elections
Government Accused of “Destroying” Independence of UK’s Election Watchdog as New “Priorities” Imposed on Electoral Commission
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The Conservatives have sparked fresh fears over the independence of the UK's election watchdog as they published a new strategy for the Electoral Commission.
Democracy campaigners are concerned that the Government is eroding the freedom of the Electoral Commission, which regulates UK elections and donations, from ministerial interference, following the passing of last year’s Elections Act.
In a statement to the Commons, Simon Hoare, Minister for Local Government, said the Government was committed to a “secure, fair, modern, and transparent democracy”. But Ministers are now able to guide the watchdog’s strategy and priorities after pushing through legislation in 2022 despite strong opposition.
The Government’s priorities for the watchdog largely concern voter fraud, enhancing election accessibility, and boosting participation. However, critics point out that voter fraud is a rare occurrence in the UK. Instead, issues surrounding electoral malpractice by candidates and parties, and questionable political donations barely get a mention.
And despite concerns over the EC’s independence being raised in a public consultation this summer, the Government has chosen not to amend the draft Statement from June 2023.
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There are no mentions of electoral threats like artificial intelligence (such as ‘deepfakes’ intended to trick voters) or misinformation in the new strategy document.
Lord Rennard, a Liberal Democrat peer and vocal opponent of the Elections Act, has sharply criticised the move. He highlighted that allowing a Secretary of State to set a Strategy & Policy Statement for the Electoral Commission gravely undermines its independence.
This concern was echoed by eight of the nine Commissioners in a strongly worded letter to ministers.
Rennard also points out that the changes in the composition of the Speaker's Committee, now give the Conservative Party an effective majority in “scrutinising” the Electoral Commission.
The Electoral Commission's independence has been further brought into question following the effective ousting of Sir John Holmes, after the Commission investigated alleged illegal activities by a Conservative Party MP, Craig Mackinlay, in the 2015 general election under his tenure. Mackinlay was cleared of all charges but local staffer Marion Little, 63, was convicted of two charges related to fiddling election expenses.
Lord Rennard accused the Conservatives of altering electoral laws in their favour and hindering investigations into campaign finance breaches, and backed tougher action on electoral wrongdoing by the National Crime Agency in the wake of the clampdown on the EC.
Tom Brake, Director of Unlock Democracy, told Byline Times: “The government is at sixes and sevens on this. It can't on the one hand claim 'it is vital for the health of democracy that the UK have an independent regulator' whilst at the same time writing its Strategy and Policy Statement, destroying its independence.
“There is a simple course of action. Stop interfering with the Electoral Commission and let it set its own path.”
Dr Jess Garland, director of policy and research for the Electoral Reform Society, added that the group was concerned that the new policy “unnecessarily impinges” on the Electoral Commission’s independence.
“The statement before Parliament [last] week seeks to reassure on that point, but there is no guarantee of a similar approach in future. If the government intends to maintain the operational independence of the Electoral Commission then why do they need to set a strategy and policy statement in the first place?”
The Fifth Report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life was emphatic: “Those who have advocated the establishment of an Electoral Commission have been emphatic that it should be independent both of the government of the day and of the political parties. We agree. An Election Commission in a democracy like ours could not function properly, or indeed at all, unless it were scrupulously impartial and believed to be so by everyone seriously involved and by the public at large.”
The Government ignored and overrode the warnings. You can read the Government’s statement on the changes here and the new Government priorities for the Electoral Commission here.
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UK’s Politics Now Wide Open to Foreign Donations, Peers Warn, as Government Scraps Time Limit on Brits’ Donations from Abroad
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The floodgates have been opened to foreign interference in British democracy, peers have warned, as ministers pushed through the extension of votes - and donations - for life for Brits who live abroad.
The Government has just extended voting and political donation rights to British citizens living abroad, irrespective of how long they have been away from the UK. It was a manifesto pledge from the Conservatives in 2019, but critics have noted there are few checks to ensure that the sources of donations from abroad can be vetted.
This move has sparked a heated debate about the integrity of the UK's democratic process, particularly in light of the lack of checks on political donations from abroad.
On Tuesday, Byline Times covered a damning new report finding that the UK Government is “almost certain that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 general election”.
The Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, comprising MPs and peers from both Houses of Parliament, said it was alarmed that attempts to interfere may be made in the next general election – with no proper protection for politicians and political parties – and have sought an urgent meeting with the National Cyber Security Centre to discuss the matter.
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In the debate on changes to the Representation of the People (Overseas Electors Amendment) Regulations on Tuesday night (12 December), Minister Baroness Penn, representing the Government, argued that overseas electors should be considered an integral part of the democracy and have the same rights as other citizens, including making political donations.
But Labour’s Lord Khan, supported by a majority in the House, warned the changes could "dangerously weaken" restrictions on overseas political donations and allow more foreign money to influence British politics.
With some 30 seats in the last general election decided by fewer than 1,000 votes, even a small number of overseas votes could swing results. And the new registration rules, which allow any UK voter to attest to the identity and past location of an overseas voter, were seen as potentially vulnerable to manipulation. This loophole, critics argue, could be exploited by those wishing to influence elections in specific seats by claiming they lived in swing seats some decades ago.
Bungs from Moscow
Under current rules, political donors who contribute more than £500 must be on the electoral register. The removal of the 15-year limit, however, might allow individuals with minimal connections to the UK, possibly from states hostile to Britain, to exert significant influence through financial contributions, opposition peers warned.
And Lord Khan noted that Brits who live in Russia and haven’t returned to the UK for decades could now donate vast sums from Moscow to political parties here.
“It is beyond belief that the Government [is] seeking to risk opening our system at such a critical time for our world. What would a political party do if, for instance, it were offered a donation of £50,000 by somebody who lives and works in Moscow today?” Lord Khan said.
The Labour front bench, represented by Lord Khan, as well as Liberal Democrats stressed that this could open the door to manipulation by hostile foreign actors.
There is no single body responsible for investigating the sources of donations, and donations made by Brits living abroad for decades will likely be treated the same as any other - rather than as ‘foreign’ donations which are theoretically illegal in the UK.
Lib Dem peer Lord Rennard was particularly concerned about the changes, arguing: “The absence of any cap on the size of donations will no doubt encourage more donations of, say, £5 million-plus to come from people whose real interests are not in this country.
“Why should a billionaire tax exile be able to fund a political party in the UK, and who knows where their money really comes from?”
EXCLUSIVE
There are fears lax rules could allow unfettered cash to flood in to UK politics from abroad
Josiah Mortimer
No Scrutiny
He added that the Government has “clipped the wings” of the previously independent Electoral Commission through the Elections Act 2022, and stripped it of the ability to launch criminal investigations into election finance laws.
There is also doubt over how fines can be levied to Brits abroad who are abusing the new rules.
“Political parties themselves have very little capacity to scrutinise overseas bank accounts, or to inspect the accounts of companies operating overseas, even if they want to. Earlier this year, the Government rejected an amendment to the then National Security Bill which would have insisted on greater scrutiny of the original sources of donations to parties. I wonder why?” Lord Rennard asked.
The chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Julian Lewis, earlier this year backed tougher checks, noting that “the UK has clearly welcomed Russian money, including in the political sphere … We must protect against covert, foreign state-backed financial donations if we are to defend our democratic institutions from harmful interference and influence”
However, the Government voted against tougher checks by parties on sources of donations. “I think perhaps we should be told [why]” Lord Rennard said.
Lord Rennard suggested alternative models, such as overseas constituencies similar to those in France and Italy, to better represent citizens living abroad and avoid swing seat results being changed by those with little connection to the UK, as well as beefed up investigatory powers for the Electoral Commission and National Crime Agency.
Last month, the Government announced an increase in national party spending limits of 80%, allowing a party to spend up to £35 million in a general election year. The Conservatives are currently out-fundraising Labour by millions of pounds per quarter.
But Boris Johnson’s party spent just £16 million on his successful election campaign in 2019. “The reason for the new limits must in part be to allow for major new donations from abroad,” Lord Rennard said.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab) also pointed out that the slogan of the Boston Tea Party which triggered the American war of independence was: “No taxation without representation”.
“What we have in this case is clearly representation without taxation, as people can have very vestigial links,” the Welsh peer said.
An approach to foreign influence that relies on identifying particular state threats risks shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, writes Tom Griffin
Tom Griffin
Fraud Risk
Lord Anderson added that the idea of fining Brits abroad who breach election law - for example, by falsely claiming to have lived in a certain seat when in the UK - is “absurd”.
“How can any fines be enforced on someone who lives a good distance abroad? This is just window dressing; it is a spurious suggestion. What is the real motive of the Government in pressing this?..It is not the advance of democracy; instead, it gives the opportunity for many people to interfere in our elections.”
And he questioned whether the Government expects wealthy donors abroad to “suddenly surface” as a result of the proposals. “In their dying days, this Government have brought forward these proposals. My hope is that an incoming Labour Government will speedily reverse them,” the Labour peer said.
In theory, someone could have lived abroad for 50 years, with little evidence of where they used to vote, and a friend could vouch that they were telling the truth about their eligibility to cast their vote in a marginal seat and to make unlimited donations to a political party. The same “vouching” rules do not apply to voter identification, where the Government rejected people being able to “attest” for someone’s identity if they lack ID at the polling station.
There are an estimated 3.5 million British overseas citizens, amounting to roughly 5,500 per constituency, if they all registered. “If we assume that no more than 50% register, that is still well over 2,000 per constituency,” Lib Dem Lord Wallace said. Currently, around one million Brits abroad are eligible to vote (having lived abroad for up to 15 years), though that is now expected to grow to encompass nearly all the 3.5 million.
Lord Khan noted in the debate there were “already clear evidence of attempts by [foreign state] actors to influence UK democracy.”
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Big questions remain about Russia’s attempts to interfere in US elections
Stephen Humphreys
Already Happening
One of the largest donations to the Conservative Party this year, of £5 million, came from someone whose financial interests are centred in Dubai, one of the main offshore centres for Russian and Chinese money, Lord Wallace noted. Another of the largest such donations, of £2 million, came from a Tory-backer whose financial and commercial interests are in Indonesia and Thailand.
The Government appears to have noted the threat of foreign interference, with Penny Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons, writing to Tom Tugendhat, Security Minister, in September to call “for a new intelligence-sharing framework between the security services and the UK’s main parties”.
He added: “Some government insiders fear parties have too little access to sensitive information about potential donors.” Mordaunt was reportedly working with officials to identify new mechanisms for data sharing between intelligence officials and political parties. There is no allegation the rules were broken.
The Electoral Commission does not have powers to investigate either registration or the source of donations in other countries, Lords heard.
Lord Khan’s amendment to the Government motion, expressing “regret” over the heightened risk of foreign interference, passed after crossbenchers, Lib Dems and Labour peers got behind it. However, the changes as a whole are now law.
Baroness Penn, representing the Government, defended the move, saying, "Overseas electors are important participants in our democracy, and it is only right that they should be able to make donations to political parties in Great Britain in the same way as other citizens registered on the electoral roll in Great Britain…
“UK electoral law sets out a stringent regime of donations controls to ensure that only those with a legitimate interest in UK elections can make political donations, and that political donations are transparent. The same transparency measures will apply to those who are empowered to vote and donate through this expansion of the franchise, as applies to existing voters. Money from a foreign or unknown source is illegal.”
During the passage of the then National Security Bill, the Government committed to undertake a consultation on enhanced information sharing between parties, regulators and police to help “identify and mitigate” foreign interference in political donations. The Government will lay a report on that before Parliament by the end of next year, Baroness Penn said.
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‘One of the World’s Most Cyber-Attacked Nations’: Parliamentary Report Confirms Russian Interference Attempts in UK Elections – and Slams Braverman’s Inaction to Prioritise ‘Stopping the Boats’
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“The UK Government is almost certain that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 general election”, according to a stark new report on an issue consistently under-investigated by the Conservative Government and under-reported by the established press.
The Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, comprising MPs and peers from both Houses of Parliament, is alarmed that attempts to interfere may be made in the next general election – with no proper protection for politicians and political parties – and have sought an urgent meeting with the National Cyber Security Centre to discuss the matter.
“It is unclear if the support for ‘high-risk individuals’ will be offered to all parties before, during, and after an election and what work the NCSC is doing to preserve the integrity of free and fair elections in the UK overall,” the Committee said. “This work is vital to defending democracy and providing impartial support.”
The disclosure has brought condemnation from MPs and the advocacy group The Citizens, since the Government has previously denied there were any attempts of Russian interference in the 2019 General Election and during the 2016 EU Referendum.
In a striking conclusion, the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy states that its report “confirms that Russia’s Federal Security Service has carried out multiple attacks on the UK since at least as early as 2015 and at key times including around the 2019 General Election” and that, despite this, and while still refusing to carry out a full investigation, “the Government continues to assert today that attempts to interfere with UK politics and democracy have not been successful”.
The committee states that this position is “untenable” and called on the Government to “now, finally, commence a full investigation of foreign interference” as recommended by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee’s 2020 Russia Report.
It said that the National Cyber Security Centre believes a failure to do so “puts the UK’s democratic processes at grave risk”.
Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, who first raised the issue of Russian interference in UK politics in December 2016, told Byline Times: “I am flabbergasted that, having denied or obfuscated this for years and resisted our legal attempts to get them to investigate Russian interference all the way through the courts, the Government is now admitting it’s been going on since before the Brexit Referendum, as many of us said at the time.”
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A group of MPs, including Bradshaw, Green MP Caroline Lucas and Labour’s Chris Bryant, failed in their judicial review – an attempt to compel then Prime Minister Boris Johnson to investigate Russian interference in UK elections – after a judge ruled in 2021 that their concerns were a “matter for politics rather than the law”.
Clara Maguire, executive director of The Citizens, said “the Government’s acknowledgements fly in the face” of what it told the High Court in 2021. “It is also significant that no mention of Brexit is made anywhere in this disclosure. We need to know who these named individuals are, what information has now come to light, when the Government discovered this, and why they denied the significance of these attacks in the court case we brought.”
Stop the Boats But Ignore Russian Interference
The disclosure comes in a scathing committee report that states the entire UK is at risk from a catastrophic ransomware attack that could disrupt the country.
It puts the blame squarely on former Home Secretary Suella Braverman for ignoring the issue to concentrate on illegal immigration and ‘stopping the boats’. It says she “showed no interest in it”, with clear political priority given to other matters such as illegal migration.
The report states that Braverman could have introduced new legislation to protect people from cyber and ransomware attacks but did not include it in the King’s Speech, and calls for the Home Office to be stripped of its responsibility for cyber security and ransomware and for this to be handed over to the Cabinet Office.
“Russia-based and Iran-based actors continue to conduct spear-phishing campaigns against politicians, journalists, activists and other groups”, according to the report. And “Russian-speaking actors are the source of most attributable ransomware attacks against UK targets”.
“The Russian Government’s tacit (or even explicit) approval of these attacks is consistent with the Kremlin’s disruptive, zero-sum-game approach to the West,” the report adds. “It also provides revenue to the Putin regime’s well-oiled network of corruption and criminality.
“For many Russian hackers, ransomware is simply an easy way to make large sums of money, with next to no chance of being caught or prosecuted… the sheer scale of the threat demonstrates how vital it is that the UK is adequately resourced to upscale its defences, and to prepare for a major attack.”
The report cites the huge rise in ransomware attacks since the 2019 General Election with Sellafield, the NHS, private firms, local government, and the British Library, often given as targets as part of global attacks.
One example it points to is the North Korean WannaCry ransomware attack of 2017, when 200,000 computers were attacked worldwide including the NHS which cost the health service £92 million.
The report states that 2021 was the best year for ransomware but this year it expects it is on the rise again, with suspected record pay-outs to hackers. Hackers are also getting more sophisticated and have increased their demands, going “game hunting” for big organisations and individuals and sometimes tripling their demands.
“Large swathes of UK critical national infrastructure remain vulnerable to ransomware, particularly in sectors still relying on legacy IT systems, and we have particular concerns about cash-strapped sectors such as health and local government,” the report states.
I Spent Years Imploring the Conservatives to Investigate Russian Interference. They Didn’t Listen
As a Labour MP investigating disinformation, Ian Lucas saw first-hand the Government’s attempts to duck the question of Russia
Ian Lucas
Previous Warnings Ignored
MPs Bradshaw, Lucas and the SNP’s Alyn Smith – with support from The Citizens – made a submission to the European Court of Human Rights last March in a claim that the UK Government is infringing their rights to free and fair elections by failing to act on the findings of the Russia Report.
That inquiry found that the Government had “actively avoided looking for evidence that Russia interfered” in the UK’s democratic processes and that the “outrage is that no one wanted to know if there was interference” or not.
Then Prime Minister Johnson had suppressed the report in the run-up to the 2019 General Election for reasons unknown. Three years before, as Foreign Secretary, he claimed there was “not a sausage” of evidence of Russian President Vladimir Putin meddling in Brexit. Johnson’s associations with influential Russians have been explored in detail by Byline Times in recent years.
But the Russia Report was not the first inquiry into the issue that raised concerns.
The 2019 report of the House of Commons’ Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, examining disinformation and fake news, outlined the impact of the Russian Embassy in London and state-backed media outlets RT and Sputnik, in supporting the leave campaigns during the EU Referendum. It also revealed the role of social media operations through Russia’s Internet Research Agency and the now defunct data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.
Labour’s Dame Margaret Beckett, chair of the National Security Strategy Committee, said the UK has “the dubious distinction of being one of the world’s most cyber-attacked nations”.
“It is clear to the committee that the Government’s investment in, and response to, this threat are not equally world-beating – leaving us exposed to catastrophic costs and destabilising political interference,” she said.
“In the likely event of a massive, catastrophic ransomware attack, the failure to rise to meet this challenge will rightly be seen as an inexcusable strategic failure.
“Our main legislative framework is irresponsibly outdated and the Government missed another chance to rectify this in the latest King’s Speech. The agencies tasked with detecting, responding to, and recovering from ransomware attacks – and degrading further attack capabilities – are under-resourced and lacking key skills and capabilities.
“If the UK is to avoid being held hostage to fortune, it is vital that ransomware becomes a more pressing political priority, and that more resources are devoted to tackling this pernicious threat to the UK’s national security.”
A Government spokesperson told Byline Times:
“We welcome the JCNSS’s report and will publish a full response in due course.
“The UK is well prepared to respond to cyber threats and has taken robust action to improve our cyber defences, investing £2.6bn under our Cyber Security Strategy and rolling out the first ever Government-backed minimum standards for cyber security through the NCSC’s Cyber Essentials scheme.
“We have also, this year, sanctioned 18 criminals responsible for spreading a prolific ransomware strain, taken down a piece of malware that infected 700,000 computers and led on an unprecedented international statement denouncing ransom payments, signed by 46 nations.”
Norman Lear (1922-2023)
On December 5, 2023, Norman Lear died at his home in Los Angeles, aged 101.
On June 16, 2015, I met up with Lear, who is the proud owner of a rare Dunlap broadside copy of the Declaration of Independence, to talk about voting rights... READ MORE
UK’s Next General Election is Wide Open to Foreign Interference, Corruption Watchdog Warns
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The integrity of the UK’s next election is at serious risk from rogue actors overseas, according to a corruption watchdog.
Spotlight on Corruption has written to the National Crime Agency (NCA) to urge it to take a leading role in coordinating enforcement of the UK’s electoral finance laws – arguing that Britain is currently “exposed to dirty money and foreign influence”.
This letter comes in the week that the Commons has waved through new regulations under the Elections Act 2022 that allow a huge expansion in overseas votes with few checks. The regulations will go to the Lords next week, where the Labour front bench has laid down a motion of regret that the regulations will “allow foreign money to enter our democracy.”
Up to 3.4 million UK citizens abroad will soon become eligible to vote and, as a result, donate – and spend potentially significant amounts on UK elections as non-party campaigners. The new voters will be able to use Brits living here to vouch for their identity and electoral administrators have few powers to enforce penalties abroad against fraudulent applications.
The Spotlight on Corruption letter also comes at a time when trust in the UK’s electoral system is at “an all-time low” the group argues. The Electoral Commission reports that 52% of people think foreign influence on UK election results is a problem, and only 30% think the authorities would take appropriate action.
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As the letter highlights, there is currently no single law enforcement body with overall responsibility for criminal enforcement of the UK’s electoral finance laws, or of the new rules in the National Security Act to prevent foreign interference.
The Electoral Commission lost its powers under the Elections Act 2022 to bring criminal proceedings and has itself highlighted gaps in criminal enforcement.
There is now a “grave risk” that there is no effective criminal deterrence against rogue actors who may seek to undermine the UK’s electoral processes, SoC says.
The only police force with a specialist unit to tackle electoral law breaches is the Metropolitan Police. But its remit is limited to electoral fraud and malpractice within London, and – as a Freedom of Information request by SoC revealed – it has not carried out a single investigation into two key offences under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendum Act 2000 in the past 13 years.
The offences include facilitating the making of an unlawful donation, and failing to provide information to a party about a principal donor. The force has even recently asked to completely withdraw from enforcing election finance offences.
The NCA – with its broad national-level powers, specialist legal tools for tackling national security risks and money laundering, and its close working relationship with MI5 – has the ability to coordinate and lead criminal enforcement of the UK’s electoral laws.
However, “time and again it appears to have taken a back seat on enforcement of electoral law breaches, or ruled out further action when cases have been referred to it” Spotlight on Corruption warns.
In their letter, the group raises a serious questions about how the NCA is interpreting its mandate to protect the UK from national security and money laundering risks in election finance, what assessment it has made of the weaknesses in electoral finance laws that impede its ability to act, and what action it has taken on four specific recent cases which raised serious questions about alleged foreign interference or dirty money entering the UK’s electoral system.
EXCLUSIVE
The change means parties will now be allowed to spend over £30m in order to win a General Election
Josiah Mortimer
Dr Susan Hawley, Executive Director of Spotlight on Corruption said: “The government has talked tough on tackling the issue of foreign interference but, by expanding the overseas vote with so few checks, they are leaving the integrity of our next general election at serious risk.
“The government must urgently address the many glaring loopholes in our electoral rules and step up criminal enforcement of those rules, which is currently almost non-existent. Only the NCA has the national-level powers to coordinate an effective enforcement response to these risks. Ministers must give them the remit and resources to ensure that our democratic process is protected from hostile powers and dirty money.”
Spotlight on Corruption is a charity set up to “shine a light on the UK’s role in corruption at home and abroad” by scrutinising the UK’s anti-corruption laws and international anti-corruption commitments and how they are enforced.
Letter to the NCA in Full
Dear Mr Biggar [Graeme Biggar, Director General of the National Crime Agency],
Addressing the UK’s enforcement gap in relation to election finance
We are writing to establish how the National Crime Agency (‘NCA’) is exercising its functions and making use of its powers and resources in light of the significant threats posed by foreign interference and dirty money to UK elections and the real risks that our democratic processes could be compromised as a result.
As the UK approaches a general election, it is imperative for the public to understand if, and to what extent, the current weaknesses in criminal enforcement of electoral finance laws result from decisions about the application and prioritisation of existing enforcement powers, or, and to what extent, they result from gaps in the law...
Government policy and increased risks of election finance crime
The current Government has made it a priority to protect the integrity of the UK’s democracy – including by preventing foreign interference in our elections – following on from commitments made in the Conservative party’s 2019 Election Manifesto.
To meet these commitments, the Government introduced the Elections Act 2022, and has implemented the Electoral Integrity Programme to strengthen the integrity of the UK’s democracy. It has also introduced a series of measures that focus on tackling hostile state interference in the UK’s democracy, including the National Security Act 2023, the Defending Democracy Taskforce and the Integrated Review Refresh.
The Elections Act 2022 removed the 15-year limit on British citizens living overseas being allowed to vote in UK elections, extending the franchise to all British citizens who have lived in the UK. Newly eligible voters will be able to register from January 2024 once regulations have passed through Parliament.
EXCLUSIVE
There are fears lax rules could allow unfettered cash to flood in to UK politics from abroad
Josiah Mortimer
The Government estimates that, as a result of the change, between 3.2-3.4 million British nationals living overseas could become eligible to vote, (and therefore donate to candidates and political parties) and form unincorporated associations if they are composed of two or more overseas electors in order to spend potentially significant amounts of money on UK election campaigns.
Concerns have previously been raised by the Electoral Commission that these sorts of measures may increase levels of fraud. This is particularly due to the fact that overseas voters will be able to provide an attestation of their identity by another overseas voter, and it will be difficult for electoral authorities to enforce penalties against those who provide false identity information or false attestations.
The Elections Act 2022 also removed the Electoral Commission’s power to institute criminal proceedings although it retains responsibility for civil enforcement.15 The Government has recognised that it may be difficult for the Electoral Commission to enforce restrictions on foreign spending internationally “as it is outside of their jurisdiction.”
At a time of increased risk of electoral fraud overseas, and of donations originating from overseas, it is currently not clear which enforcement body in the UK now has overall responsibility for leading the UK’s strategic, national enforcement response to serious criminal offences under Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA)and the foreign interference regime in the National Security Act 2023.
This means that there is a grave risk that there is no effective criminal deterrence against rogue actors who may seek to undermine the UK’s electoral processes.
The NCA’s role in relation to election finance offences
It is clear to us, from a review of the NCA’s statutory duties, powers and strategic and operational priorities that there is an overwhelming case that the NCA can and should be leading and coordinating the national response to these crimes, by scaling up its expertise and capacity, investigating and coordinating enforcement activities, making full use of its powers through enhanced collaboration with the Electoral Commission, Metropolitan Police Service (‘MPS’) and other agencies, and publicly committing to more robust enforcement.
The Crime and Courts Act 2013 confers significant functions on the NCA – including crime reduction, criminal intelligence and the functions conferred by the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
In exercising the NCA’s functions, you must have regard to the priorities set by the Secretary of State, the NCA’s annual plan and the framework document. Current strategic priorities include: “intensify its work to tackle the threat from hostile states, corrupt elites, cyber and economic crime” and “play a full role in delivering the Government’s wider strategy to reduce crime and respond to national security threats.” Current operational priorities include: “strengthen our leadership role with partners and the public”, where success will be measured by a more cohesive, efficient and effective national operational response to threats.
Increasing the amount political parties can spend on general elections is another warning sign for British democracy
Lord Chris Rennard
From the strategic and operational priorities, it is clear that the NCA should play a lead role in coordinating the national enforcement response to serious crime in election finance, intensify its work tackling the threat from hostile states to the UK’s democracy and help to deliver the Government’s strategy to respond to national security threats in UK electoral processes. The agency is also uniquely well-placed to tackle money laundering in UK election finance.
The NCA also has considerable tools to deliver on these enforcement outcomes which are not available to other agencies. These include its oversight of the UK’s strategic response to high-end money laundering, powers under the Criminal Finances Act 2017, International Liaison Officers and broader cooperation with overseas law enforcement agencies, human and technical intelligence-gathering capabilities, intelligence-sharing through the International Crime Bureau and access to suspicious activity report data.
The NCA has particular powers, capabilities and networks to investigate foreign interference in the UK’s democracy. The agency’s close working relationship with the Security Service (MI5) is at the heart of “collective efforts to keep the country safe from all threats to national security”. This relationship includes sharing intelligence, assessments of current threats and collaboration on investigations to enhance your evidence-gathering capability.
It is essential that the NCA robustly addresses malign influence in electoral finance in order to properly discharge its functions and to have meaningful regard to its strategic and operational priorities. Trust in the administration of the UK’s elections is at stake with only only 30% of people thinking the authorities would take appropriate action if a political party is caught breaking the rules.
However, from our review of recent cases, we are very concerned that the NCA appears to have taken a backseat in enforcement. In the few cases that the NCA has commented on in recent years involving alleged donations from foreign sources and/or allegedly linked to money laundering or other criminality, it has expressly ruled out or has taken no further action on every occasion.
The current enforcement gap in election finance
The Electoral Commission works with the National Police Chiefs’ Council (‘NPCC’) and the City of London Police to provide support and training to a network of police specialists in election crimes, and the NPCC has a Lead for Financial Investigations and Elections. However, the Electoral Commission has identified that:
“…the overall system is not coherent and does not provide an effective deterrent. For offences which involve intent or recklessness, the only option is police investigation and then criminal prosecution. This means there is still an ‘enforcement gap’ for cases which are intentional but which are not, from a police perspective, in the public interest to take forward. Police forces’ pressured resources are understandably commonly prioritised to both more traditional police work and importantly serious victim-based crimes.”
The MPS Special Enquiry Team investigates allegations of electoral fraud and malpractice within London. However, the Team does not have the NCA’s broad national-level powers or suite of legal tools to tackle national security risks and money laundering in election finance, or significant alleged breaches of UK political finance law that originate from complex agency-based or corporate overseas-based movements of funds.
The MPS has carried out no investigations into possible offences under sections 54(7) or 61(1) of PPERA since 2010 and has recently proposed that it fully withdraw from enforcing election finance offences. The Electoral Commission has raised concerns about the lack of criminal enforcement, emphasising that, “Voters and campaigners should be able to know that non-compliance will be identified and dealt with proportionately and swiftly. The absence of any criminal prosecutions undermines the ability to deter or punish offences.”
The Electoral Commission shares information about potential criminal offences with other investigating or prosecuting authorities, but both the Electoral Commission and MPS have said that the current information-sharing powers are inadequate. The NCA’s broad information-sharing powers, and the functions conferred by the Crime and Courts Act 2013, underscore the need for it to step up to fill the UK’s current enforcement gap, and to take a lead in coordinating a national enforcement response to serious crime in election finance – including foreign interference and money laundering.
EXCLUSIVE
EXCLUSIVE: The Chancellor is lavishing cash at areas under significant threat from Labour
Josiah Mortimer
Election finance offences include serious crimes that cause significant harms
Political party funding from donors with links to corruption, money laundering or hostile states represents a fundamental threat to the UK’s democracy and national security. Dirty money leaves parties and MPs exposed to malign influence and the criminals and politically exposed persons who provide it, risks fostering dependence on criminal funds and undermines the integrity of our democratic processes. The risks are compounded by the limited statutory requirements on political parties to run checks on donations.
Independent bodies and MI5 have issued a series of warnings that hostile states have sought to influence our democratic processes by donating to political parties. For example, a report by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) in 2020 identified that members of the Russian elite linked to Vladimir Putin had donated to UK political parties.
In January 2022, MI5 warned that an alleged Chinese agent had sought to influence UK parliamentarians on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party, having donated to Labour and the Liberal Democrats. The ISC’s recent report on China said the country has sought to influence UK political thinking and decision-making, including through channelling donations to political parties.
Changes resulting from the Elections Act 2022 to the franchise for overseas voters meanwhile have created new risks of potentially suspect funds or funds linked to foreign influence operations entering UK electoral finance through donations made from abroad. These are risks that the NCA is more suited than any other enforcement body in the UK, with its wide international reach and proactive surveillance powers, to monitor and investigate.
EXCLUSIVE
UK authorities have alarmingly few powers to prevent bad actors from interfering with our democracy
Josiah Mortimer
Potential loopholes in our election finance laws
It may be that the NCA is unable to exercise any significant role in enforcing the UK’s current electoral finance laws because of the serious weaknesses in them. If that is the case, it is crucial for the public and policymakers to understand how enforcement in this area is being affected by the legal framework and what needs to change.
Some of these weaknesses may include that:
● The NCA has stated that it is lawful for a permissible donor to make a donation that comes from funds derived from someone overseas as long as it is the donor’s decision to donate.
● The Electoral Commission has identified that UK elections law “is silent on whether or not money obtained from crime would make a political contribution unlawful”.
● There are no requirements under the PPERA for parties and MPs to undertake due diligence on donations or to identify the true source of donated funds.
● A UK-registered company or limited liability partnership may donate money to a UK political party provided it “carries on business in the UK”, with no requirement for this to come from profits generated in the UK. The Electoral Commission has identified this as creating a risk of political parties accepting proceeds of crime.
● Unincorporated associations are not required to ensure that those who make donations to them are lawful donors, and only need to disclose whatever details they know of the name and address of a person who makes any political gift above £7,500.
Next steps
Given the seriousness of the issues raised in this letter and the critical need to restore public trust going into the general election, we would be grateful if you could acknowledge receipt by return and provide a full response with reasons to the following questions within 28 days of the date of this letter, by 2 January 2024:
Has the NCA identified specific gaps in the current election finance laws that have impinged on its ability to undertake election finance investigations under PPERA?
[Read the questions in full here].
We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss these issues. We look forward to hearing from you.
Yours, Susan Hawley
Executive Director, Spotlight on Corruption
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Josiah Mortimer also writes the On the Ground column, exclusive to the print edition of Byline Times.
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Outcry as Government Proposes Letting Brits ‘Vouch’ for Overseas Voters’ Identities – While Denying Same Chance for In-Person Voters Who Lack ID
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The Government has been accused of “corrupting democracy” as it pushes through legislation that will allow Brits living overseas to have their identity confirmed by an existing UK voter – while rejecting calls for the same rules to apply to in-person voters who lack photo ID.
A little-known piece of legislation – the Draft Representation of the People (Overseas Electors etc.) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 – is currently sitting in Parliament after being drawn up by ministers, and does not require a parliamentary vote to pass.
It will allow overseas voters to have their identity vouched for by a currently-registered voter, when they sign up to vote abroad. Voters living here can already register this way, though the process is rarely used, and there are fears that relaxed rules for overseas voters could open the UK up to foreign interference and a flood of opaque donations.
Ministers have just raised the spending limit by 80% for general elections for political parties – again without a parliamentary vote – while separate legislation has scrapped the previous 15-year limit that people could live abroad and continue to be able to vote.
In theory, someone could have lived abroad for 50 years, with little evidence of where they used to vote – and a friend living in the UK could vouch that they were telling the truth about their eligibility to cast their ballot in a key swing seat.
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Liberal Democrat peer Lord Chris Rennard is sounding the alarm about the plans, arguing that the so-called ‘attestation’ rules letting overseas citizens register to vote without firm documentation showing they used to live in the UK will enable Brits overseas to donate unlimited sums to political causes.
It comes after the Government controversially rejected calls from the Electoral Commission watchdog and democracy campaigners to let voters bring alternative forms of voter identification following May’s elections or to allow others to ‘attest’ to the identity of those who lack ID.
At least 14,000 voters were turned away from polling stations and denied a vote in England in May. There are fears as many as 100,000 people could be turned away in next year’s general election.
EXCLUSIVE
More than 100,000 voters could be turned away at the next General Election according to one forecast
Josiah Mortimer
“There is a clear pattern of this Government bending election rules in their favour," Lord Rennard told Byline Times. "Jacob Rees-Mogg admitted that the strict voter ID rules were a form of 'gerrymandering'.
“One way of helping to ensure that legitimate voters can participate in elections would be to allow 'attestation' at the polling stations. This work, for example, in Canada where voters with the requisite ID can 'vouch' for someone on the electoral roll but who is without the necessary photo ID. The Government has recently rejected this sensible proposal in order to limit participation.
“Such a process as attestation can be used to get on the electoral register and this may be crucial for registering more of the UK citizens who have been living overseas for more than 15 years.”
He believes the Government's motive for the change in overseas voter registration may be “principally linked to allowing unlimited donations from these people”.
“It seems wrong that a form of attestation may be used to register people to vote when there is no evidence of a previous address in the UK, whilst not allowing a similar process for people who are on the electoral registers but do not have the specific forms of Photo ID to vote at a polling station," he added.
“The Government is not bothered about the right to vote – it is concerned about raising big donations from people without stringent checks on the original sources of funding. This corrupts democracy."
A spokesperson for the Electoral Commission confirmed that so-called attestation rules would apply to oversees voters registering, but not those who lack ID and try to vote in person.
They said: “When applying to register, overseas voters will be able to supply an attestation of registration status from a qualifying voter, or an attestation of relevant address connection. We will be publishing our guidance with further detail in the coming weeks.
“Attestations are already an option for verifying a UK-based person’s identity in the process of registering to vote. It is not currently used in the voting process, but we recommended that the same principle could be extended to polling stations to vouch for those without ID. This would help to improve accessibility and support those people who do not have an accepted form of ID.”
Campaign group British in Europe has broadly welcomed the changes in a briefing.
There will be a limit of two people that a UK registered voter can ‘vouch’ for among overseas voters.
Revealed: Britain’s Broken Election Laws Just Got Even Worse
The Government has made it even easier for dark money, foreign influence, and the proceeds of crime to bankroll British politics
Peter Geoghegan
In practice, the short election timetable makes it hard for overseas voters to participate in UK votes, as the window for sending postal votes out and back from overseas is generally too tight. But voters including those overseas are now able to register for a postal vote online under a new government portal, making the overall process smoother.
Meanwhile, Labour peer Lord Khan of Burnley has filed an objection to the draft law saying it could “dangerously weaken the restrictions on overseas political donations and allow foreign money to enter our democracy”.
The new statutory instrument, or 'Henry VIII' order, will be debated on Wednesday in the House of Commons. The draft legislation can be read here.
The voter ID rules currently exclude several forms of ID used by young people, including Young Persons’ Railcards and some forms of student ID.
Labour refused to say whether it would repeal the ID requirements if in government, when asked by Byline Times earlier this year. The Lib Dems back repeal of the ID rules. The full list of acceptable IDs is published here.
Byline Times has extensively covered the voter ID roll-out and will be monitoring further developments.
ShoutOut UK and the Greater London Authority have launched a new WhatsApp chat bot to give advice on getting ID and registering to vote. Add +44 7908 820136 to use it.
The Department for Levelling Up was contacted for comment.
Update: This article was amended after publication to make it clear that the new online portal is for registering for a postal vote, not voting online.
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Josiah Mortimer also writes the On the Ground column, exclusive to the print edition of Byline Times.
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Could Isaac Levido Return the Conservatives to Power Again Against All the Odds?
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As the General Election exit poll was announced just after 10 pm on the evening of 12 December 2019, indicating a crushing defeat for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, staffers at Conservative campaign headquarters in Westminster began chanting a name to the tune of The White Stripes’ anthem ‘Seven Nation Army’: “Oh, Isaac Levido…”
It was not just a taunt at Corbyn, whose name had similarly been chanted to that tune by crowds of adoring supporters, but the Conservative Party election team was in no doubt that it was Levido’s work as its campaign director that had delivered Boris Johnson’s landslide.
Four years later, the party is once again putting its faith in the 39-year-old Australian wunderkind now often referred to as “the Wizard of Oz”.
So who is Isaac Levido and what is his strategy to return the Conservatives to power against all the odds?
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Max Colbert
The Protégé
For a man with such a formidable reputation, Levido keeps a low profile and grants few interviews. Those he does give tend to offer the same barebones story about his career. And since his reputation, both as a political strategist and a corporate lobbyist, is built largely around his mastery of the ‘dark arts’, his preference for the shadows could be seen as very much on-brand.
Levido does, however, cultivate a fierce sense of personal loyalty among those who work for him. After the 2019 election victory, he presented gifts to every member of his core campaign team, including a pair of cufflinks engraved with the number of additional Conservative seats they had helped to win.
Levido grew up in Port Macquarie in New South Wales, a town founded as a brutal penal colony for convicts but now a quiet coastal resort favoured by retirees from Sydney and younger professionals escaping from the big city some four hours’ drive south.
The son of a lawyer and local councillor for the Australian Liberal Party (which is much more right-wing than its name might suggest), Levido gained his first taste of campaigning in the US, where he completed a master’s degree in American government at Georgetown University.
While in Washington, he cut his teeth on Republican senatorial campaigns before landing a junior post at Australia’s Washington embassy.
His career took a decisive turn in 2013, when he approached the notorious Australian lobbyist and political fixer Lynton Crosby – the original “Wizard of Oz” – to ask for a job. Crosby liked what he saw and gave him one, at the Washington office of his lobbying outfit CTF Partners (“CTF” is from the partners’ names: Lynton Crosby, Mark Textor and Mark Fullbrook).
Little is known about who or what Levido was lobbying for in Washington, but CTF appears to have been none too fussy about its clients, provided they paid well, and the firm worked extensively for both Big Tobacco and major fossil fuel and mining interests.
In 2019, Crosby’s successor company, the C|T Group (for which Levido also worked), was revealed to have mounted a major ‘astroturfing’ operation for the multinational mining company Glencore, aimed at undermining the transition to renewable energy and influencing politicians to favour continued large-scale coal mining (unethical as this was, astroturfing is not in itself illegal) .
By the time Levido joined CTF, Crosby was already close to the British Conservative Party, having managed Michael Howard’s unsuccessful general election campaign in 2005, and then helped David Cameron to power in 2010.
He was particularly close to Boris Johnson, whose successful campaigns as Mayor of London he had directed in 2008 and 2012.
For Crosby, the line between politics and corporate lobbying has always been blurred to the point of invisibility, and his high-level political access has no doubt been a big selling point for his corporate clients.
When it comes to combining politics with the pursuit of personal profit, Isaac Levido has clearly learned a great deal from his mentor.
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Sam Bright
The 2019 General Election Campaign
In 2013, after Cameron’s Government dropped a plan to remove branding from cigarette packets, it emerged that CTF was working for Philip Morris International, the world’s largest tobacco company.
Former Liberal Democrat Health Minister Paul Burstow said: “Lynton Crosby cannot remain at the heart of government while he is also serving the interests of the tobacco industry. If he does not go, the Prime Minister should sack him.”
Crosby furiously rebutted “any claim that I have sought to improperly use my position as part-time campaign advisor to the Conservative Party”. It later emerged that he had lobbied Conservative minister Lord Marland for Philip Morris, albeit just before taking up his political role with the party. CTF partners told the Guardian that there was “no conflict of interest” because he was not working for the Conservative Party at the time.
Further questions were raised over Crosby’s close relationship with Johnson when the lobbyist accompanied the London Mayor on a trip to the United Arab Emirates to meet ultra-wealthy Gulf business people, during which he funded a networking dinner and paid for Johnson to fly back to London mid-trip so that he could be at Margaret Thatcher's funeral.
Then Conservative MP Dr Sarah Wollaston observedm of lobbying in general: "I think those lobbyists with roles at the heart of any party should have to reveal their major clients, and that includes Lynton Crosby."
None of this was likely to deter Johnson, who greatly valued Crosby’s political services – not least his ability to use ‘dead cat’ techniques to distract voters from issues that might not play well.
That the relationship was mutually beneficial was illustrated in 2019, when CTF Partners donated more than £20,000 towards Johnson’s campaign for the Conservative leadership.
But it was Levido, rather than Crosby, who stepped into the lead campaign role for Johnson in the subsequent general election, at the invitation of Vote Leave campaign director Dominic Cummings. By this time, Levido had already worked alongside Crosby at Conservative Party HQ on the 2015 General Election, as well on Theresa May’s 2017 campaign.
“I learned a huge, huge deal from him,” Levido told The Times in 2020. “I owe him a great amount. His outstanding success speaks for itself. You want to learn as much from them when they’re instructing you to do something as you do when you’re observing them undertake their role.”
The 2019 General Election campaign saw Levido deploy the full range of ‘attack, divide and distract’ techniques he had learned from Crosby, as well as some online tactics of the kind that had proved effective earlier in the year to help the Australian Liberal Party leader Scott Morrisson pull off a surprise election win.
These included setting up a misleading website under the domain name labourmanifesto.co.uk and paying Google to make it more likely that voters would find this rather than Labour’s actual manifesto; editing a video of then Shadow Foreign Secretary Keir Starmer to make it appear that he couldn’t answer a question on Brexit; and deceptively rebranding the Twitter account of the Conservative Party Press Office as a fact-checking site during a live TV debate between Johnson and Corbyn.
These digital stunts were delivered by Topham Guerin, a firm run by two young New Zealanders with whom Levido and Crosby had worked in Australia and New Zealand.
But the main thrust of the social media ‘battle of the thumbs’ was to put out a constant stream of so-called ‘boomer memes’, also produced by Topham Guerin, with two aims: to hammer home Johnson’s “Get Brexit Done” slogan and to denigrate Jeremy Corbyn.
The independent fact-checking service Full Fact found that 88% of the Facebook ads posted by the Conservative campaign in the first four days of December 2019 were misleading. Interviewed in 2019, Levido said he was “quite proud” of the digital campaign, which he described as “disruptive” and “edgy”.
An anonymous source who worked alongside Levido on Scott Morrison’s campaign told the Sydney Morning Herald how the same constant flow of crude memes had worked for that: “We’d make them really basic and deliberately lame because they’d get shares and lift our reach; that made our reach for the harder political messages higher.”
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AV Deggar
Commercial Lobbying
Johnson’s landslide win, on top of Morrison’s unexpected victory earlier in the year, confirmed Levido’s reputation as an outstandingly effective political operative. It also earned him an OBE for political services in the Queen’s 2020 Birthday Honours List.
The next step for Levido was to capitalise on this reputation in the commercial sphere – much as his mentor Crosby had done so lucratively.
Just a month after Johnson entered Number 10, Levido set up his own commercial lobbying firm, Fleetwood Strategy Limited, together with Michael Brooks, another former Crosby protégé. Peter Dominiczak, a former political editor of The Telegraph was later brought on board as a director.
Fleetwood’s website lists several other former senior government advisors and Conservative Party operatives as staffers, including: Ben Jafari (former special advisor to the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary), Henry Cook (a former senior advisor for five different government departments and a speechwriter for Johnson), and Georgia Hardisty (former assistant to the Conservative Party campaign director). Fleetwood’s team also includes a former Labour Party and trade union operative, Melantha Chittenden – a sign, perhaps, that Levido is hedging his bets.
In March 2020, Levido was called on once again by Johnson and Cummings – this time to manage public communications around the Coronavirus pandemic.
Perhaps mindful of the conflict of interest accusations that had surrounded Crosby, Levido temporarily stepped down as a director of Fleetwood while he took up this position in Downing Street. But his role at the heart of government was surely useful in cementing relationships with key government decision-makers of the sort that can be helpful to corporate lobbyists.
By mid-2023, Fleetwood’s client list as disclosed to the Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists was short but impressive, with its clients comprising: Airbnb, infrastructure group Balfour Beatty, crypto-currency platform Luno, and data analytics corporation Palantir, which had revenues of nearly €2 billion in 2022.
(Fleetwood is not registered with the Public Relations and Communications Association, which demands higher levels of transparency from its members and has called for reform of the current legal framework governing lobbying).
Balfour Beatty is a member of the ‘Build Back Better Council’ established by Johnson and a very considerable recipient of multi-million pound government contracts – most recently for the £1.3 billion A66 Northern Trans-Pennine upgrade project.
But it is Levido’s and Fleetwood’s relationship with Palantir – the data giant co-founded and still chaired by far-right US billionaire and Donald Trump campaign donor Peter Thiel – that has attracted most controversy. Accused by campaigners of involvement in multiple human rights abuses, Palantir (which has always denied such accusations) was last week awarded a £330 million contract to create a “federated data platform” for the NHS – a development the British Medical Association described as “deeply worrying”.
The services offered to clients by Fleetwood Strategy include “government engagement” – but the extent to which such engagement played a role in helping to land this deal is not known.
Palantir’s initial introduction to the lucrative world of UK Government contracts had come some time earlier, when the former head of MI6, Sir John Sawers – the founder of another corporate consultancy, Newbridge Advisory – introduced Palantir’s CEO to a senior Cabinet Office official in 2019. The company went on to win a £27 million contract to process border and customs data post-Brexit – a contract that was not put out to tender.
‘Conservative Attempts to Fight a Climate Change ‘Culture War’ Betray Our Planet’
Conservative strategists are prioritising partisan games over the survival of the planet, writes Tom Burke
Tom Burke
Weaponising Fear
With Labour’s lead in the polls looking all but unassailable, Isaac Levido will find his electioneering skills tested to the full in the months ahead. But Scott Morrison’s 2019 victory in Australia also looked highly unlikely just a few months before it occurred. So what will Levido’s strategy be?
Some early indications came in the shape of Rishi Sunak’s rowing back on the UK’s climate commitments and Jeremy Hunt’s claim to be cutting taxes in his autumn statement. Fear of voters being hit in their pockets by government action to reduce emissions, and by higher taxes, will no doubt be part of the recipe.
It seems probable that it was Levido who weaponised anxiety over ultra-low emission zones (ULEZ) to narrowly win the Uxbridge by-election for the Conservatives in August, as Byline Times reported at the time. As an investigation by Valent Projects has detailed, a very large amount of money was spent on social media manipulation, including the creation of thousands of inauthentic accounts, to rile voters up about ULEZ ahead of this by-election, by persons unknown. It is highly likely that we will be seeing a lot more of such online manipulation in the run-up to the next general election.
Stirring fear and resentment of immigrants and asylum-seekers is also likely to be a major feature of the campaign, as it was for Lynton Crosby in his successful effort to get Australia’s Liberal Party Prime Minister John Howard re-elected in 2001. In that election, Howard falsely claimed that Afghan refugees arriving in boats were throwing their babies overboard as a means to ensure that they were rescued and granted asylum, following up this lie with full-page ads proclaiming: “We will decide who comes into this country.”
All the signs are that this will be an exceptionally dirty campaign, perhaps made even more so by the fact Levido’s influence and access as a lobbyist, in the UK at least, depends in part on him having congenial associates in government.
But, as the careers of Lynton Crosby and his protégé illustrate, both corporate lobbying and political campaigning are now thoroughly transnational – and even when technically separated still deeply interconnected – businesses. Whatever the outcome of the UK election, Isaac Levido is unlikely to be short of clients willing to pay handsomely for his highly unusual skillset.
‘The Price of Democracy in the UK has Just Gone Up Massively: The Conservatives Once Again Set the Rules to Benefit Themselves’
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The Government this week sneaked out an announcement increasing the amount that political parties can spend on general elections by around 80%. This major change in election rules cannot be challenged by opposition parties. It is the governing party setting the rules to benefit themselves.
In the six general elections since spending limits were introduced for national parties in 2000, a limit of approximately £20 million in the year before a general election has proved adequate. Only the Conservative Party has consistently come close to spending up to this limit.
In the last four general elections, the Conservatives have spent between 80% and 97% of the legal maximum.
In contrast, Labour has spent between 42% and 69% of the limit.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats spent between 25% and 36% of the limit until the 2019 General Election (when the party spent 79% of the limit fuelled by ant-Brexit donations).
Only one party is therefore likely to benefit substantially from increasing the maximum limit for party spending.
The change has not been supported by the Electoral Commission, the 'watchdog’ powers of which have been watered-down by the Government.
Revealed: Britain’s Broken Election Laws Just Got Even Worse
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A House of Commons question from Lib Dem MP Alistair Carmichael revealed the Commission’s concerns in advance of the announcement. A member of the Commons committee overseeing the Commission, Labour MP Cat Smith, said: “The UK Government’s proposals to increase the spending limits and donation reporting thresholds represent a significant change to the UK’s political finance controls.
"The Commission’s research shows a long-term decline in public confidence in the political finance system. Any changes to spending or reporting thresholds must be supported by rigorous analysis, including on the likely impact on public confidence and transparency.
“The Commission has not seen any evidence to support these changes. It is concerned that the proposals risk damaging the transparency of political donations and give significantly more scope for higher-spending parties to campaign.”
The Government’s new policy is a complete reversal of the pledges made by David Cameron when he became Prime Minister in 2010 to “take the big money out of politics”. All attempts to place a cap on the size of a donation from any one source since then have been resisted.
It will now be legally possible for a single billionaire to stump up the entire £36 million, or for six billionaires to pay £6 million each, and cover a party’s total general election spend at the national level.
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After a general election, it may never be known what price, and what positions, have been extracted in return for such donations.
UK citizens living overseas for longer than 15 years will also now be able to vote in next year’s general election – but should tax billionaire exiles be able to give millions to political parties?
If the kind of 'financial fair play rules' now being applied to football clubs were applied to political parties, then the Conservatives would be deducted dozens of seats – probably many more seats than those which give them their present majority to force through rule changes in their favour.
It is the equivalent of Manchester City winning the Premier League and then setting new rules now to allow it 15 players on the pitch, while its opponents have 10.
If, and when, this Government is defeated, we must have fairer, and more democratic, rules in place.
Lord Rennard is a Liberal Democrat peer in the House of Lords. He led for his party on the Political Parties, Elections, and Referendum Act (PPERA) of 2000 which introduced maximum limits for political parties to spend in the year before general elections
Revealed: Britain’s Broken Election Laws Just Got Even Worse
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There has never been more money in British politics. Since the start of last year, Labour has raised more than £25 million. The Conservatives have taken in almost £40 million. Now, the parties can spend more than ever before.
On Monday, the Government rushed through massive increases in spending and donations thresholds – without holding a single parliamentary vote and with, seemingly, no media coverage (the eagle-eyed Seth Thevoz excepted).
But these new rules matter.
They mean that parties can spend more during election campaigns. They also mean more donors will be hidden from the public.
From now on, parties can accept donations of £11,180 – up from £7,500 – without publishing the donor’s name. That may not sound like a dramatic difference, but it’s actually a lot of money for British politics.
Just £12,000 bought Richard Desmond a seat next to then Housing Minister Robert Jenrick at a Conservative fundraising dinner in 2020, where the property developer was able to successfully lobby for a planning decision to be overturned, saving himself an estimated £50 million.
The new rules mean a family with two kids could donate almost £50,000 anonymously.
The Government’s own legislation admits that “a full impact assessment has not been produced for this instrument as no, or no significant, impact on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen”.
This is a truly extraordinary statement: legislation that will significantly increase the amount of 'dark money' in British politics is not judged to have any impact on, well, anything.
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Peter Geoghegan
In the House of Commons, Conservative MP Jacob Young, a junior minister at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities – which is now in charge of British election laws – explained the changes as merely a reflection of “historic inflation” in the 20 years since the limits were initially set.
This is both true and deeply disingenuous. Why? Because, while inflation has risen sharply over two decades, the Committee on Standards in Public Life had previously called for the limits to be lowered.
And, even more importantly, political spending and donations thresholds have been increased by the very same Government that is completely failing to enforce British political finance laws and which has refused to close the many loopholes that allow dark money to pollute the political system.
Last year, it introduced the Elections Act, of which probably the most eye-catching measure was the introduction of mandatory voter ID.
More than £4.5 million was spent advertising voter ID online and off, according to a Freedom of Information request I submitted this summer. Nevertheless, an Electoral Commission study found that hundreds of thousands of voters could be excluded at the next general election – with the voter ID law disproportionately affecting poorer people, minorities, and those with disabilities.
How did the Department for Levelling Up respond? It said the roll-out of voter ID was “very encouraging”.
Voter ID is the start, but not the end, of the Elections Act’s calumnies. The legislation also gave ministers powers to set the strategy for, and guide the work of, the elections watchdog, the Electoral Commission. Forget the ‘cradle of parliamentary democracy’ talk – Britain, in effect, no longer has an independent elections regulator.
It is hard not to see the move as a victor’s punishment for the Commission’s decision to investigate the Vote Leave campaign’s breaches of electoral law during the 2016 EU Referendum. It is equally hard to conceive of a similar investigation happening again.
The Elections Act also removed the Commission’s power to initiate criminal proceedings. The watchdog had not used this power but – as Spotlight on Corruption has pointed out – its removal is likely to weaken its investigative and compliance activities.
The UK is heading into the next general election with no law enforcement body at a national level overseeing the political system. The National Crime Agency has no election finance expertise and has made it clear it is not interested in developing any. (Perhaps burned by its failed investigation into Brexit donor Arron Banks).
As the Electoral Commission has noted, UK elections law “is silent on whether or not money obtained from crime would make a political contribution unlawful”.
It's a good job there is no evidence of political donations being linked to the proceeds of criminal acts then.
But there’s more. The Elections Act introduced measures that will allow up to 3.5 million British nationals living overseas to be added to the electoral register. This is not a bad thing in itself, but the effect is added burdens on the electoral system at the same time as a weakening of its checks and balances.
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Foreign donors can still give money through UK-registered companies – even if the firm hasn’t made any profits.
The Government has also refused to do anything about shadowy unincorporated associations giving anonymous money to politics – despite repeated warnings, including from figures such as the former MI5 director Lord Evans.
Indeed, while most of the new donations and spending limits passed this week come into force in the new year, for unincorporated associations the legislation is explicitly backdated to October 1 2023. A cynic might wonder if there is any connection between this and the huge sums that the Conservatives receive in donations through these secrecy vehicles.
Would Labour reverse this if in power? There is little sign that this could be the case. Warm words about trust seem unlikely to be met with action.
Last month, I attended a fringe event about ethics and integrity at the Labour Conference – Neither of the two Labour representatives on the panel would commit to any substantive changes to tighten electoral laws or take dark money out of politics.
It is already clear that the next election is going to be the most expensive in British history. Labour’s private funding operation has massively ramped up. The Conservatives are taking in record sums, despite double-digit polling deficits. The legislation introduced this week means that parties can spend approximately a third more money during the next general election.
“We probably shouldn’t be surprised that this Government is increasing the amount of money they can bring in anonymously,” Labour MP Clive Lewis said. “This is a Government that has been far too cosy with, and facilitated a lot of the issues we have, with dark money in politics. Why? Because it’s benefited them.”
All this additional money will be spent in a political system with no checks and balances. This should worry everyone who cares about democracy.
Peter Geoghegan is the author of the bestselling 'Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics’
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