Where's the party gone?

Ed Miliband’s pledge to reform his party’s links with the trade unions–assuming he can pull it off–seems like a smart move. Not only does it help create the impression that he is capable of leading his party towards an electable centre ground, it paints him as a sleaze-busting democratic reformer.

What has surprised everyone, however, was his readiness to go this far when there is also a considerable amount of financial risk involved for his party.

In recent years, the Labour Party has drawn more than £10m of funding a year from affiliated trade unions. Some 15 trade unions are affiliated to the Party, bringing about three million people into Labour as affiliated members. These unions have a special relationship with the party, receiving seats on its national executive and some other voting powers.

In theory, affiliated members are simply paying into a central ‘political fund’ which their union can use to support whatever political activity is then agreed, including making party donations. They are also (and must always by law be) free to opt out of donating to the union’s political fund–though most do not. In practice, few members opt out, and almost all union party funding flows to Labour.

The Conservative Party, in contrast, receives the biggest chunk of its donations from corporate sources, particularly from the financial sector–more than £10m in 2010, comparable to Labour’s union funding.

These bear their own risks to reputation, such as links to corporate lobbying scandals (but more on that later).

One factor that would make life less scandal-ridden for all political parties would be if their memberships were bigger, so they could gain more money from ordinary members paying their subscriptions every year. Despite the fact these are not that large – typically between £15 and £40 a year, or the price of a pint of beer a month–this is not looking likely at the moment.

Around the early 1960s, more than 3 million people across the UK (more than 9 per cent of the electorate) were members of a political party. By the late 1980s, membership levels had fallen to around half that number and they have now dropped to about half a million in total, excluding affiliated memberships through the trade unions. For both the largest two parties, Labour and the Conservatives, membership (again excluding affiliates) has dropped below 200,000 – still enough to raise a few million pounds each, but less than a sixth of the parties’ total funding.

Total UK party membership today represents a little over 1 per cent of the electorate–and falling. Does this matter? Research has shown that despite falling memberships, the bigger parties have been able to hold their revenues steady by raising membership fees, changing membership structures or raising money in other ways–though this is where the rising exposure to scandal emerges.

It might be, too, that fewer people have strong lifelong links with parties these days–they vote for different parties at different elections, so why should they join one? On the other hand, the core vote for all parties is surely still much larger than their membership.

Overall, it cannot be a good thing for the main political parties in a democracy to have small memberships. As parties make the policies we all have to live by, it must be the case that the bigger and more active their membership, the healthier our democracy will be.

What could persuade more people to join a party, even temporarily?

It is up to all parties to ponder this question, and try to come up with more value to members. Could local meetings be made more engaging? Could other membership benefits be better? Online networks? News services? If our parties are ever to be mass movements once more, plugged into the hopes and energies of large numbers of ordinary people, they need to change.

For Labour, this question of membership value will become particularly urgent, if affiliation is indeed switched to an “opt-in” system. If union members see the point of Labour Party membership, Miliband might, at a stroke, have solved the problem of generating a true, new, live mass membership base. If they do not, an awful lot of money will now need to be found from somewhere else.

As an absorbing coda to this tale, we should remember that the government’s recent offer to bring forward proposals for a statutory register of lobbyists had been unexpectedly tied to measures designed to hit union funding of election campaigns.

The prime minister was forced to take quick action on lobbying by a new wave of scandals. But no doubt he felt that by building a more general “anti-sleaze” bill, adding in campaign funding measures that would hit the unions’ support of Labour hardest, he could balance out the pain, since cutbacks on big business lobbying might be seen as more disadvantageous to the Tories.

Now Miliband has moved to embrace reform of Labour’s union links he has finessed that ploy, so the lobbying reform proposals we are promised before the summer recess will be awaited with renewed interest. Silly season? Not this year.

‘People Power: a users’ guide to democracy in the UK’ by Dan Jellinek–an overview of all elements of modern British democracy–is out now, published by Bantam Press, £14.99.