Month: September 2026

The huge donations to Reform are already backfiring…

~ Julian Samways ~ 1 Comment

The two £36 million donations to Nigel Farage’s party from crypto billionaires are grotesque. These people barely live in the UK and certainly have no commitment to improving standards in public life. The characters say they want nothing in return… umm…The crypto space is controversial and ripe for further oversight. Theresa May made the case forcibly in the House of Lords yesterday that the wealth created from crypto should have no role in UK politics.

Money is not everything…

Our political system is relatively clean but not wholly. A report in 2021 by The Sunday Times and Open Democracy showed a clear correlation between an average donation of £3 million to the Tory Party by Tory Treasurers and a seat in the Lords. Tony Blair was investigated in 2007 in a Cash-for-Honours scandal. Whilst the Crown Prosecution Service did not bring any charges, the Labour Party was forced to return sizeable sums of cash and it tainted the end of Blair’s premiership.

Then there is the continuing hypocrisy of the Trade Unions and the Labour Party. DonationWatch has identified £93 million of donations to Labour from the unions since 2010, with the largest, Unite, giving a staggering £53 million. I am sure they expect union friendly policies in return…

So what is the difference? First, it is the transparency of political donations to parties to date. It took me just 15 minutes to dig up past numbers and the source of those funds. Second, it is the size of the Reform UK donations from individuals who have been based until recently mostly offshore and the secrecy surrounding their activities. Third, Farage is already being investigated for a personal donation of £5 million from one of the donors and the conflicts that are potentially involved. Fourth, and perhaps most potently, it is the sensitivity to the Americanisation of UK politics. Nobody wants to continue down the path of rich people buying political influence without limits even if in the US it is driven through ‘Political Action Committees’. A staggering $15 billion was spent on US elections in 2024, including over $5 billion on the presidential race alone according to the organisation Open Secrets.

When I was a parliamentary candidate in 2001, admittedly in an unwinnable seat, comparing notes at a dinner party with a US Democratic senate candidate going for his party’s nomination in Delaware, he nearly fell off his chair at my budget of £6,000 versus his $7million. The US numbers were huge even then.

Such vast sums of money subvert democracy and lead to Donald Trump type characters getting elected. Ordinary voters get shut out of any debate. Nobody pretends US politics is about policies.

Reassuringly, the backlash to Reform’s donations is mounting. Nearly two-thirds of the public believe they reflect a problem with the way the party is run and deals with its finances according to a poll run by City AM/Freshwater Strategy. Reform outside its core supporters has a somewhat seedy image. This problem has just been compounded.

The solution? A cap on individual donations and, more controversially, some state aid to benefit smaller parties which may even be to the advantage of Reform. Proportional representation would help too. It is harder to buy parliamentary majorities in such a system.

America has led the way with the sheer size of money needed to finance an increasingly dysfunctional democracy. It is driven by billionaires and nobody wants that over here.

A few thoughts on UK politics…

~ Julian Samways ~ 1 Comment

Back from the Summer holidays. A time of at least attempted peace and quiet but not if you are a UK politician…

A good deal has changed in the last couple of months. A new PM in the shiny, positive form of Andy Burnham, continuing headwinds facing Reform UK and the Greens, mostly self-inflicted, and a spring in the step of Kemi Badenoch and her merry band of Tories. All against the backdrop of a challenging international environment.

Here are a few thoughts and predictions.

  • Andy Burnham is certainly a better communicator than Starmer and has made a better start to his premiership than many would have predicted. He mostly looked assured in his first PMQs last week and took three hours of questions from MPs the day before without putting much of a foot wrong. The result is that Labour are back at the top in opinion polls albeit by a whisker. However, Burnham is constrained from really making a difference by government finances and the Labour manifesto which stupidly prohibits major tax increases. The cost of government debt is soaring (interest costs of over 5%) as concerns mount about fiscal headroom against a deteriorating global backdrop. If opinion polls remain favourable expect a 2027 election. It is Burnham’s only option to deliver more radical solutions to the nation’s problems.
  • Reform UK will not go away. People are too disillusioned by mainstream politicians’ failure to deliver but they are certainly weakened. Most polls have them now in second or even third place behind the Tories and Farage continues to be the ‘nearly man’ of British politics electorally even when driving the agenda. Watch out for more scandals but no room for complacency for the major parties as many of these will cement the support of hard core Reformers just as with Trump and his MAGA crowd. Proportional representation must look an increasingly attractive proposition for Reform…
  • The Greens have imploded somewhat due to the extreme leadership of Zack Polanski and the rise of Andy Burnham. In a bid to regain momentum, Polanski is their candidate for the Holborn and St Pancras by-election as Starmer (and who can blame him) clears off out of UK politics. On balance, he will probably lose which will do for his leadership and make a 2027 general election more likely.
  • A false dawn awaits the Tories. Whilst Badenoch’s momentum continues, support for her party has flatlined. The public has not forgotten their often disastrous period in government and still doesn’t trust them. Badenoch’s move to the Right is simply wrong as is appointing a supporter of Liz Truss’s budget as Shadow Chancellor, although choosing the moderate Tom Tugendhat as Shadow Foreign Secretary is a shrewd move. She won’t apologise for the mistakes of her predecessors and any prospect of winning a general election is 5-10 years away at best, assuming proportional representation has not been introduced by then. The next election is now Labour’s to lose although it will be a tough battle.
  • The LibDems are nowhere. History will judge this period as a huge lost opportunity for them.

So there we are. For participants in the Westminster game, there is all to play for although the poor bloody electorate will see little, if any upside…

P.S. Trump’s presidency is an increasing disaster. Outside his international follies, look at the size of government debt and the rising cost of servicing it. At $40 trillion, how long can the protection of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency suffice? Fuelled by his policies, a huge financial crisis potentially beckons. More on that later alongside thoughts on the rise of the far-right in Germany after elections in Saxony-Anhalt… A lot to catch up on…