Yorkshire Post Op-Ed: Grasping politicians are impervious to shame

By Matthew Elliott

EVEN before the events of recent weeks, the public already had a low opinion of politicians. Every opinion poll shows that the people we are expected to trust to make our laws and run our country are generally viewed as untrustworthy and incompetent.
The automatic assumption of most people on hearing a new government initiative is to assume the announcement is timed to distract attention from a scandal elsewhere.

After the revelation of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs's appalling handling of people's most private information, and revelations that the Government has for years been breaking its own laws on party funding, public opinion of our masters has sunk to a new low.
The public's scepticism has been justified.

All but the most hardened cynic, though, would be shocked at the latest turn of events. No sooner had the David Abrahams dodgy donations scandal broken, but the Government began to use it as a justification for taxpayer funding of political parties.

Even to those of us who assume that the Government is shamelessly wily, it is amazing that there has been quite such a shame bypass in Westminster.

Having hypocritically broken donation laws which they themselves introduced, and deceived the public in the process, it is almost beyond belief that they should try to turn this scandal to their advantage. The idea that the solution to having untrustworthy politicians is to trust them with even more of our money is ridiculous. But that is exactly what is suggested.

The exact details of Sir Hayden Phillips's report are worth remembering – each year, some £25m would be paid to the main political parties from public coffers. That is £25m that could otherwise be spent on services, or used to help relieve the tax burden.

Why do the parties want this money? The main reason is that they are broke. They all spend huge amounts on glossy posters, costly focus groups and gimmicky image consultants – much more so than they have ever spent before. The Labour Party, for example, has reportedly run up debts of £20m.

That lavish culture might be fine if their income could support it, but it can't. The public are simply not donating sufficient money to the parties to keep them in the style to which they have been accustomed.

Subsidising the parties with taxpayers' money is not the answer to this problem.

For a start, many of the problems faced by our country today are down to the fact that our politicians are insulated from the real world. In real life, businesses have to stay solvent or go bust. To stay solvent, companies have to offer a product that people want to buy. Everyone else has to live by that rule; why should politicians be any different?

Political parties have become out of touch, uninspiring and ineffective, resulting in the fall in turnout at elections. The product the parties are selling is not what people want

It is crucially important, not just for the taxpayer but also for the future of our democracy, that we insist the parties learn to stand on their own two feet.

If we mollycoddle them and remove any need for them to actually appeal to the people, they will only get worse and the vibrancy of our politics will fade even further.

Instead, it is about time they took a good, long look at themselves and realised that spin and trickery have become far too prevalent. Their funding crisis is self-inflicted, and they must solve it by themselves.

The recent crises and the ensuing attempts to cover them up and then exploit them as a cynical excuse for screwing yet more cash out of the public, will only add to public disillusionment. Ironically, for a problem which is very much internal to the political parties themselves, the solution is in the public sphere. Not the lazy option of demanding free cash from the public, but looking at what politics is meant to be about.

Public service is called service for a very good reason; politics should not be about what colour rosette the winner wears, or which candidates win parliamentary allowances, but doing the best for the nation. Having the best ideas, putting them into practice and running things effectively ought to be the goals of anyone running for office.

That is not to say politicians should be selfless – there is plenty of room for self-interest, too.

If they competed to produce good policies and to put them into practice effectively, politics would be inspiring again, they would win the support of the electorate and could attract donations by themselves without having to force an unwilling population to cough up through taxation.

If the parties have to change their ways or face bankruptcy, it will invigorate politics once more. If we follow the other route, and
reward their failure by bailing them out of their self-dug hole, we will only see our democracy suffer further.

Matthew Elliott is chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance.The TaxPayers' Alliance is a grassroots campaign group committed to lower taxes and more efficient government.
For more information and to join, visit www.taxpayersalliance.com