We must prevent the wealthy buying up politics

The Labour Party has received a six-figure donation from two millionaires who want them to unseat the SNP as the party of government in Scotland because the millionaires don't like what the government is doing.

Meanwhile in the US (where political donations define the political agenda to a degree even higher than in Britain) we have a president who is operating well outside the law or the constitution but who appears to be protected because he is doing so in the interests of the owners of media companies, tech platforms and big corporations.

Globally, the use of political donations by the rich to enact their power without engaging with democracy is arguably the single biggest harm that has been done to the concept of mass democracy. It has twisted parliaments to work against the interests of its citizens, it has undermined the confidence people have in the political process and it has resulted in untold sleaze and scandals.

In the US the justification for this is contained in the notorious Citizens United case on which the Supreme Court ruled. As so much in US politics, the name is misleading since it sought to achieve the opposite of acting in the united interests of citizens.

The Citizens United ruling (by a conservative Supreme Court) ruled that money was a form of speech, and so the First Amendment (the right to free speech) permitted unlimited spending to influence elections. It is an utterly perverse reading of the constitution, but it has created the US we now live with.

It is 15 years since the Citizen United ruling and in that time money has engulfed US politics. It has empowered the far right of the Republican Party because many billionaires have no qualms with its 'rules are for other people' mindset. But it has also captured the Democrats, because their corporate backers believe that rules should apply to everyone – as long as the rich get to write the rules.

The outcome is that most of the American population has no political party that is particularly interested in what is good for them. It took the shock of the Mamdani campaign in New York for politicians even to become widely aware that the cost of living crisis was still the dominant issue for many voters.

The UK is not quite as bad, and a lot of the most pertinent problems with corporate influence in Britain tend to be about lobbying rather than political donations, since we have much stronger electoral finance rules. This means that we don't have the big-money election campaigns they have in the US (most US spending goes on TV adverts which are illegal here).

But the ability for political parties to exist still relies on them to be able to fund their activities so parties which can draw in six-figure donations will have a built-in advantage over those who do not. And people who can give six-figure donations do not do so because they believe in reducing economic inequality.

So it is much more important that we tackle lobbying and informal influence networks in Britain and that we counter the inevitable influence of the powerful through more use of participatory democracy and much less secrecy and behind-the-scenes policy formulation.

But it does not mean we should not act on party finance too, both to limit injustice and to facilitate a vibrant democracy. This means two things. First, private political donations should be limited. A possible test would be 'should not be more than an average person could make'.

Linking the maximum political donation to median salary would send out the message that political influence should be within reach of ordinary people as much as the very rich. It might even encourage greater participation in politics.

The second thing we have to do is accept the implication of this; we need some public funding for political parties. This sounds like an unpopular option until you consider all the others, and this must be explained to the public. If you want a politics which isn't in the pockets of the rich, it needs democratic funding, and that means taxpayer money.

There is a long and complicated debate about how that would be allocated. But with trust in politics as low as it is, we can't not act when there is blatant evidence that one class of person can buy political parties and one cannot.