A full English please

When I was researching my book on Tory party financing (Price of Power: The secret funding of the Tory Party, Vision, 1998) I came across a wholly opaque group of funders—unincorporated groups with names like Midlands Industrial Advisory Council, Northern Industrialists Protection Association or the United and Cecil Club. These outfits had no need to register anywhere and could channel money to the party whilst preserving donors’ anonymity. Within certain ineffectual rules, unincorporated associations still carry on funnelling money to the Tories. Labour on the other hand got much if not most of its money from the highly regulated trade unions, forced by Thatcher to hold regular members’ political fund ballots. I wonder if this asymmetry may be about to end. Many of the Tory clubs were self-described as ‘dining’ clubs. Now Labour has the ‘West Midlands Breakfast Club,’ (WMBC) which in the first quarter of this year donated £130,530 putting it in the top twenty donors of that period. Expensive breakfasts, those. The WMBC has a website which consists entirely of a single home page with its logo, a telephone number and an email address.

I sent an email to them: ‘I am wondering who you are and how you are funded. Thank you.’ I quickly got a reply from someone called Stephen Goldstein: ‘It is a non for profit group that meets on a regular basis. All members pay a subscription and initially, it was to support Richard Parker who successfully elected Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority.  If you could send us your phone number, we could give you a call to discuss further.’ I replied: ’My only other question is whether you publish your accounts?’ and Mr Goldstein replied  ‘we haven't yet published our accounts as our group is less than a year old.’ This may suggest the accounts will be published, but since unincorporated associations have no legal filing requirements, we’ll have to wait and see what if anything emerges. Immediately one can see the problem with this—it means that during an election period the original source of the money remains hidden. Starmer used a not dissimilar methodology to conceal the origin of donations to his leadership campaign. All this is perfectly legal, whether it’s ethical is another matter. Politico has a very good article on the subject of political donations from unincorporated associations, available here Britain’s political parties are quietly raking in millions. No one will say where it’s coming from – POLITICO . We’ll have to see whether the WMBC is setting a precedent for Labour. If it is, it is just another step backwards.