She would take his money and probably end up running his business. He should go, of course, Mr Wheeler. There's no place in the Tory party for someone who thinks he can buy its policy. I would think this regardless of the manner in which the putative policy purchaser made the money with which he seeks to buy his policies; but I admit that the more I've thought about Stuart Wheeler (whom I am sure is in real life a charming and good person), the more the plot of Major Barbara, George Bernard Shaw's (in my opinion) masterpiece, has re-occurred to me.
We (by which I mean the people who run our party) were, prior to Mr Wheeler's political, ah, realignment, in the position of Major Barbara herself. Should we take this man's money, and do good with it? Or should we reject it, on the basis of its provenance? Some few aspects of my presbyterian upbringing have stayed fast within me; chief of which is that I abhor gambling. The haunted faces of men, outside the numerous bookmaker shops that my impoverished borough boasts, is one of the most depressing in urban life. Yes, yes, I know, free will, no, of course I would not ban it, but look at the face of the man who has lost his money, again, and tell me you do not think: someone is making money from this misery. I cannot think good of this. No doubt this is a personal failing. That you can now lose money on more gambled outcomes than mere horse-races, without as much as setting foot in a bookmaker's shop, is not my definition of progress.
Apparently Shaw would not have agreed with me, and of course Major Barbara herself comes round to the point of view that it is better to take a rich man's money and do good with it in the world (a perfectly sound philosophy) than disdain to dirty one's hands, if the consequence otherwise would be that those who need help do not receive it (actually her outcome is a little more nuanced than that, in terms of the target of her deeds, but still).
Well, but we're not a charity, and we do not seek money in order to affect change directly in the lives of the people who need it most, by doing good works: instead, we seek to have a party manifesto elected as the platform for an executive; a manifesto, the implementation of which, we believe, would be that more people would be happier and, in some sense, 'better', or, at least, that some people who are 'least best now' would be 'less least best later' (I'm using 'good/better/best' to represent movement along whichever axis of joy you care to consider). This lack of temporal spontaneity, the lack of observable correlation, between 'donation' and 'policy' and 'eventual outcome for real human being' is what makes the moral situation, even more than the syntax, less clear for a political party than for a soldier of the Salvation Army. Is it not possible, though, that the very lack of clarity behoves the party to take more, not less, care?
You probably do not have the qualms over gambling which afflict me, and so you may regret the cutting off of the Wheeler-supply. Regardless of its provenance, however, did it not always trouble you that the donations appeared to arrive with strings: namely, a hotline to appear on Today to criticise the party leaders whenever they deviated from the line which Mr Wheeler wanted to push. Parties have this in common with charities at least: they must not be bought. They also have no function other than to push for the election of that common manifesto, and if you find yourself out of alignment with the current one, then you have two options. Stay and fight for the change you desire from within; or leave, and support another party. I doubt there's a single activist reading this who hasn't wrestled with that problem at one point in their voluntary career. What no-one I know has ever done is to attempt to be a supporter of two political parties at once. Not before heading for breakfast at Milliways, at least.