Under Capitalism, Democracy is Always For Sale

Nigel Farage has constructed his entire political persona around the claim that he speaks for the ordinary citizen as opposed to the establishment and big business. But his party, Reform UK, has just accepted donations totalling £72 million from Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo, two crypto billionaires, in an extraordinary injection of private wealth into UK politics.

These aren’t even traditional industrial robber barons, who at least accumulated their fortunes by building factories and developing productive enterprises. They are crypto tycoons, glorified gamblers and spivs, who made their fortunes in what amounts to a casino – and who now see fit to bestow a substantial amount of the proceeds on Farage and Reform UK, self-appointed champions of the hard-pressed, honest toiler.

The whole grubby spectacle is very nearly comical. The question now, however, is whether Harborne and Delo’s donations will be allowed to stand, since both have spent substantial amounts of time based abroad; it is unclear whether Harborne is even registered to vote in the UK. Ministers are reportedly considering adding tighter residence requirements, to be applied retrospectively, to the Representation of the People Bill which is currently passing through Parliament.

But there is a deeper question that needs to be addressed: how is it that the British political system could ever permit two individuals, whether or not they live and are registered to vote in this country, to sink £72 million into a political party in the first place?

Although cryptocurrency’s advocates originally claimed it to be an alternative to the venality of the regular financial system, it has long since become thoroughly integrated with it, mirroring and exacerbating some of its worst features. It is emblematic of modern-day financialised capitalism, where fortunes can be accumulated rapidly through speculation rather than productive investment.

It is important to note here that Ben Delo was himself convicted in the United States for failing to implement adequate controls against money laundering in his crypto exchange platform BitMEX, before being granted a pardon by (who else?) Donald Trump. Of course, it could be argued that money laundering is a large part of cryptocurrency’s purpose.

Furthermore, it just so happens that some of Reform’s policy positions – including proposals for crypto-friendly tax cuts and a national Bitcoin reserve – are very closely aligned with the interests of cryptocurrency billionaires. Thus it is that Reform UK, for all its populist rhetoric, is deeply embroiled with the kind of concentrated, speculative wealth it purports to oppose.

If the £72 million donations are allowed to proceed, that money has a range of potential uses extending well beyond paying for leaflets and billboards. It could also be used, for example, to expand and deepen Reform’s local organisation, recruit organisers, gather local voter data and bolster its campaign infrastructure. It would constitute a major war chest.

Having said that, Reform’s membership – like its support base – is relatively elderly, so it is unlikely to muster large armies of energetic activists pounding pavements at general election time. The more productive battlefield will be the digital one, with data-driven, targeted online content – especially on social media – and repeated exposure to carefully tailored talking points and messaging. The right has, of course, become highly proficient in this area.

Capping individual political donations could have broader implications. This is a point that has been raised by some trade unions, including GMB, which have argued against a cap for fear that it might set a precedent that could later be used against them, leading to restrictions or even a potential ban on union funding for political parties.

Unions, it seems, are agreed in their opposition to the scale of individual donations pouring into the political system, but necessarily on the mechanism for dealing with them. It should go without saying that £36 million out of one billionaire’s pocket is not remotely equivalent to the collective contributions of workers through their trade unions’ political funds; the unions’ internal democracies certainly have their flaws, but they are democratic organisations. 

Still, the slippery-slope argument is unconvincing. If a Reform UK government wants to curb union donations, and it may well, it will do so regardless. There is no rational basis for believing that opposing curbs on donations by wealthy individuals now will buy the trade unions any goodwill from Reform in the future, or make it any more accommodating to them.

Yet the issue is more fundamental than this or that donation from this or that billionaire. Under capitalism, whatever democracy we have will always be for sale, one way or another. The greater the concentration of wealth at the top, the cheaper it becomes to those with money. The £72 million to Reform UK is just an unusually stark example. As long as capitalism persists, the vote may formally be equal, but the capacity to influence what governments do emphatically is not.