What’s happened?
The House of Lords is currently debating the Representation of the People Bill. Introduced by the Labour government, it proposes widespread changes to UK electoral law. It would give 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote, change the rules around voter identification, update how elections are conducted and introduce a raft of other measures.
Amongst these measures is a proposed cap of £100,000 per year on donations to political parties from British citizens living overseas.
The timing is interesting, as over the weekend, Reform UK received a total of £72 million from two donors. More importantly, the government is proposing to backdate the relevant provisions of the legislation to 25th March 2026.
Whether those two donors were resident in the UK on 25th March 2026 isn’t clear at the moment. But watch this space, because that fact could be critical to Reform UK’s funding.
The bill was already in progress before the donations were made, but the scale of the new funding has brought the debate into sharp relief.
What are we being told to think?
On one side, we have the argument that electoral law needs updating and political party funding needs to be tightly controlled to prevent unwanted influence from foreign powers or individual billionaires.
On the other side, we have Britain’s supposedly well-developed sense of fair play coming under fire.
Retrospective laws are inherently uncomfortable. They mean legislating that something which has already happened, and was considered acceptable when it happened, should subsequently be treated differently.
Then there is the broader question of how political parties are funded.
Today is the 158th annual TUC Congress, a four-day decision-making convention in Brighton. The TUC is the national umbrella body for trade unions in England and Wales, representing around 5.3 million workers across 47 affiliated unions.
At the convention, TUC general secretary Paul Nowak described Reform UK as a “party for sale” and its donations as “a crisis for democracy”. He said there was no similarity between “care workers chipping in a few quid a year through their union and a party bought and paid for by billionaires.”
Hang on a minute…
Is there really no similarity between the funding of Reform UK and the funding of the Labour Party?
And do trade unions really have no influence over Labour Party and government policy?
They do. Since 2020, Labour has received almost £43 million from trade unions, whose funds are raised largely through individual workers’ membership fees.
Nowak has argued that each individual member’s contribution should effectively be considered separately, rather than treating the whole amount as a donation from the trade union itself. So that’s all okay then?
Well, the 2025 Employment Rights Act increased some workers’ rights and included several measures that trade unions had been campaigning for.
Labour has also significantly increased public sector pay for some workers, although the unions are generally asking for more.
And when Labour put forward its manifesto at the general election, it was ultimately approved through a process which includes representatives from affiliated trade unions.
It would be equally naïve to pretend that organised groups which give millions of pounds to a political party have no interest in influencing the party they support.
The reasonable position
In the UK, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks retrospective laws are inherently fair.
Some may argue for them when it suits their interests, but as a general principle, telling people that something they did in the past is subsequently subject to a new rule is not easy to swallow.
A reasonable person might also want politics to be a fair game and the playing field to be level. Well, as much as is possible in this complicated world.
That should include reducing the ability of people and organisations with their own agendas to exert disproportionate influence. So, measures governing political donations are perfectly reasonable to consider but they have to be considered against the backdrop of that level playing field.
Would it really be fair for Labour to receive almost £43 million from an organised interest group over the last six years, while Reform UK is prevented from receiving money from two British citizens simply because they happened to live overseas in the past?
Perhaps there is a perfectly good answer to that question, but it isn’t as obvious as we are being asked to believe.
The uncomfortable bit
Trade unions have agendas. They have goals. They campaign for particular policies and they want to influence government policy. That’s their purpose.
We are told that the donations to Reform UK come without strings attached and are an attempt to level the playing field with the longer-established parties. Perhaps they do, but it would be naïve to assume that this is entirely black and white.
There are legitimate questions to ask about the influence of very wealthy individuals over political parties. There are also legitimate questions to ask about the influence of organisations representing millions of people and contributing millions of pounds to political parties.
What is clear is that if we decide we don’t like one form of political influence, then, if we genuinely care about democracy in the UK, we should be prepared to scrutinise the other forms of influence too.
Perhaps it is time to reform political donations but let’s do it fairly, consistently and with clear eyes.
One last thing…
I like a Co-op Irresistible Stone Baked Mature Cheddar & Jalapeño loaf as much as the next person. But next time you shop at your local Co-op, spare a thought for the fact that the Co-op shops support the Co-operative Party.
This political party was founded in 1917 and for over 100 years has had a formal electoral alliance with the Labour Party and funds joint candidates. Your loaf could be helping to fund a political party.
Nothing is as clear-cut as we’d like it to be…