Is this what we deserve?

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The Labour and Conservative parties have each had their own little financial scandals in recent weeks. The Tories have taken £10 million (or perhaps £15 million) from a man who makes casual racist remarks which he apparently thinks are merely ‘rude’, whilst Labour’s new leader in Wales took £200,000 from a man twice convicted of environmental offences. At first sight, there seems to be no comparison – it doesn’t require more than a very rudimentary command of basic maths to understand that £15 million is bigger – a lot bigger – than £200,000.

But that comparison is over-simplistic – we also need to think about the differing electorates involved here. Hester’s millions were intended to help Sunak appeal to the entire UK electorate. At 46.6 million, that equates to about 32p per target voter. The donations to Gething, however, were intended to help him win an internal Labour Party election. Whilst the party seems to have avoided publishing detailed numbers, some estimates put the total eligible to vote at around 100,000, meaning that the donation was worth about £2 per target voter. The egregi-ometer no longer points so unswervingly in the direction of Sunak and the Tories.

One could attempt to argue that there is some sort of moral difference between a man with previous convictions and one who is merely under police investigation, or even that casual and unthinking racism is in some way less serious than environmental crime; but they’re not arguments that I’d like to try making in their position (although that doesn’t mean that they won’t try). I’m more interested in the similarity of their responses. Both men have effectively said something along the lines of “I’ve followed all the rules on donations”. It’s not a statement that I’m in a position to dispute. It does, though, raise two big questions. The first is whether rules which allow this sort of behaviour when it comes to political financing are fit for purpose – and many will probably conclude that they are not. The even bigger question is whether we are prepared to accept that the only responsibility we place on politicians is to follow the letter of the law at all times. Should we really never expect them ever to take a step back and think about morality, and whether what they are doing complies with some sort of sense of right and wrong?

They are both acting and talking as though the fuss will soon blow over and this particular scandal will be laid to rest alongside all the others. The worst part of it is the horrible feeling that they might be right. Along with Thomas Jefferson.