Fifty years and still the same problem

By Iain Roberts | Mon 18th January 2010 - 10:45 am

A genuinely hard problem, or one the large parties have an interest in not solving?

Whichever the truth is, political activists might find these comments have a ring of familiarity.

A far more serious problem, however, is the lack of any limitation on amounts which can be spent nationally and in the period between elections.

These amounts have now begun to dwarf the total sums spent on behalf of all candidates. In the period leading up to the 1959 election it has been estimated that the Conservative Party spent £468,000 on advertising alone, while over three times that amount was spent by business firms supporting the conservative cause.

National expenditure on this scale goes a long way to thwart the intention of Parliament in restricting the level of expenditure in constituencies. This has led to a growing demand for an enquiry, which has so far not been acceded to.

That’s R. L. Leonard writing in the early ’60s.

Although there are now notional limits on national expenditure, in reality the effect is to give agents and treasurers a headache rather than actually restricting political spending.

2 Comments

Andrew Suffield 18th Jan '10 - 12:47pm

There is something to be said for the simple and brutal solution: completely ban the use of commercial advertising for politics. It would effectively force candidates to campaign by talking directly to their constituents (in person or via their supporters) or by appearing in (impartially run) public debates. I’m not completely sold on the idea, but it does have a certain appeal.
Malcolm Todd 19th Jan '10 - 9:26am

Of course, we’d still be jiggered, in competition with Labour’s Union-employed paid support, and the Tories’ business friends paying for leaflet deliverers in droves, etc. Apart from that, I quite like the idea.