No such thing as a free polity

‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. So goes the dictum of the late Milton Friedman, not one of my favourite economists but he was right on this if not much else. The same adage applies to the funding of parties in democratic political systems.
Government on the cheap through political parties that take large sums from wealthy organisations or individuals, serves the people ill and has a high but hidden price. Good government unreliant on sectional interests is not a free good, it comes at a modest cost but it is a price that is well worth paying.
So I was pleased to see reports that an incoming government formed by the current opposition would substantially increase the public funding of political parties and introduce a cap on individual donations.
I hope that these reports are true and that other political parties will accept this policy – by in one case insisting on what they originally stood for and in another by changing tack and putting the public interest before their own.
Inducement to put private or sectional interests before the public interest is what most major donations to political parties are all about. This of course will always be denied, but you’d have to be pretty credulous to believe that kindness of heart, self-denial or a generous concern for the common good were the true motivations. There are undocumented but effective understandings between donor and recipient.
What the country in fact gets is policy bias, more than a little something in return, which will also, of course, be denied. This bias in government policy that can cost many, many times more than increased public funding up front and it can also lead to an overcrowded House of Lords and so yet more policy bias in the future.
Our friends the lawyers and the more self-serving politicians will no doubt attempt to weasel their way round any such regulations limiting the size of contributions (witness the political action committees in the US).
But the system that results from enhanced public financial support and donations capped to four figures is still going to be far better than the deeply flawed one that we have had to put up with, and bear the cost of, for so many years.