Comment on Burnham accused of U-turn after initially backing political donations cap to fall below £500k
TheUnicornOfPerfidy@feddit.uk 1 day agoI’m confused. £500k for individual donations is way more that £164 347. Is there something I’m missing here? Also, where did you get the £300k cap from?
Arola@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
It’s not about that specific £160k donation - its about keeping someone who has the means to donate £160k to a potential PM happy - £160k is peanuts - they might want to give £10million to an actual PM (or the next PM, or the PM after that). My only point is that Burnham pretended like he would stop massive individual donations to prevent cash for influence “if I get in to power” while he was taking massive individual donations. Now he is in power, he is blaming the unions for changing his mind and allowing massive individual donations to continue. He is just scapegoating unions (whose members collectively donated £20k between them in the last year) as the sole cause of him having to take the difficult decision NOT to support measures that would adversely affect him, and the tiny handful of people who actually gave him vast sums of money. It doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to see where this motivation might come from. It’s not the unions.
TheUnicornOfPerfidy@feddit.uk 23 hours ago
Thanks for the explanation. Tbh my feeling is that is largely doesn’t matter what the motivation for the u-turn is. The proposal was for anti corruption/anti pernicious influence reasons. Backing out of it without a clear alternative is a statement that those influences have worked on you. The unions should be as bothered by large donors as much as anyone else and failing to make that argument to them is either a failure of leadership or exactly what you suggest.