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Party Funding In A Level Politics | Everything You Need To Know | Politics Explained Tutoring | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Party Funding In A Level Politics | Everything You Need To Know
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This content provides a comprehensive overview of political parties and their funding in the UK, focusing on the sources, debates, and potential reforms, particularly state funding, relevant for A-level politics students.
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hi my name's Ollie and in this politics
explained video I'm going to give you an
introduction to political parties and go
through everything you need to know
about party funding in a level politics
so that's not just all the knowledge and
some key examples you need to know but
also key points of analysis and the key
questions that you could get asked so
that you can be properly prepared for
the exam so I'm going to start by going
through an introduction to political
parties and party systems looking at
what political parties are an
introduction to the political spectrum
and what types of different political
parties there are looking at major and
minor parties from there I'm going to go
and look at party funding looking at um
the key kind of sources of party funding
currently and how parties are currently
funded in the UK looking at membership
subscriptions trade unions and donations
Public Funding is key ones and from that
I'm going to look at some debates and
issues in relation to party funding
um including a number of scandals in
relation to party funding that you can
use as examples in your essays and then
finally I'm going to look at the debate
over estate funding of political parties
and the arguments on either side for
whether there should be State funding of
political parties so yeah um the PDF
that you should be seeing up there you
can find it on the politics explained
website in the first link in the
description where you can also find lots
of resources to help you in a level
politics including essay plans um essays
everything you need to know guides
um as well as a place to sign up for
tutoring if that's something you'd be
interested in so yeah without further
so starting off with the kind of key questions
questions
um you could get asked in key debates so
in terms of the introduction to
political parties and party systems you
can't really get a question asked just
on that
um if you look at another video on the
post it's explained a YouTube channel on
minor parties the lib Dems and kind of
debates over a multi-party system
um in there these kind of themes can
come up a little bit but you can't get a
question just on this where you can get
questions is on party funding and
there's effectively only one key
question you could get really up you
could really get it can be
um phrased in different ways but if you
plan kind of one of those two questions
on evaluate the view that political
parties should be state funded or
evaluate the view that from the funding
of political parties in the UK should be
reformed if you make a kind of really
detailed essay plan on one of those and
revise from that you should be very well
prepared for the exam so that's kind of
the real key type of question you could
get asked
so yeah starting off with an
introduction to political parties and
party systems so starting off with what
are political parties and how are they
distinct from pressure groups so a
political party is a group of people
Drawn Together by a broad ideology
um even if they don't have completely
identical views and they aspire to form
a government and enact a range of policy
commitments through standing in
elections and kind of setting out
manifestos some parties such as ukip are
mainly folks around distinguish you but
they normally develop a broader set of
policies to grow their supporter base as
well will have a Manifesto which covers
um almost everything in in politics in
case they get elected
pressure groups crucially aren't the
same as parties they often represent a
particular sexual group or interest
um there's a video on policy explained
YouTube channel on pressure groups if
you're interested
um this kind of key part of the course
and pressure groups trying to influence
parties and politics but crucially they
don't enter their own candidate certain
elections and that's what makes parties different
different
so what key roles the parties play
there's kind of five key functions or
roles of political parties the first one
is that they represent the views of the
people with a certain set of common
beliefs and therefore play a really key
um Democratic role the second one is
that they encourage political
participation among the public through
encouraging voting
um joining parties kind of parties up
big big memberships supporting them
through funding and spreading the message
message
um a third one is that parties crucially
recruit uh future politicians and
leaders and can be really important
um in kind of governing the country and
kind of having future potential
um in the labor party
and kind of party develop candidates
through the political skills they learn
as campaigners so in terms of kind of
Future Leaders of parties often come up
from the Grassroots of the party
um and Having learned a lot um
um
so parties also formulate policies to
deliver on the ideas they stand for and
that's as I said they in elections these
all come together in a big Manifesto
which voters can look at and decide okay
is this the right party for me and the
final one um kind of role of parties is
foreign governments so parties who stand
in elections provide government and run
the country if they're successful so
they kind of control parliamentary
business with the aim of implementing
the policies in their manifestos so they
set our manifestos
um and once selected they're supposed to
opposed to enactment
so that's the introduction to political
parties what I've got now is looking at
the political Spectrum so what is the
political Spectrum the political
spectrum is a way of measuring and
describing the overall policy positions
of different political parties so
different parties adopt different parts
of the political spectrums whether
that's left right authoritarian
um libertarian and therefore offer
voters a wide range of choice elections
based on which part of the political
Spectrum the voters find themselves at
um and which kind of policy positions
they support traditionally the key
division between labor and the Tory
party was on the Left Right Dimension so
labor was left-wing and the conservative
party was right with and it's still very
much the case the labor labor and more
left-wing and the conservatives
um are more right-wing but in the 2019
election the conservative party kind of
economically so the left right Dimension
is very much
um well largely in terms of economics
the Tory party shifted quite
significantly to the center in terms of
economics kind of pledging to end
austerity and spend quite a bit more
kind of discussion kind of leveling up rhetoric
rhetoric
um and they were able to gain a lot of
Voters through kind of more cultural
politics rather than traditional Left
Right politics so kind of brexit and
other cultural issues so though I think
it is still very much true that the
political Spectrum in the UK is still
left right and it's still labor on the
left and the conservatives on the right
it is becoming a little bit more
complicated that can than that compared
to how it maybe was
um in the post-world War II period
so looking at what kind of left-wing
parties are some key principles of them
is that they desire change reform and an
alteration to the way that Society
operates so that often
um in favor of big government and a
large welfare state so high taxes
um High public spending
in order to really kind of change
society and improve Society especially
through tackling um inequality
they um kind of at one end of it they
they really include socialists who are
critical of capitalism and a free market
economics they have tended in history to
be on the kind of right side of social
issues as well so that's not writers in
right wing um but on the kind of correct
side of social issues in relation to
issues such as
um gay marriage
in terms of right-wing parties
um they're more um supportive of
conserving the status quo and supporting
kind of little or no change so
maintaining Society largely as it is
currently they stress the importance of
order stability hierarchy and private
property so they're all big supports of
capitalism and they're broadly more in
favor of smaller government
um individualism and self-determination
so that's lower taxes and lower public
spending so kind of less of an attempt
to really change society
um and less of attempt to really tackle
inequality within Society
in terms of the different types of
political parties
um you can kind of split this into two
types of obviously more more ways you
could break this down but you can in the
UK you can broadly split it up into
mainstream or major political parties
and then minor or minority political
parties so major or mainstream parties
are parties that run candidates in all
constituencies develop policies in all
areas of policy and have realistic
attempts at forming a government so it's
normally just conservatives the
conservatives and the labor party
there's definitely a period
um kind of in the early 2000s um and
especially looking at the 2010 election
where you could argue the lib Dems were
in that category as well but it's mainly
laboring the conservative party you have
a realistic chance of forming a government
government
um but kind of since the 2015 election
the lib stems um support has really dropped
dropped
um and I wouldn't argue that they are
any longer a major political part
in terms of minority parties these
parties also stand candidates at
elections of very little chance of
winning elections themselves they may be
able to enter um government as a minor
partner in a coalition or in a kind of
confidence and Supply agreement as the
dup did with the conservative party in
2017 and some of these parties such as
ukip or the green party stand candidates
in the vast majority of constituencies
they still have a large number of
candidates but some of them are only
stand candidates and constituencies in a
certain part of the UK so such as the
dup the Democratic unionist party who
only stand candidates in Northern
Ireland kind of you can break these
minor parties down into a couple of
different types so some many of them are
nationalist parties such as the SMP
applied kumru Shin Fein who only stand
candidates in a part of the UK and
campaign for the independence or
self-rule of that part of the UK whilst
a lot of these minor parties um are also
single issue parties such as the green
party ukip and the brexit party we're
really mainly focused on campaigning for
only one kind of particular issue policy
area or cause
these parties can can be seen as very
similar to pressure groups as they have
very little chance of really getting
into government and effectively could be
described as pressure groups that use
the electoral process
um to seek to achieve and draw attention
to their aims so that'll be covered more
in the final video on the political
parties topic on the politics explained
YouTube channel um kind of the lib Dems
and like kind of the importance of minor
parties in the UK so look at that if you
want to kind of you could bring in that
perspective to those essays potentially
so yeah that's everything in terms of an
introduction to political parties what
I'm now going to go into is kind of the
main part of the video and the kind of
key kind of part of the course that you
could get asked a question on and that's
so starting off with party with party
funding why do political parties need um
funding ultimately political parties use
funding in order to carry out a number
of their key functions such as fighting
elections they spend money on
advertising and campaigning holding
party conferences which are really
expensive carrying out research and
develop developing policies and
manifestos and key to this is ultimately
employing special advisors and having a
lot of stuff so a lot of funding just
goes to employing members of staff to
help develop policies to help run party
conferences to help kind of develop
strategies to fight elections
in 2021 the top five total incomes of
political parties in the UK were as
follows so the labor party gets the most
funding at 45 million the conservative
party gets the second most at 31 32
million bear in mind these kind of
levels of funding especially for the two
main parties do go up significantly in
election years and aren't kind of stable
especially for the conservative party
where it's quite dependent on donations
it is quite variable
um so that at some points they may be a
lot closer to labor and then from there
you have a big drop off to the minor
parties the rest of the party so the lib
Dems have an 86 million pounds um in
funding the SNP around four and a half
million and the green party
um have around 3 million
so now we're going to look at kind of
where this funding comes from right so
how are parties currently funded the
first key type of funding is through
membership subscriptions so members of
political parties pay monthly membership subscriptions
subscriptions
um for example the labor party
um pay 4.38 per month um and there's
currently 430 000 members so for labor
membership subscriptions are a really
big part of their funding um in 21 2021
sorry they received 16 uh over 16
million pounds from membership fees
which formed around 35 of their total
income so that's really really important
source of income for them the
conservative party
um does to have membership subscriptions
but it gets a lot lower proportion of
their funding from membership
subscriptions in large part because they have
have
um fewer members which kind of really
does account for some of the key reason
why in 2021 they had less funding than
labor so
conservative party members pay less
um slightly less um
um
but they have a lot lower number of
members kind of an estimated there's
lots of different estimations but
estimated between 100 175
000 members and in 2021 the party
received just 2 million pounds from
membership fees
um forming just six point five percent
of their total income
um and then a couple more examples
you've got the s p and the lib Dems just
looking at um the s p they've got around
100 000 members which is a lot considering
considering
um that kind of only stands candidates
in Scotland and the lid Dems um have
around 70 000 members overall
overall
um the big decline in party membership
since the 20th century and especially
since a kind of um mid to end point of
the 20th century has kind of had a big
impact in harming um party finances
um so overall membership subscriptions
used to be probably a bigger proportion
of party funding that they aren't so
much anymore
a next form of party funding which is
kind of very specific to the labor party
is through trade unions so the labor
party receives significant funding from
trade unions which charge members of
political Levy as well as membership
fees so as part of their kind of
membership fees they'll kind of um
members of trade unions will play it
kind of pay for a part that can be used
to push kind of political agendas and a
lot of that from trade unions goes to
the labor party
um and the labor party has a number of
Affiliated unions which give the labor
party significant funds including Unison
unite and GMB in 2021 the labor party
received nearly six million pounds from
Trade union affiliations which is around
13 of their total it's a very key source
of income
um and it's not just that um it's not
just those affiliations the main party
get money from the trade unions for the
trade unions also regularly donate to
the labor party so in terms of the
donations that labor receive a decent
purported of those are from trade unions
as well
a key piece of legislation recently or
relatively recently passed um which has
harmed kind of laid the labor party's funding
funding
um with the 2016 Trade union act which
is passed by the Tories in 2016. um
um
and really hard labor parties at the
labor party's funding from trade unions
and the reason they did this is it
obliged new Trade union members to
choose and opt in um to making payments
towards political influence so that
political Levy
um rather than being automatically opted
in as they were previously so as a
result I resulted in a drop of funding overall
overall
the next form of um party funding which
is kind of a lot less significant in
terms of numbers is local constituency
fundraising um so political parties
receive a small amount of funding from
um events such as Raffles and dinners in
local constituencies and this funding is
often spent on local campaigns so for
example in 2021 the labor party received
200 000 pounds from fundraising so a
decent amount of money
um and definitely useful but nowhere
near the amount of money they're
receiving from donations or trade unions
or party membership
The Fourth Kind of key type of um
funding for political parties is Public
Funding so we're going to look later on
the kind of the debate around State
funding and whether uh parties should be
entirely state funded at the moment
there is some State running it's not
that significant but it's important to
recognize there is some Public Funding
especially for opposition parties
so political parties also receive some
Public Funding in order to support their
activities and as I said the vast
majority of this goes to the opposition
so those who are not in government and
this is because they lack the support of
the Civil Service which the government
has um so the Civil so the government
can use the Civil Service in order to
carry out um their functions and to run
run the government um effectively the
labor party well at the moment late
parties in opposition certainly doesn't
have that right so the Public Funding is
supposed to kind of make that a bit more fair
fair
the key part of this is what's known as
short money
um that's just named after I don't
remember I don't know his first name but
a man with the last name sure I think
was introduced in the 1970s
um and it's intended to support parties
um to carry out parliamentary business
including policy research
um and it's kind of primarily used to
pay for staff and cover the salaries of
researchers and advisors in the center
offices of parties
it's as I said it's only available to
opposition parties that have won either
two seats in the House of Commons at the
previous general election or one seat
and more than 150 000 votes in total
from All City contestants so in terms of
the opposition parties the more um
support you got the previous election
the more short money you get
in terms of other sources of Public
Funding there's also crumble money which
supports the opposition in the House of
Lords that's less significant kind of um
than short money
um as well as uh funding for the office
of the leader of the opposition
um so that only goes to kind of test
armor at the moment the leader of the
opposition their office and policy
development grants that's the only type
of Public Funding currently policy
development glance that the government
gets well I think it was um last year I
think 450 000 pounds
um for
the labor party the conservative party
and just to kind of make clear the um
other opposite opposition parties do get
kind of short money um and crumbled
funding as well but because they
generally have a lot less MPS a lot
fewer MPS than labor
um or the main opposition party they get
less money effectively
so yeah just kind of breaking this down
in 2021 the labor party received nearly
seven million pounds in Public Funding
so that's around 15 of their total
income so pretty significant amount of
their funding um and around 75 of this
was from short money as you can see
um in the um the graphic above
and um yeah and you can see here that it
is the low party that receives the most
money um from Public Funding so in
2021-22 the lane party received
um over seven and a half million pounds
in total
um Public Funding the Tory party
received just 450 000 pounds the s p received
received
1.282 million pounds and the lib Dems um
received around 1.7 million
so many ghost opposition parties as I
said and now the final um type of um
um
type of um party funding to look at and
kind of potentially the most important
especially in relation to scandals
around party funding is donations so
political parties receive a significant
proportion of their funding through
donations from businesses organizations
and Rich individuals there are no limits
on how much can be donated to political
parties or politicians
um so for the labor party they receive
key donations from trade unions as I
mentioned earlier
um but since becoming friendlier to
business under new labor in the early
2000s they've also began to receive more
funding from businesses and Rich
individuals as well a really key recent
example of this is Lord sainsbury
um who donated significant sum to the
labor party under Blair Brown and Miller
Band or so under
um new labor in the miliband once Corbin
became leader however he stopped um as
he didn't support um Corbin's project
and he was kind of a big supporter of
Romaine I've been trying to rejoin the
EU which kind of explains why in the
2019 election or prior to the 2019
election he gave the lib Dems a massive
8 million pound donation
um but now that storm has moved the lane
party back to the center ground
um Sainsbury's started um to donate to
the labor party again um and in early
2023 gave two million pounds to the leg
party so though kind of donations are
less important kind of from Rich
individuals are kind of a less
significant proportion of labor party
funds and then the conservative party as
I'll mention in a minute
um especially on the new label and now
the storm is moving the party more to
the center is becoming quite important again
again
um the conservative party receives a lot
of donations a lot of big donations from
Rich individuals and business so for
them donations are a really key part of
their party funding
um for example billionaire Lord kradas
um who has donated
um Millions to the conservative party in
2019 for example uh Boris Johnson helped
to increase funding from donations due
to his popularity with the conservative
party receiving 56 million pounds in
donations in that election year compared
to the 34 million pounds Theresa May was
able to raise in 2017 so that shows not
only the kind of massive amount of
donation the conservative party are able
to receive
um or parts conservative party does
receive but also how it increases our
election years
and the kind of really key to
illustrating the difference between the
two main parties in terms of
um funding from donations is that in
2021 the conservative party receives
received over 20 million pounds of
donations which was the vast majority of
their funding so 65 of their overall
funding whilst the labor party received
just under 10 million pounds there's
still a significant amount but a lot less
less um
um
uh significant reported that overall
funding at just 22 so the labor party
kind of receives mainly funding kind of
from a number of areas so from
significant funding from memberships
which is really quite significant for
the labor party
um from donations from trade unions and
a significant amount of short money
Public Funding
um now they're in opposition the
conservative party is a lot more focused
on donations for them obviously they do
receive some short money do receive um
um
a significant amount of membership
subscriptions but nowhere near compared
delay party and the conservative party
is very dependent financially on
donations from Rich individuals and business
business
so yeah now that we've looked at um the
kind of key sources of funding I'm going
to look at um some key debates and
issues in relation to party funding in
the UK and the first one of kind of key
part of this you need to know is the
piece of legislation and that's the 2
000 political parties elections and
referendums act
um so this was introduced in an attempt
to overcome the perception that party
funding was undemocratic and the Blair
government passed it in 2000 what it did
was introduce an independent electoral
Commission to supervise election
campaign spending by parties so
donations from individuals or businesses
who weren't on the UK electoral role
effectively foreign companies and
individuals were banned from making
donations to political parties
um and it was made the job of political
parties themselves to ensure that their
donations from their donations and later
loans as well came from permissible
sources and report to the Electoral
commission any that don't
requirements for reporting donations
over a certain amount were also
introduced and kind of as that prior to
the 2010 election loans are also made
subject to the same rules as donations
in terms of the current requirements for
recording donations and Loans as I said
there's no kind of maximum amount
um that can be donated to a political
party but donations or loans over 7 500
pounds to the central party must be
reported to the Electoral Commission
um and uh party sections whose finances
aren't managed by the central party for
example I think this includes kind of
local constituency parts of parties must
report donations of over 1 500 pounds
and MPS must report loan donations of
over 500 pounds and made in connection
with their activities as an MP to the
Parliamentary Commission of the
standards so it's supposed to be very
transparent even if there aren't limits
on donations
in terms of concerns over party funding
in the UK there are a lot of concerns
there's major concerns
um particularly in relation to the
Reliance of parties and particularly the
conservative party on donations from
Rich individuals and businesses
um so there are worries that rich donors
are able to buy political influence
which is highly undemocratic and there
have been a number of scandals in
relation to party funding across a range
of parties so both the labor and the
conservative parties have been accused
of offering places in the House of Lords
for example two donors so kind of it
suggested that it's kind of in response
to if you donate a significant enough
money to a political party you're able
to get political influence and you're
able to benefit from the state which is
highly undemocratic
so I've got a number of scandals in
relation to party funding now which I'm
going to go through um so the first one
of these is the cash repairages Scandal
this is in 2006 to 2007
um when there was a scandal concerning a
possible link between individuals who
had learned significant amounts of money
to the labor party and individuals and
those same individuals being nominated
by Prime Minister Tony Blair for Life
peerages In The House of Lords the
nominations were rejected by the house
of Lord's appointment commission and
there was suspicion that periods were
promised in return for the loans It
ultimately couldn't be proven um that
this had been agreed in advance though
but there were significant suspicions
another Scandal involving new labor was
in relation to Bernie Eccleston So
within months of becoming prime minister
in 1997
um bless faced significant criticism
following the Revelation that Bernie Eccleston
Eccleston
um a motor racing boss in kind of F1
have donated to one million pounds to
the labor party and there was a kind of
um it was reported there was an alleged
link between this and the fact that
there was a delay introduced in
implementing a ban on Tobacco
advertising in F1 racing even though
that Barnaby introduced for other sports
Leo was forced to justify himself on TV
and he said that the events weren't
connected but the money was subsequently returned
returned
so with a lot of these you'll notice um
there's never a kind of a clear it's
never clear what actually happened but
also had a significant Scandal so in
2005 businessman Michael Brown donated
2.4 million pounds of lib Dems then a
year later he was jailed for perjury
um and as a consequence of that there
was pressure on the lib Dems to return
the donation
um kind of
with suspicions it was fraudulent but
they ultimately kept it after the
Electoral commission concluded they have
accepted the nation in line with
electoral rules and they said they've
done nothing wrong
um it's not just a labor party who have
um scandals in relation to um the House
of Lords very recently um Lord crotters
who's a billionaire conservative
um donor was made up here in the House
of Lords so that was in February 2021
and that was just days after he donated
500 000 pounds the largest amount of
money he's ever donated to the
conservative party
um and this kind of appointment by Boris
Johnson Not only was it suspected
um it was linked to this donation it was
also made despite the fact that you did
the um House of Lords appointments
commission vetting process
um kind of said that launch products
failed and shouldn't be appointed to the
House of Lords um which Johnson overall
so quite problematic
got another couple in relation to the
Tory party especially recently the first
of those is in relation to PPE so
personal protective equipment
um contracts um in covert so during the
pandemic um Med Pro which was a PB
company linked to Tory Pier Michelle
moan was fast tracked um in the kind of
scheme in terms of companies providing
PP to the NHS and awarded more than 200
million pounds in government contracts
much of this PP turned out to be unusual
by the NHS but the company still made a
huge profit
and tens of millions of pounds
um of Med Pros profits were then
transferred to an offshore trust in
which moon and her family were the
beneficiaries so there's kind of a suggestion
suggestion
um that the maybe this isn't
specifically in relation to kind of
party funding so much but in relation to
a Tory Pier uh Michelle Mona kind of a
lot of suspicions in relation to money
in politics that due to her kind of
having quite close to the conservative
party and being conservative peer she
was able to benefit financially
um make to massively benefit
um financially financially
um in a crisis
and the final one um in relation to
party funding is Russian influence in
the conservative party so when Boris
Johnson was in power over two million
pounds of donations to the Tory party
were linked to Russia which raised major
security concerns and this included um
evgenie lebedev who was made up here by
Boris Johnson
at the same time the conservative party
hadn't implemented any of the 21
recommendations of the Russia report
which discovered widespread attempts by
Russia to try and influence voters in
the brexit referendum so there's kind of
potential suspicions of the influence of
Russian money in the conservative party
may have influence policy obviously with
a lot of these there's no way we can
prove this
um but there are scandals and you can
suggest that there have been significant
links I'd say particularly with maybe
Lord krados and cash repairages
um are some really key examples
um and then one final thing before we
look at the debate overstate funding
um is kind of a proposal by labor and
the lib Dems in the 2015 election
um so in the 2015 election both parties
supported a suggestion to impose limits
on individual donations to parties
obviously they didn't get into Power
um so they it wasn't implemented
um but it is a potential suggestion that
could be used um in order to kind of
limit the influence of donations
obviously this is kind of partly
politically motivated though as it would
have hurt the conservative party the
most as the conservative party depends
the most on donations
um but you could say the same about the 2016
2016
Trade union act um which is the Tory
party introduced and harmed labor the most
most
so yeah that's it in terms of scandals
in relation to party funding the final
thing I'm going to look at is the debate
over statement this is some really kind of
of
um key
um key points of analysis so first off
how would State funding of political
parties work many democracies in the
west have state-funded political parties
so in Australia for example State
funding supports parties election
campaigning whilst in the Netherlands
intended support further research
whilst the UK does have some Public
Funding State funding as I mentioned the
majority of funds come from donations
and membership fees um for parties and
it could move to a largely state-funded approach
approach
this approach could include State
funding based on the number of votes in
the previous election that's how it
could be allocated
um or it could potentially match
donations from members of the public and
this could be capped so it could be only
under 50 pound donations for the member
for members of the public to ensure that
I'm kind of
kind of individuals with a lot of money
aren't able to have more influence than
those without
um and that's kind of what's often used
or what is used in Germany so a lot of
different models that could be used for
State funding but it's effectively
moving from a system where kind of
donations membership fees um
um
trade unions for example form a key part
of party funding and moving towards a
system where it's largely State funding
in terms of arguments for State funding
of political parties
um the first one is that parties are key
to representing the public and can be
seen as a key part of democracy and they
therefore can be seen the deserving
effective funding
State funding would also reduce the
Reliance of parties on funding from
trade unions businesses and individuals
who have vested interests Public Funding
would also remove the disparity and
resources available to different size
parties so it can be argued that the
kind of the two-party system in the UK
is partly
um facilitates them furthered by-party
funding in which the labor party and
conservative party receive a lot more
funding than other political parties
um and as a consequence if State funding
was introduced this two-party system
could be challenged and it's argued that
pluralist democracy would improve um
um
with smaller parties and other voices
having the funding to fight elections
effectively in the same way
um that um the major political parties
are on the other hand if it if it was
done kind of the level of State funding
is done in relation to um
um
um donation like small donations to the
public which are matched always done in
relation to success in the last election
that's still going to further the two
main parties
um so it's kind of difficult to see how
state funded wouldn't necessarily change
out which I think is actually one of the
arguments against
um in a minute
third argument is the state for maximal
donations by party members as I said we
should improve the partition
participation of the public in politics
and ensure that those who are supported
the most receive the most funding so it
remains very democratic
um and the last two are the parties and
politicians could focus more on
representing the public and effectively governing
governing
um rather than focusing on raising money
especially before elections so it's kind
of the idea that they're wasting time
I'm focusing in two months on party
funding and also prevent parties trying
to limit the funding of other political
parties when in power such as the 2016
Trade union act which harms the labor party
party
and finally and I think this is
potentially the most persuasive argument
um is that it would curb the possibility
of corruption and that those who have money
money
um and the ability of those who have
money to donate to political parties and
therefore potentially have or allegedly
have undue influence on policy
um or kind of influence their ability to
get into positions of power which can be
seen as undermining democracy
in terms of kind of finding the key
arguments against State funding of
political parties
um is the kind of The Limited Public
Funding currently available ensures that
political parties are independent from
the state and therefore the party
currently in power which can be seen as
um important in the Democracy so kind of
moving to a state funding approach could
be seen as actually moving away from
democracy and potentially threatening
democracy by depending too much on the
state and um moving parties away from
being independent from the state
as they were no longer to seek Finance
need to seek financial support it could
also isolate parties from the wishes of
the public and their members um which
could be seen as harming democracy
it also costs the state a significant
amount per year so it's just a factor in
itself but it's also that many taxpayers
wouldn't um would likely not want to
fund parties they don't support and have
their tax
um attacks kind of dollars that their um
their money spent on on that
um especially if they don't trust those
in power those kind of decreasing trust
um in political parties especially recently
recently
and finally as I said if funding was
linked to past performance and elections
then it would likely uphold the power of
existing parties and not further
so yeah that's everything in terms of
the content
um as I said at the start of the video
kind of there's only kind of one key
type of question you can really get
asked in relation to party funding and
that's effectively is party funding is
how party funding currently works good
and should it be reformed with kind of
move to State funding being the key kind
of type of Reform um that's often
suggested in terms of how you could
possibly structure this
um I think it'll be useful to kind of do
matched up arguments
um to kind of have effective debates so
if you have three four against
paragraphs with quite well-matched up
arguments so for example in the first
paragraph you could do an argument for
State funding um that it would kind of
stop corruption
um and stop those in power have having
the kind of
undue influence over politics
um on and kind of as a Counterpoint to
that um you could note that it could
isolate parties from the wishes of the
public and their members which could be
seen as harming democracy and you could
also potentially suggest that the kind
of current funding of political parties
isn't that undemocratic uh kind of
citing the fact that especially the
labor party rely quite a lot on membership
membership
um subscriptions
um trade unions rather than like rather
than just focusing on donations which is
or largely focusing on donation which is
more the case for the conservative party
another argument for State funding in a
second paragraph you could potentially
do that are
furthers the two-party system and
upholds a two-party system and damages
that as a Counterpoint to that um you
could say
um that if funding would lead to past
performance or or kind of Max donations
the state funding wouldn't really change
that right
um as it would likely continue to uphold
the power of existing um
um parties
parties
um and you could also say that
if though it might kind of help other
minor parties taxpayers wouldn't really
want to spend
um all of their money
um or a lot of their money
um wouldn't want a lot of their money to
be spent on funding political parties
they don't support and then potentially
as a final paragraph you don't have to
do is just kind of thinking from my head
you could do
um how parties can be seen as
representing the public and upholding
effective democracy in Nashville should
be funded and I think you can combine
that with the fact that parties and
politicians should be focusing
um not on party funding but actually
governing the country and representing
the public as a Counterpoint you could
you could say that
um The Limited Public Funding currently
enables or ensures that parties are
independent from the state so kind of
have that final paragraph on
democracy um and if State funding would
really benefit our democracy in that sense
sense
um so that's just an idea
um there will soon be a full and
probably when most of you are watching
this video they'll be on the positive
explained website um link below you'll
be able to um
um
to kind of see uh one of the um
um
essay plans on there will be on this on
one of these questions
um so I would have done a really
detailed one to give you an example if
that's something you'd be interested in
looking at go to the politics explain
website um and look at the kind of essay
plan resources
um and yeah if you're kind of interested
in any other help in relation to a-level politics
politics
um go to the policy display website
where you can sign up for tutoring look
at other resources
um on there and feel free to drop any
questions or comments in the comment
section below um if there's anything I
can help with and yeah I'll see you in
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