive dialogue about broadening and deepening democratic audit work inside our mainstream political parties.)

That should not detract from a critique of the report, which could be read as writing off political parties. I had a similar problem with the Power Report (2007). Without that detailed democratic audit work of the political parties themselves, it is relatively easy to misunderstand membership trends in Britain and elsewhere among western democracies.

There is no mention in the DA Report of the LabOUR Commission Interim Report (2007), or the issues it raised about party democracy inside the Labour Party based on evidence. Nor was there any reference to the Electoral Commission report on the funding of political parties (2004).

Instead, we have, what have become for the dwindling band of party democrats like myself, a series of familiar assertions. I will cite a few examples - in Sn 2 Representative and accountable government, paragraph 6. is headed:

Continued dysfunctionality of the 'first past the post’ electoral system for the House of Commons.

To which the obvious question is what 'dysfunctionality'? Did the electorate, to a woman and man, boycott the polls? Did they all put numbers in orders of preference against candidates standing for election, instead of 'X'? No, of course not - this is elite-speak for 'proportional representation' being a better voting system in a democracy than 'first-past-the-post'.

In Sn 2.1.3 Candidates & parties: registration and media access

it is important to note a number of long-term trends in party campaigning and political communications which have important implications for measures intended to promote fair access for candidates and parties to media and communications.

Well that may have been the case until former Labour Leader, Tony Blair, nearly bankrupted the Labour Party after the 2005 General Election. but since? A rather different set of considerations have been in play that have reshaped campaigning and political communication due to a shortage of money.

Then in Sn 2.2 Democratic role of political parties, DA recall:

In our 2002 Audit we suggested that 'British political parties are not likely to increase in size ever again’ (Beetham et al., 2002, p. 114). The evidence we have compiled for this Audit reaffirms our past assessment that declining party membership may prove irreversible, not least because the problem may be greater than we were previously aware. As Childs (2006, p. 69) notes, 'the era of mass parties is clearly over’. It is not just party membership which is in decline, but also party activism (Driver, 2011)

Well, is that really surprising in the absence of no political party leader actively championing political party membership since before the 1997 General Election, stripping out members' rights to have a say either in policy-making or increasingly in candidate selection? 

Then the the final insult for us democratic socialists, in Sn 2.2.4 Funding of political parties which concludes:

Some means of channelling state funding so that it bolsters the efforts of parties to recruit more members and engage more widely with the electorate is therefore essential (Wilks-Heeg and Crone, 2010a).

Why? Why should taxpayers money, which would be better used (IMHO) relieving poverty and encouraging growth and jobs be used to subsidise political parties recruit, when members don't have a say, all for the benefit of well-paid careerists who have not only voted themselves gilt-edged pensions, but had their hands in the till and still can't be trusted? End of rant.

In the absence of serious and regular audit of the workings of our political parties, no-one can be certain that our democracy is in terminal decline, the era of mass membership political parties is over, or that channelling state funding to political parties is essential. That includes the DA.

As for the future, there is an interesting clue in the Introduction to Sn 1.2 The rule of law and access to justice, the DA asserts:

The rule of law is widely accepted as essential to the functioning of democracy.

Indeed. And which institutions' internal affairs are not directly regulated by the rule of law? Political parties. This is not a path which I personal wish to advocate. But unless our political parties submit to open and transparent democratic audit, then maybe that is the only remedy left to regulate them in the interests of democracy.

In the meantime, I would hope more curiosity can be aroused in the academic community than has been evidenced in DA report 2012 about how our political parties have been hollowed out, and how they might be revived. Why bother? Well, I can't think of any other institution in our society able to form governments.

 

An alternative to state funding - electoral ward political party branch budgeting

This is as stoggy as a hot cross bun. Read no further. Debate about how political parties should be funded has been rekindled by yet another scandal. The latest involves cash for access and co-treasurer of the Conservative Party, Peter Cruddas, who promptly resigned. Attempts by Labour to score political points are unlikely to impress the vast majority of the electorate. Most of the debate focuses on the motives of donors and the base practices of party fund-raisers. Few if any commentators, let alone voters, give a moment's thought to when, where and how often political parties need money.

Democratic societies need political parties. They are generally the only institutions capable of forming governing bodies at whatever level - national, regional or local government. (There are some worrying departures in the European Union following the Eurozone crisis, but that should not detract from the norm.) If you want power, or a handle on power, or to enable others to exercise power on your behalf, then joining a political party is the way to go. There was a time in the UK when money played a direct part in securing a seat in Parliament. The notorious "Spendthrift election" came in Northamptonshire in 1768, when three earls spent over ₤100,000 each to win a seat. These blessed isles saw the light about politics with the introduction of rules to limit spending on elections at a local ward/constituency level. Though it took over 200 years to introduce limits on national spending in General Elections. Such rules are now bundled with a regulatory body, the Electoral Commission (EC), into law. People at the centre of party politics came to see the legislation enact by Labour in 2000 as the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act as a curse. That includes Labour. It is worth dwelling for a moment on why. The EC took a rather silly view about the role of treasurers in political parties, placing what seemed to be overly onerous requirements even on constituencies accounts. The absence of anyone with any experience of active party membership on the Commission itself didn't help. But it did have some sound ideas, which really irked the professional political class. In its requirements for annual reporting by registered political parties, the EC suggested membership should be included in the annual Statement of Accounts. As one if its first decisions, the Commission embarked on an Inquiry into the funding of political parties. In its recommendations published in December 2004, the EC concluded there was no case for state-funding, but that there were issues for political parties concerning membership and small donations. Given the presumptions of the political class, and that includes Labour's upper echelons, the EC recommendatons were buried. The then Leader of the House of Commons Peter Hain failed to make parliamentary time available. Yes, the same Peter Hain who presided over the bungled exercise to Refound Labour last year, adn who is still in an influential party position as chair of the National Policy Forum.

This is unfinished business. Labour doesn't have to wait for the other political parties. It has an opportunity to reconnect with its core vote and build the Party on the Ground.

This is not a hopeless cause, or one lacking possible traction either with the new general secretary or members of the parliamentary labour party. There is a strong case for looking at the issue of political party funding through the other end of the telescope. You just have to ask: how many Labour members of parliament elected in 2010 won their seats thanks to above average levels of local campaigning activity undertaken by volunteers, with or without professional organisational support? In which seats did Labour win a higher percentage of the vote than the national average? 

What the 2010 general election campaign highighted for Labour were different models of local political organisation -  an often cited example was Birmingham, Edgbaston where the sitting MP Gisela Stuart secured re-election with a slightly lower share of the vote and a modest 1.3% swing to Conservative from Labour. This compared with a national swing against Labour of 6.2%. Much more deserving of study is the result in Oxford East where sitting MP Andrew Smith was relected with a 6.5% increased share of the vote and a swing TO Labour of 4.2%. Whereas Stuart's victory was MP/organiser campaign led, Smith's was underpinned by an active local party and a local councillor-base/Labour group that had seen off the Liberal Demcrats on the city council. This is not an exact science. But it is a pointer to the future.

Layering community activity, and the way it is organised and accounted for is critical to rebuilding the Party on the Ground, winning future elections and burying the threat to our democratic socialist party from the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. A possible place to start is using the national agreed limits to start building election-cycle budgets and fundraising strategies to match political goals overtime. After the May elections, of course. Someone in your CLP will be filling in the forms for election expenses. Those limits matter, both for accounting and future budgeting. Think about it. 

Daily Politics: Labour minister fails to note TUs consolidate small donations

Labour minister Sadiq Khan misses opportunity on Daily Politics to make clear TU donations to the Labour Party are consolidated small donations. In the run up to a General Election with the Conservatives threatening to wreck the federal structure of the Labour Party itself, this is unfortunate to say the least.

Latest  party funding data has just been published by the Electoral Commission