Musk vs the Electoral Commission and the power of progressive institutions

Farage image attributable to Gage Skidmore, Musk to TED. Licences respectively, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic & Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic

Over the past few weeks it has been reported that Elon Musk, not content with having purchased one election, is intent on replicating this feat in the UK. In addition to his regular peddling of far-right Kremlin disinformation and agitation on behalf of “Tommy Robinson” (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) Reform UK Ltd figures are touting a possible $100 million donation with the promise to upend UK politics – and our democracy as we know it.

The newly appointed anti-corruption champion, Baroness Margaret Hodge is correct to call for reforms to political donations to prevent Musk using loopholes in current regulations to donate through the UK subsidiaries of his various companies.

It is concerning to see these calls facing resistance. While tightening loopholes would go some way to achieving Keir Starmer’s promise to restore trust in politics, opponents will argue that that any changes are about government suppressing democracy. If there is one lesson from the first six months of the new Labour government, it is that sensible argument will only carry you so far when the odds are stacked against you in a disingenuous at best and hostile at worst media environment.

However, this risk is insignificant in comparison to the danger such a donation could have on UK politics – dwarfing the £55.5 million in funding received by all parties in Q2 of 2024 during the election campaign – that sort of money buys a lot of influence with social media grifters for instance as Romania’s Calin Georgescu recently found. The Romanian backlash against the court ruling declaring the first election round null and void demonstrates that it is imperative to stop far-right foreign interference upstream to avoid the harm caused by their politics of division downstream. It may be too late to put the Faragist genie completely back in the bottle, but we have a responsibility to try and stop the levers of power being captured by populists.

Policy options include campaign spending limits to leave donations moot or the Electoral Commission’s repeated recommendation to tie donations to profits of UK companies (which are rather meagre in Musk’s case). The latter received a tirade from Nigel Farage, a clear indication of good policy.

When he says “the older order needs to be swept away” he is not just attacking the electoral commission but the entire basis on which the politics of progress is based. Fair, rules-based institutions must be swept away to allow those who cannot compete in the battle of ideas to leverage the oldest and only advantage. Money.

It is time that progressives recognise that not just the policy options outlined above, but the whole future of our movement depends on championing of the liberal, democratic, institutions of which the EC is only one.

Journalist and broadcaster Paul Mason has recently spoken about the need for what he calls muscular social democracy, including at Progressive Britain’s recent annual Oxford Symposium held in collaboration with FEPS. For a tradition as pragmatic as social democracy, which has had to reinvent itself several times to keep the fight for progressive values going to avoid falling into irrelevance, recognising our collective strength and the need to fight back should be second nature.

Beefing up the powers of the Electoral Commission such as an enhanced sanctions regime over and above fines of up to £20 000 or forfeiture of impermissible sources of funds. The IPPR recently recommended undoing the changes made by the Tories in 2022 to weaken the Electoral Commission, such as restoring their criminal enforcement powers. Currently, electoral malpractice laws tend to be ex-post, punishing illegal donations after they have occurred which in our environment is too late. Such changes would inhibit the ability of the international far-right paying to win, and Britain losing.

Importantly pragmatism does not mean compromising on our values. Just as there is no need to be tolerant of intolerance, there is no need for democracy to tolerate those who actively seek to undermine it for kleptocratic purposes. To foresee a lazy objection, preventing the international far-right interfering in British politics also does not undermine freedom of speech.

These institutions are our achievements (the electoral commission was founded under Labour in 2001). In many cases 14 years of neglect has left them shabby and ineffective but the deliberate degradation of their ability to do the job they were envisaged for – to create the conditions for a fair society -shouldn’t make us lose sight of that vision.

Therefore, publicly throwing down the gauntlet to the man whose disinformation caused far-right riots in the Summer is both a necessity for our democracy and something that should be pursued unashamedly. Curbing foreign interference in our elections is long overdue and Labour must champion political donations reform before it is too late. Putting Britain back on the global stage and emerging as a leader of the free world in challenging times requires taking the gloves off and overcoming squeamishness with self-confidence in our mission and conviction in our resolve.

For more on the politics of progress and the Right’s anti-institutional turn see ‘Badenoch vs Devolution’.

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