Monday 13 August 2012

It's my Party too, isn't it? Why state funding for politics is a mad act of cynicism

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I know it's hard down in the Westminster bubble to understand the real world where people are struggling on through the hard times. But our political leaders - and the media that preens and fawns over them - need to try just this once.

Those ordinary people don't pay taxes to fund political parties. They pay taxes for schools and hospitals and roads and policemen and soldiers. They don't pay for spin doctors, communications consultants, campaign teams and expensive offices on Millbank. State funding for political parties is wrong. So why are we speculating about it?

What odds then that in private a deal has been done that will allow both sides to come away with what they want? Here's how it was presented to me: over the next year or so Mr Clegg will find a way to back the boundary review when it comes up for a vote in the Commons. In exchange, Mr Cameron will agree to support some form of state funding for political parties.

This sums up everything that is wrong with our politics - the ghastly corruption created by Tony Blair and continued by every successor regardless of party. A belief that political parties are part of the state's apparatus, a cavalier attitude to spending tax money on what amounts to a political fix and an obsession with the process of politics rather than the outcome of policy.

But then the whole thing is so cynical.

Cameron is more open to the deal than his party because it reduces his reliance on the already decimated grassroots.

Am I thinking that Cameron is prepared - for short-term tactical advantage - to destroy the Conservative Party replacing it with a pathetic hollow shell where the "grassroots" (that's people like me) are pushed aside completely?  That I rather believe this says all you need to know about the management, leadership and direction that Cameron provides at the moment.

It's my party too isn't it?

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1 comment:

ANDY5759 said...

If this were to happen there will be anger followed by some form of refusal to pay that portion of our taxes. That's what I would do anyway. My time spent in prison would enable me to practice noose-tying with piano wire.