George Monbiot argues that we should stop big money from interfering in politics by preventing big spenders from contributing to the campaigns of political parties. The effect of big campaign contributions is simple: “The political parties know that if they do anything which offends the interests of corporate power they jeopardise their prospects.”
Monbiot has a better idea. Each political party should be able to charge a modest fee for party membership. Let’s say £5. The party would then “receive matching funding from the state, as a multiple of its membership receipts. There would be no other sources of income.”
This system, he believes, “would not only clean up politics, it would also force parties to re-engage with the public. It would oblige them to be more entrepreneurial in raising their membership, and therefore their democratic legitimacy. It creates an incentive for voters to join a party and to begin, once more, to participate in politics.”
The estimated cost of such a system would be around £1 per elector which is more or less “three times the price of a telephone vote on the X-Factor”. Almost negligible in terms of the overall scale of state expenditure, in other words.
Against claims that the taxpayer cannot afford to fund politics in this way, Monbiot argues that the alternative (the devastating effects of big money’s reign: the ruined economy, the inaction regarding climate change, the creation of monopolies and so on) would cost us much, much more.
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