Aug 21, 2026 · 48 min · 17 segments
How are our political parties funded – and is it time for a cap on donations? Ruth Davidson and Harriet Harman pull back the curtain on political donations – and discuss whether bots astroturfing…
Ruth DavidsonHost
Dominic GrieveGuest
Harriet HarmanHost
Beth RigbyHost
But I think if you step back, it's that our political system is based on political parties, and to run a political party costs money.
You've got to have finance to develop your policies, and all that costs money.
And for the most part, in this country, that has been done by private money, not by state.
But here we've said no party should be independent of public funding, um, and actually they should raise their money themselves.
And therefore, the question is how they can raise money which is not dirty money, not corrupt money, not secret money, not too much money.
They can actually raise money in a way which enables them to do their important job in our democracy but doesn't become a reason for that trust and confidence in our democracy to be undermined.
You've got a treasurer who's trying to raise money, and there's all these rules about stopping money laundering and cryptocurrency and transparency.
And actually what you've got is somebody who's a volunteer, who's not a qualified accountant, trying to get money.
And so you've got to distinguish between, you know, the bad guys who are trying to undermine the system and people who might make mistakes at local level.
If we're just talking about the money here, the sort of size of it, just as a, a kind of rule of thumb for people, if you think in an election campaign how much stuff comes through your door and how many leaflets come through your door even still, the current cost of a first-class stamp in the United Kingdom is £1.80, and the average size of a constituency is just over 73,000.
So although you, you do deals with the Royal Mail, so they'll deliver stuff, like, unstamped, but if you're still thinking of how much it costs even for postage, it runs into the tens and then hundreds of thousands and then into the millions on a national scale really, really quickly.
I mean, the money we're talking about here for a, a general election campaign is enormous, isn't it, Harriet?
But I think if you step back, it's that our political system is based on political parties, and to run a political party costs money.
You've got to have finance to develop your policies, and all that costs money.
And for the most part, in this country, that has been done by private money, not by state.
But here we've said no party should be independent of public funding, um, and actually they should raise their money themselves.
And therefore, the question is how they can raise money which is not dirty money, not corrupt money, not secret money, not too much money.
They can actually raise money in a way which enables them to do their important job in our democracy but doesn't become a reason for that trust and confidence in our democracy to be undermined.
You've got a treasurer who's trying to raise money, and there's all these rules about stopping money laundering and cryptocurrency and transparency.
And actually what you've got is somebody who's a volunteer, who's not a qualified accountant, trying to get money.
And so you've got to distinguish between, you know, the bad guys who are trying to undermine the system and people who might make mistakes at local level.
If we're just talking about the money here, the sort of size of it, just as a, a kind of rule of thumb for people, if you think in an election campaign how much stuff comes through your door and how many leaflets come through your door even still, the current cost of a first-class stamp in the United Kingdom is £1.80, and the average size of a constituency is just over 73,000.
So although you, you do deals with the Royal Mail, so they'll deliver stuff, like, unstamped, but if you're still thinking of how much it costs even for postage, it runs into the tens and then hundreds of thousands and then into the millions on a national scale really, really quickly.
I mean, the money we're talking about here for a, a general election campaign is enormous, isn't it, Harriet?
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