On last nights BBC Radio 4 Any Questions the panel was given the opportunity to speak about party political funding in the light of the bequest from Joan Edwards to the government of the day. The question from Axel Landon was phrased “Is there a better way of funding political parties than stealing from the dead?” The only fully fledged politician on the panel was ex-Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and under the summer rules for AQ Jacqui did not use the opportunity to try to score any political points for her own party but instead she explained how important it is to have adequate funding for all political parties. According to Ms Smith, based on her work exporting party political structures to other nations if we don’t have strong organisations the following ensues:

There is no way to determine a political programme, which means we have no opportunity to hold politicians to account for their actions; People get elected on the basis of their personal wealth or their willingness to do favours for other people; There is no way of forming a majority to make a government and no way of forming an opposition. She finished her comments by suggesting that none of us would want to live in a situation like that!

It was clear from her preamble that these words which clearly have a strong dose of unintended irony were an attempt to point out that in new democracies these things do not come along easily. However she failed to acknowledge that the chaos that she has experienced in pre-democratic societies is not necessarily the outcome in a society which is seeing a disintegration of political parties that have become unsustainable institutions. Two other useful contributions from the panel came from Alex Deane former Chief of Staff to David Cameron who pointed out that our parties are grossly inefficient using communication methods that are both costly and ineffective. Ken Olisa followed this up suggesting that our parties are unpopular because they have failed to inspire and enthuse us through their policies and behaviour.

The newspapers that have been debating the £520,000 bequest from Miss Edwards have largely ignored another piece of news this week which is the publication of a report by the Electoral Reform Society into the cost of funding elections. Called “Penny for Your Vote?” it is a fascinating insight into how the political parties targeted their local spending into certain constituencies during the 2010 General Election. If the spending in the most costly constituency (Luton South) was replicated across the country as a whole this would have amounted to something like £84M. By the same token had the parties spent on the same scale as they did in the cheapest constituency (Beckenham) they would have spent £7.2M on top of the national spending during the campaign and the cost of running these political parties themselves. Rather sadly the tone from the ERS is to suggest that the voters in Beckenham are being shortchanged and that it is in our interest to have national parties who can ensure that they spend evenly across the country. This has an implicit suggestion that we are being sold to, not that our role in the process is to engage with the debate as equals.

My own position is inevitably coloured by my personal experience. As a candidate for the Police and Crime Commissioner elections in November I observed both ends of the ERS spectrum. My own spending on the contest which covered 16 Parliamentary Constituencies was £370, yet I managed to attract 20% of the vote. I came third in the contest (out of 5) and the amount spent by the 4 runners up amounted to a respectable Beckenham sized £8,000. However the winning party spent £37,000 which would place them in a Luton South type race. It was clear that the four of us were massively outspent by the winning party who sent a glossy magazines to many of their targeted homes in Sussex. However in a predominantly Conservative area, the end result for the party was still only 31% of the vote.

We do need a political system that offers some consistency across the spectrum so that electors throughout the country can have realistic expectation of the level of engagement that they can expect from candidates. It is vital however that it is set at a level that is  realistic for small parties and Independents to achieve. Our national parties are spending between them sums of money that are unsustainable and probably adding to the contempt to which many of us hold our parties in. Setting the bar at a level similar to Luton South level will inevitably favour only very wealthy parties and candidates and give the appearance that our democracy is out of reach to most people. That doesn’t mean however that the spending levels as seen in Beckenham are necessarily right either. The combined sum of £7.2M is still a substantial amount of money. In the opening section of the ERS report the first sentence is “Today’s elections are controlled by parties”. This truism suggests that the system has become corrupted although it is not unreasonable given how our modern democracy has evolved. What if tomorrows elections could be controlled by you and me?