Lobbyists and large political donors have begun to dominate our politics - Andy Brown

One of the most damaging early mistakes was the decision of some of the most senior figures around Keir Starmer to accept gifts from wealthy donors and lobbyists. It simply staggered belief that a party leader who had made so much legitimate criticism of the dodgy behaviour in the departing government should think it OK to accept gifts of clothing or to justify acceptance of concert tickets.

It doesn’t matter what words you choose or what rules have been obeyed. The deed of accepting money from donors is always going to raise suspicions in the minds of electors. The assumption of most ordinary people is that when an influential politician or their party receives a gift something is expected in return.

If political donations were just a matter of a few items of clothing, they might not matter overmuch. Unfortunately, that is just the tip of the iceberg of a much bigger problem. Lobbyists and large political donors have begun to dominate our politics.

Some of the key policies that this government has been following seem to be much too closely tied to the wishes of particular lobby groups rather than the needs of the community.

There are, for example, some very hard questions to be answered about what has driven the Labour Party leadership’s determination to weaken planning laws and build on green belt land. How much of the policy was the result of hefty lobbying from building developers?

Ordinary communities badly need small homes being built. They need council and housing association properties that are affordable to rent. They need strong laws about rents and tenancies to avoid exploitation of shortages of supply. Long neglected communities need investment in regeneration. People struggling to pay electricity bills need support to acquire cost cutting technology like battery storage that runs the home from dirt cheap night-time power.

It is much harder to make the case for building large executive homes on the green belt that are way out of the price range of any young person trying to buy their first home. Yet that is what makes the biggest profits and what the building developers lobbied for. Some of them made significant contributions to the Labour Party before the election and must be rubbing their hands with money as they watch their dream agenda being turned into government policy.

Lobbying has become an industry and it is not a pretty one because it destroys trust in politicians. Yet most mainstream and even fringe political parties seem to think they cannot survive financially without it. Election campaigns are expensive to run and gaining large funding contributions has begun to be seen as a necessary part of the political game.

It shouldn’t be. MPs are meant to represent the communities that vote for them not fall in line behind bought and paid for politics. When they give even the slightest impression of doing so it destroys trust and paves the way for popularists to accuse mainstream parties of ignoring the wishes of voters.

Which is ironic in the extreme because if you are looking for examples of political parties that have been created and funded by very wealthy donors then Trump’s Republicans and Farage’s Reform would be at the top of the list.

Trump famously received millions from Elon Musk and had the backing of a whole series of multi billionaires. Farage gets his party’s funds from similarly wealthy backers.

The biggest donor for Reform was Christopher Harborne who has paid millions into party coffers. He lives in Thailand and is a dual national. No wonder the party has decided to let in any amount of immigrants who agree to pay for the privilege of being British.

If we really want to clean up our politics, Britain needs to bring in a ban on any contributions to its political parties from anyone without full British nationality or who fails to pay full British tax. We need to ban receipt of money from political lobbyists. There needs to be strict limits on campaign contributions from any one person and any one organisation.

At the moment few people think that they are being genuinely listened to by their leaders. Many suspect that their own voice is being drowned out by professional lobbyists who are paying for political access. Many think politicians can be bought.

British political life badly needs a clean up. It must begin with political funding.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.