A neo-Jacobin

Say 'NO' to state funding for political parties

How can it be that major political parties are debating whether the public should chip in and prop up their organisations bank accounts? That's the sickest idea I've heard this year. What? Us pay for the up-keep of the New Labour Party? What? Voluntarily? Well... that sounds sick to me - because, no political party has the right to exist, indefinitely. Talk about dependancy culture.

The state, under no circumstances, should be financing any political party - if supporters of New Labour, the Tories, or the Lib-Dems cannot cough up monies in support of their own parties, then why should we?

New Labour is said to be in debt to the tune of some £20 million, there's a really good reason for that - it's because they have no support from it's core constituency anymore - Tony Blair runs a mass political party, that has no mass of people in it. He has been forced to look elsewhere for funding the parties electioneering bureaucracy.

The truth is, New Labour, and the Tories are financally bankrupt - for the state to step in and bankroll the two parties would be suicidal for our democracy. Firsly, it would complete the parties transformation from a mass based people's party, into the new political oligarchy, devoid of any genuine popular support.

This crucial point was not lost on Clare Short, when she spoke of the isolation of New Labour elites, in the wake of the 'loans for peerage' scandal. The scandal exposed the nature of the 'bubble' that the New Labour elites now find themselves in.

Bankrolling bankrupt parties will solve nothing, but make matters far, far worse for us all.

Picture: Rene Magritte The Month of the Grape Harvest. 1959. Oil on canvas.

posted by Courtney Hamilton @ 2:35 PM