Unions should back political donations cap

Editorial / 15 September 2026 Electors have the right to their candidates. Let Galloway stand 15 September 2026 Editorial / 14 September 2026 Big money, the far right and the US empire 14 September 2026 Editorial / 13 September 2026 Rebuilding Britain: pointers and pitfalls at TUC 2026 13 September 2026 Editorial / 11 September 2026 Unions must rediscover their power to change this country 11 September 2026 Editorial / 10 September 2026 Burnham must be bold in budget 10 September 2026 Editorial / 9 September 2026 Incensed reaction from Israel apologists shows new British sanctions really matter 9 September 2026 Editorial / 8 September 2026 Mosley’s heirs must be confronted 8 September 2026 TRADE unions are in danger of tying themselves in unnecessary knots over the issue of party funding.

It is now beyond clear that action must be taken over political donations following the two huge gifts, totalling £72 million by crypto billionaires Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo, announced in recent days.

Their brazen attempts to buy the next general election were only possible because Labour under Keir Starmer dithered and procrastinated over doing anything about millionaire money poisoning our politics.

Now the government is poised to act and impose a cap on donations. Indeed, these changes may retrospectively render the funds from Harborne and Delo unlawful.  

Angela Rayner was right to tell the TUC that Labour would “defend our democracy and our society from any foreign dictator or fascist oligarch who seeks to divide out country and buy our politics.”

Nigel Farage is predictably infuriated. He has threatened that a Reform government would ban trade union donations to Labour as revenge. 

Such a move would end the Labour Party as historically constituted — not just for financial reasons but because it was founded as the voice of organised Labour, rooted in trade union affiliation.

Concerns about this bogus line of argument seem to have alarmed some unions into not backing the essential cap on donations, an issue the motion adopted by Congress today avoided. 

Yet, as Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds pointed out, trade union donations bear no resemblance to the inflated cheques being sent Reform’s way.

Union money represents, as Reynolds said, “tens of thousands of ordinary people choosing to make that donation, and it’s bundled up and given from the union. But it’s very easy to opt out of that. There are rules governing political funds, political ballots.”

Indeed, such donations are already heavily regulated, indeed over-regulated. They are democratically sanctioned and transparent, and each individual payment of a union’s political levy is very small.

It is easy to draft legislation that blocks the crypto moguls’ cash but leaves workers’ political fund donations intact. Don’t let Farage and the bosses scare us into ducking the defence of democracy against capitalist corruption.

TUC Congress 2026 / 14 September 2026 Farage is ‘a politician for sale’ who will ‘sell our country down the river’ 14 September 2026 TUC general secretary Paul Nowak says Reform's billionaire funders pose a ‘crisis for our democracy’