Greens demand political donation cap to end political grifting

Greens demand political donation cap to end political grifting



Zack Polanski, Rachel Millward, and Ellie Chowns of the Greens - also Andy Burnham and Keir STarmer of Labour, and Nigel Farage of Reform UK

Political donations are all over the news at the moment because of Reform UK’s various scandals. Establishment figures are arguing the issue is that Reform didn’t properly declare their various ‘gifts’ and ‘benefits’. As the Greens and others have said, however, the real problem is that billionaires are able to legally buy influence from UK politicians:

Get big money out of politics

In the clip above, MP Ellie Chowns says:

In a democracy, every voter’s voice should count equally, but it’s clear that billionaires are buying influence. So why will the minister not set a cap on all donations so that we can eliminate the corrosive and frankly corrupting influence of big money in our politics?

Responding to Chowns, Green Party deputy Rachel Millward said:

This is the point! And Reform’s ridiculous offer to pay for Farage’s own by-election just demonstrates how convinced they are that they can buy democracy. Pathetic.

This is a reference to Reform UK offering to pay for the pointless by-election that Nigel Farage just called.

Well, we say ‘pointless’; the point for Farage seems to be distracting from his undeclared £5m ‘gift’ scandal. As we previously reported:

Farage accepted the £5m gift from Harborne – a crypto billionaire – in 2024. At the time, he’d said he wouldn’t run in the general election, but this changed after he received the £5m. The problem is that after he became an MP, he was supposed to declare any ‘registrable benefits’ from the previous 12 months. Farage did not declare the £5m, and now it looks like he was purposefully trying to hide it.

As noted, the establishment wants you to think the issue was the process, not the great, big, heaping bags of cash. Commentator Saul Staniforth is documenting all the instances of them trying to get away with this sleight of hand:

“Nigel Farage is a grifter”

Responding to the by-election announcement, Greens leader Zack Polanski said:

Nigel Farage is a grifter. He always has been and he’s continuing to grift.

He knew he was heading towards a byelection anyway so has pulled the trigger early.

The people vs the establishment?! Reform are literally part of the establishment.

This man has taken money now from cryptobillionaires and convicted criminals and those are just the ones we know about.

This is another circus when actually the Government should be taxing wealth fairly and cleaning up money and politics.

The Green Party are the only party talking about our assets – like energy and water – being nationalised rather than continuing to make huge profits for the already very wealthy.

Our mission stays the same.

Replace Labour. Take on Reform.

The Green Party will not be discussing all this as part of a Clacton by-election campaign, because they won’t be running. It might have been better if they had, but given that it’s not really a proper by-election, they’ve seemingly decided they can call out Farage from the sidelines and get just as much benefit.

Whether this works in practice remains to be seen. Our worry is that there will be a lot of criticism of Farage’s financial affairs, yes, but the criticism which cuts through will come from other parties. In other words, the Greens will have squandered an opportunity to lead the national conversation like they did in the Gorton & Denton by-election.

Either way, we agree that we need to get big money out of politics. And we need to seize every opportunity to shout that message from the rooftops.

Featured image via the Canary

By Willem Moore





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