The Party needs private money. But it should raise smaller donations from many more people

By Paul Goodman

There's a Catch-22 about politicians and money, as follows.  If they're dependent on private money, they're leeching off vested interests; if they're dependent on public money, they're sponging off the taxpayer.  Nothing, apparently, can bust this iron rule - since politics, like anything else, costs money, and must be paid for.  Either way, MPs (individually) and political parties (collectively) have been found guilty before the trial's even started.

This helps to explain the Daily Telegraph's splash this morning, headlined: "Tories sell access to Ministers for £1000 a head".  It can be argued that the Party's asking for trouble by holding a fund-raising dinner at its forthcoming conference at which donors won't have to declare their identities - because even the most expensive ticket comes in below the £5000 legal limit for declaring donations.

However, even the greediest plutocrat might balk at paying £5000 to sit next to a junior Minister, let alone a backbench MP.  But even if the Party set prices at this level - and donors were wiling to stump up - the media story would change rather than disappear.  The opulence of such an event would be contrasted with the austerity of the times.  It would be held to be an offence against taste - as well as our old friend, fairness.

In such an event, media enquiries would presumably be made about the background of those attending.  Further stories would run about the proximity of Midas Sleaze, Chairman of Greed Incorporated, to Janet Drudge, Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Blue and Orange Sky Thinking.  Perhaps the safest course the Party could take is to cancel the dinner and angle for more state funding instead.

But on second thoughts, not so, since more taxpayers' money for political parties would provoke bigger and nastier headlines - including in the Telegraph, the editorial position of which, correctly, is to oppose more state funding for politics.  Why, then, has it chosen this morning to ramp up a story about the Conservatives raising private money - a practice of which, in principle, it approves?

The answer goes wider than any single media outlet, and points to a cultural phenomenon: the push for sales, the decline of Westminster, anger among older voters especially (who feel that though their standard of living may have risen, their quality of life's fallen, because Britain's changed for the worse), contempt for politicians, and a culture that values sensation above reflection.

None the less, there's a way to escape the Catch 22.  Yes, parties and politicians should be paid for by private rather than public money.  But the alternatives for the Conservative Party aren't corruption or closure.  Like the state, it could do more for less.  A great wave of transparency is washing through central and local government, churning up details of spending on items worth more than £500.

There's a strong case for that wave to crash also over and through CCHQ, and for the Party to present more detailed accounts to its members.  Take one example, almost at random: is it really necessary for so much to be spent, before and during elections, on advertising?  A more full financial breakdown would help provide the answer.  We already know that the Party ditched elections ads costing at least £100,000.  Was this value for money?

It should also raise more money from more people - as Tim said here.  A Party spokesman says in the Telegraph story: "We want to sort out party funding but we keep being blocked by Labour because they don't want to lose their massive union donations".  The last point's right, but the Coalition now has the numbers to get reform through the Commons.  It's in the Party's interest to do so as soon as possible.