Funding

• Sources of Funding

  • Membership subscriptions: about members pay £5.25 a month
  • Trade unions: labour received £6mil in 2021
  • Local constituency funding: raffles and dinners
  • Short-money: money for the opposition (commons): Labour got £6 mill in 2021, 15.5% of total income
  • Donations: 2021 made up 65% of Tories income as they got £20 mill
• Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (2000)

  Donations from people not on the UK electoral roll were banned. Requirements for reporting donations over a certain amount introduced and loans were subject to the same rules
• Arguments for State Funding

  • Stops influence of wealthy
  • Parties can focus on representing electorate more
  • Smaller parties will get fairer support
  • Less wealthy pressure groups will get equal hearing
• Arguments Against State Funding

  • Politicians may be less interested in what pressure groups have to say
  • Taxpayers shouldn't be funding political parties
  • There would disagreements on distribution of money
• Short Money


  Money distributed to common's opposition based on how many seats they have
• Cranborne Money


  The money opposition parties in the Lords receive anually
• Arguments for Party Membership Decline

  • Labour has fallen from 1million in 50s to less than 190,000 in 2015
  • Conservatives have gone from 2.8million to 150,000 in same time span
  • Fewer than 1% of the electorate belonged to a party in 2015
• Arguments for a Two party System

  • 2015, labour and conservatives secured 69% of the vote and won 86% of the seats
  • Greens have failed to get another seat
  • Two main parties have never had less than 85% of the seats
• Arguments Against a Two Party System

  • Parties like BNP, Green and UKIP have achieved success in second order elections
  • 2014, UKIP most successful party with 33% of the voters
  • Vote shares of two main parties have fallen from 95% (1950s) to 65% (2010