Dara Fitzgerald, West London Socialist Party
Breaking news on Monday. The sky is blue, water wet, and Reform has yet again been caught up in a dodgy donor furore. Following the fallout post the Reform conference after the Channel 4 report, Reform has announced a record £72 million in donation pledges from Chris Harborne and Ben Delo, two men who made a fortune in the cryptocurrency space.
Far from being a party for the working class – as Reform leaders sometimes claim – by dividing the working class and trying to turn sections against each other, Reform acts to serve the billionaires and the capitalist bosses.
For those counting, this is the third donation scandal that Reform has been caught up in in the last couple of months. ‘Posh George’ Cottrell, convicted fraudster and author of the book “How to launder money”, was revealed by the Times to be secretly funding parts of Farage’s operation for years without disclosing such payments. It was also revealed on the eve of the Reform conference, that reporting group Verbatim has spent a year undercover filming major party figures, such as Farage, Dan Jukes, and James Orr, speaking about paid-for polling that benefited Reform and was printed uncritically in the Times and Telegraph
Scandals in Reform such as these have bolstered the arguments from some quarters, such as MPs in parliament, for more regulation of donations to political parties. The House of Lords is debating a Labour bill to cap donations to parties from expats to £100k in a single calendar year, backdated to March.
While Reform’s recent donations have been particularly bountiful, large individual donations to political parties are nothing new. The Sainsburys alone have a long history of donating to the biggest parties, with John giving more than £11 million to the Tories, and David giving more than £11 million to Labour.
Also, it could be argued that the specificity of Labour’s new retroactive donation law, capping donations from overseas donors, is designed to target Reform’s donor base. Recent analysis by Friends of the Earth showed that if a £100k donation cap was brought in, Reform would be left with just 15% of its donations! Party against the elites indeed!
Reform deputy leader Richard Tice has complained of hypocrisy, pointing to trade union donations to the Labour Party. As if donations from democratic organisations of hundreds of thousands of members are equivalent to those from exploitative capitalist bosses!
Actually, the scandal there is that the Labour affiliated unions no longer get any real democratic say in the party’s policies. Labour – created by the working class and trade unions – has been transformed into another vehicle for the capitalist class.
The capitalist parties – including Labour – are in crisis and incapable of dealing with the many crisis facing the world, such as the rise of the far right, climate catastrophe, genocidal wars and oppression of marginalised groups. The enthusiasm for a new workers’ party was shown in the over 800k people who showed their interest in the initial formation of Your Party.
What we need is a party, rooted in the working class, where representatives take only an average skilled workers’ wage, and whose vision won’t be bound by the accepted limits of the ruling capitalist class.
