Can you help us investigate dark money and hidden influence?

The fight to protect our democracy has never been more serious. Can you help us?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the past year. 2024 has not been easy for those of us who care about democracy: Trump, Musk, dark money, hidden lobbying.

There are reasons for hope, though. I’m very encouraged by the past 12 months at Democracy for Sale.

Our stories have sparked parliamentary inquiries, regulatory investigations (hello, Peter Mandelson’s Global Counsel!) and forced accountability on big business. They’ve gone viral thanks to collaborations with Led By Donkeys, Byline Times and many more. And they’ve been read on here more than one million times. (Yep, 1m times!)

We have so much more to do: more cronyism and corruption to dig up, more investigations into dodgy donors and foreign influence, more real change to make happen….

But to do that, we need your help.

We have almost 500 paid subscribers (that’s a ten fold increase in the last year!) If just 50 more people take out a subscription, we can bring in another top class investigative journalist to work with us. Imagine how much more ground that would let us cover!

You are a free subscriber. Can you upgrade to paid today to help us?

At this time of year, you'll be bombarded by demands for money from good causes: big campaigning organisations, media companies, and the like. They're all worthy, but taking out a subscription today would make a massive difference to Democracy for Sale.

It's just me and Lucas, but if we can get those 50 extra subscriptions we can increase our investigations team by 50%!

2025 is going to be a crucial year in the battle against dark money and hidden influence.

Just this Sunday, newspapers reported that Reform’s new treasurer - and former Tory donor - Nick Candy will travel to the US to meet Elon Musk to get advice (and cash?) for Nigel Farage.

This is really worrying.

More than 8,000 people have already taken our ‘safeguarding democracy’ survey. We’ll be reporting the results in full soon but so far it’s clear that many of you have huge concerns about Britain’s broken electoral laws.

In the last 12 months this newsletter has broken major stories about the dark money bankrolling British politics, from the Trump donors funding Tufton Street to shell companies donating to Conservatives and Labour. Our exclusive investigations have been picked up by everyone from the Financial Times to the Daily Mail, the BBC to local newspapers.

We’ve got concrete plans to build on this - by doing journalism and bringing legal cases that will help safeguard our democracy from big money. Right now, bringing in another journalist with specialist expertise - as well as working with lawyers who can help us bring important cases to court - will make a huge difference to what we can do.

That’s why we really need your support:. Will you set up a paid subscription today?

Thank you for supporting our work at Democracy For Sale.

Peter