Abstract
This chapter describes the state of play in British and Danish party funding regimes in terms of donations, disclosure, public funding and regulations on spending, reporting and oversight. I then present the evidence from the ‘official story’ of political party accounts. These yearly returns can provide us with at least superficial understandings of short and long-term trends concerning the ways that parties raise and spend money. Though levels of state subsidy vary considerably between the two countries, there are a number of important similarities. For instance, when both receive donations it tends to be cyclical (i.e. regardless of the level of state subsidy, donations increase in time for general elections).
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Notes
- 1.
Subsection headings are based on data available from IDEA.
- 2.
The Great Britain data is collected from annual party reports to the Electoral Commission. The Danish data is collected from an expert committee report—commissioned by the Danish government to investigate reform of the Danish party funding regime (Ministry of Justice 2015)—and party accounts submitted to the Danish parliament.
- 3.
This was calculated at the rate of £1 to 8.14 DKK accurate on 30 July 2019.
- 4.
The Ministry of Justice compiled detailed party income data for the Report on the openness of financial support to political parties (see pages 176–178).
- 5.
This includes ‘donations and loans that add up to over £7,500 from the same source in the same calendar year’ (Electoral Commission 2017a: 8).
- 6.
Although those parties in a ‘confidence and supply’ agreement with minority governments still receive Short Money. This was seen in the wake of the 2017 general election and the deal brokered between the Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) (Schofield and Ashmore 2017)
- 7.
Indeed, many stories post-election are of citizens who—understandably unaware of the ins and outs of the RPA—end up admonished by the Electoral Commission on account of treating. Recent examples include the graffiti artist Banksy offering the public limited edition artwork to not vote for the Conservative Party (Hayhurst 2017), a local entrepreneur offering a free pint of beer for anyone who voted for a progressive party (Vowles 2017) and even a UKIP candidate proffering sausage rolls to potential voters (Mason 2015).
- 8.
The CPS ultimately brought no charges against all but one of the MPs under investigation, Craig Mackinlay of South Thanet being the (dis)honourable exception in this case. Mackinlay was cleared of election expenses fraud and knowingly falsifying election expenses in January 2019 (see Davies 2019). Though Conservative Party employee, Marion Little, was found guilty on two charges.
- 9.
These tend to be released in pdf form on the Electoral Commission website in August.
- 10.
For example, the police are tasked with investigating breaches of the RPA whereas the Electoral Commission investigates breaches of PPERA.
- 11.
This comparatively one of the lowest thresholds for receipt of state funding across democracies worldwide (see page 199).
- 12.
In a number of interviews I was informed that candidates and political parties always manage to spend exactly the amount of state funding they received in the previous year for ‘political purposes’. Indeed, any funding left over is subtracted from the grant in the subsequent year. Funny that.
- 13.
I was only able to get data for Plaid Cymru from the Electoral Commission from 2008 to 2016 as this is the only information available directly from the Electoral Commission website. However, due to Plaid’s relatively small overall annual income this affects the data in a negligible way. For ease of comprehension, the accounts of PC have been removed from Figs. 5.1 and 5.2. UKIP have now largely been subsumed by the Brexit Party. However, as these events happened (largely) outside of the accounting periods studied, I have stuck with UKIP in this instance.
- 14.
This was, in part, a legacy of borrowing significant sums of money from wealthy donors.
- 15.
Though former Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party, and MP for Braintree, James Cleverley has taken umbrage with the reportage of the relatively low level the Conservative Party raises through members outlining that it has always been collected, reported and spent at constituency level. So, he argues, the national-level figures and, by extension, the reporting on them is ‘bollocks’ (Cleverley 2018).
- 16.
Here the interviewee is using 2017 as an example of an uneventful, fallow year in terms elections. British politics is nothing if not unpredictable.
- 17.
For no political party in Great Britain do grants provide greater than 10% of the share of the parties’ annual income.
- 18.
Whilst the Alternative made a significant electoral breakthrough in 2015, they were formed in 2014 and as such the data is not systematically comparative so they have been removed from the analysis.
- 19.
Whilst the LA have made an impact on Danish politics, as a relatively new party their standalone income data does not have the longitudinal or analytical reach of the other parties in the right-leaning block. Therefore, for both methodological and practical reasons, the LA has been removed from the analysis of single party accounts. They are, however, included in the overall figures.
- 20.
‘EU information’ (translated from EU opslyning) is money given for campaigning specifically for the EU at elections, referendums and in-between. All parties do receive this funding, but they might not specifically note it down as such in their official accounts.
- 21.
- 22.
Available at http://www.projectmapp.eu/database-country/, accessed 30 September 2019.
- 23.
The PGG is calculated as a group element and a seat element. The group element is 270,000 DKK a year if a party has more than four seats in the Danish parliament. If a party has less than four seats it is calculated as a fourth of 270,000 DKK per seat. The seat element is that the party receives 45,000 DKK per seat in the Danish parliament unless that seat is held by the speaker or any member of the government, if this is the case, the party receives one-third of the 45,000 DKK.
- 24.
They returned to being the sixth largest party in 2019, but with little fall in overall vote share and held the same number of seats (13).
- 25.
Though this figure has quadrupled since the turn of the millennium.
- 26.
Factors cited are the increased co-operation and compromise with the SD and the declining popularity of leader Villy Søvndal.
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Power, S. (2020). Great Britain and Denmark: Party Funding Regimes and Accounts. In: Party Funding and Corruption. Political Corruption and Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37580-5_5
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