Word of warning
That’s plenty to be cracking on with, but even if you fall foul of the existing rules, the maximum penalty the Electoral Commission can impose is a laughable £20,000. That’s walking-around money for a democracy-loving billionaire.
Still, irksome transparency campaigners reckon there are a few simple steps the government could take to properly ruin the mood, and they won’t stop banging on about it.
Slapping a donation limit on individual donors would make many of these loopholes moot, and could prove popular with the British public, a majority of whom believe mega-donors are motivated to splash cash in the hopes of gaining influence. Ungrateful sods.
There are also calls from Transparency International UK to not only reverse recent increases to spending limits, but to set them at a far lower level than previously.
It’s a move that Duncan Hames, the group’s director of policy, has argued would end the “arms race” engulfing British politics.
“If you restrict how much campaigns spend, then with it you restrict some of the more risky ways in which they raise the money,” he told POLITICO. “That affects all of them and they don’t actually need as much money.”
Even worse? There’s growing pressure for the Electoral Commission to be empowered not only to properly enforce the current rules, but also to investigate and expose those taking advantage of the existing workarounds.
But don’t panic, because campaigners have little to show despite spending over a decade pushing for these easy fixes. And with U.K. politicians becoming increasingly hooked on billionaire bucks, the system is likely to remain an open goal for plenty of time yet.