Labour Party to Privatise Itself?
The Labour party, swamped by £24,000,000 of debt at last count, has to pay £7m to donors by the end of the month or risks insolvency. Nobody donates to a failing party, membership is too low and too disaffected with the poor leadership to see a begging bowl passed its way, and the Unions have recognised that up to 1/3 of their members vote Tory. This is one of the less often touted reasons for Brown bottling the election that never was last autumn.
The party’s National Executive Committee is jointly liable for debts. As Guido has mentioned, this is probably why the Treasurer’s position is still vacant. Many high-ranking party officials could face bankruptcy because the party’s finances are in turmoil. (I shall ignore the obvious complaint that these are the people currently in charge of the Treasury…)
Mark Seddon in the New Statesman has details of one possibly strategy for fixing the financial problems. The Labour party could sell out to a private company, selling shares instead of membership.
This would only work if assets were available. None currently are, but the party is in government so policy is its biggest asset. Policy could be bid over so, for example, Murdoch might pay £10m to have the abolition of the licence fee in the manifesto. MPs and party members would doubtless object to many proposals, but the alternative is the NEC members becoming collectively bankrupt and party accounts being shut. There goes any election campaign.
This kind of sell-out would have to be proposed by or passed by the NEC - would they privatise their party to save their own assets? Forget any political disaster, forget Gordon Brown’s addiction to failure, the Labour party’s financial woes could well be the issue that ends this government. And Miliband would have no interest whatsoever in picking up the pieces.
As with the NHS proposal the other day, the Conservatives are now less privately motivated than Labour. A worrying thought indeed.
Posted in: The Government, The New New Labour Project
The thought of a privately owned party in government - in effect,a privately owned government - terrifies me. The death of democracy would be a weak term, I suspect…