General election so far: Dark Money and Digital Influence
Away from Rishi Sunak’s gaffe-prone media ops, dark money is pouring in and the digital influence campaign is ratcheting up - but a new report shows how easy it would be to clean up British politics
The general election campaign is only days old but it’s already delivered some gems.
Rishi Sunak visited the Titanic Quarter in Belfast, seemingly oblivious to the inevitable questions about whether he was at the helm of a sinking ship.
Within hours, Andrea Leadsom and Michael Gove announced they were standing down. (I admit to chuckling over Gove’s departure: he once smeared me after an investigation he didn’t like.)
But when it comes to dark money and digital influence, there is a grim sense of business as usual about the general election campaign so far.
The front of today’s Guardian carries an important story about how “Conservative donors have poured more than £2.5million into key battlegrounds to shore up support for MPs, such as Liam Fox and Penny Mourdant, who are in danger of losing their seats.”
Among this cash is almost £150,000 from the United and Cecil Club and £80,000 from the Carlton Club. Neither declare where their money comes from.
The Conservatives are also encouraging their candidates to spend as much as they can before the regulated campaign period kicks in next week: “This is important, as whatever you can deliver and post between now and 30 May will not count towards candidate election expenses,” a memo to Tory candidates says. So that’s alright then.
As I told the Guardian for the piece, the rise of donations from a small band of super-rich people is “a huge problem”.
I’ve also been avidly reading the excellent ‘Full Disclosure’ email from Who Targets Me, a long-running project focused on digital political adverts.
As they noted on Thursday, “the Tory digital campaign has so far been a slow drip-drip of activity, rather than a torrential flood of energy” - which lends more credence to the suspicion that Conservative party HQ was as surprised as anybody by Sunak’s announcement. (As the FT reports, chief strategist Isaac Levido - protege of Lynton ‘dead cat’ Crosby - wanted to wait until autumn.)
In recent days, however, the Tories have been splurging on social media.
The Conservatives have spent more than £36,000 on Facebook ads in the last week, according to Meta’s ad library. (All the ads are here.)
And what are the ads about? Yep, Sunak’s ‘plan’ - and some rather odd faux World War I images about how ‘Starmer Needs You to Vote Reform’.
Labour, by contrast, has spent more than £14,000 on ads for Keir Starmer in the last seven days.
The biggest spending MP on Facebook is Tory MP Virgina Crosbie, who has spent almost £3,500 on Facebook ads in recent days. Her ads, amongst other things, big up her role in bringing a Freeport to her Ynys Môn constituency….
There was at least one chink of light this week. On Thursday, a group of transparency experts produced a catalogue of recommendations to improve the UK’s political finance laws and their enforcement. (Full disclosure: I was involved in some of these discussions.)
What’s striking is how easy it would be to clean up British politics.
Over the past 14 years ,a raft of oversight bodies such as Committee on Standards in Public Life and the Electoral Commission have produced reports about what needs to be done - but successive governments have refused to implement their key recommendations.
As Spotlight on Corruption rightly notes, this failure “has had a corrosive effect on our political system and poses serious risks to our democracy.”
Spotlight and others have identified 13 recommendations that would make a huge difference including proper checks on donations, stronger controls on donors, increased civil and criminal enforcement and powers, greater transparency, and donation caps.
Now all we need is the political parties - especially Labour - to commit to cleaning up our politics. Will they?
Democracy for Sale will continue to report on dark money and hidden influence throughout the general election campaign. We have some major investigations coming over the next month, too.
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Glad to see Northern Ireland acting to deliver, as it seemingly it always does, metaphorical, implied or actual personal disaster to any politician who tries to use it for abuses of power.