The UK press led by Murdoch’s Sunday Times – is going to town with the story.
But why is anybody surprised?
The Tory Party co-treasurer, Peter Cruddas, was caught on film by some intrepid Murdoch reporters from the Sunday Times pointing out the benefits of paying for access. He has now resigned – for being caught on tape it would seem. He surely did not resign for doing what was expected of him in his job.
“One hundred grand is not Premier League… it’s not bad… But two hundred grand to 250 is premier league… what you would get is, when we talk about your donations the first thing we want to do is get you at the Cameron/Osborne dinners.”
“It’ll be awesome for your business. You’ll be… well pleased. Because your guests will be photographed with David Cameron. We do that, you know.”
“If you’re unhappy about something, we will listen to you and put it into the policy committee at number 10 – we feed all feedback to the policy committee.”
Cash to political parties for access to their politicians is the prevailing paradigm across most of Europe and the US and is enthusiastically copied by other countries as a well-proven characteristic of funding political parties in western democracies. Inevitably prices are higher when the politicians are in government. Back-benchers do not have quite the same opportunities as government ministers and cannot command the same rates. But they do manage to scrape together a living by being sponsored to ask “probing” questions within their parliaments or even in sponsoring partisan laws.
The UK Tory party gets some £5 million a year through attendance at dinners with the Prime Minister. And this gives the guests a photo-op with David Cameron and maybe also with the Chancellor. And their grievances make their well-greased way to the Party’s Policy Committee. Mind you the Labour Party received some £2.65 million from trade unions and in exchange they have a 50% vote on policy.
Tags: Cash for access, David Cameron, Peter Cruddas, political corruption, Sunday Times, UK corruption
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