To try and limit the influence billionaires have over our elections the law limits how much both ‘non party’ campaigners - anyone spending more than £10,000 on activities intended to influence electoral success - and political parties can spend in the run up to a general election.
The rules for non-party campaigners are complicated but, illustratively, if you want to spend more than £10,000 you need to register with the Electoral Commission.And for a general election there is a cap of £700,000 on the total amount you can spend trying to influence the outcome.
Good Law Project - the organisation I founded - registered as a non-party campaigner at the last general election. Some of our activities were about not wanting the Tories to win. And we had to calculate our spend on those activities - apportioning salaries and fixed costs and so on.
A billionaire could fund the Free Speech Union but (at least if it adhered to the law) the influence a JK Rowling or Alex Gerko could buy would be capped at £700k.
What about influencing political parties?
There is no cap on how much you can donate to a political party. The only cap on the influence a party donor can have in a general election is the £34m limit on what a political party can spend in that election.
There are also restrictions - very feeble ones for non-party campaigners and pretty feeble ones (even after the changes in the Representation of the People Bill) for party donors - on the influence that foreigners can have over general elections.
But what if I told you that there was a huge loophole - that allowed billionaires, whether based in the UK or otherwise, to spend unlimited amounts influencing our general elections? You’d be shocked, right? And probably pretty appalled.
Well, there is.
Schedule 8A of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act says that “expenses incurred in respect of the publication of any matter relating to an election… in a newspaper or periodical… or a programme included in any service licensed under Part 1 or 3 of the Broadcasting Act 1996” are excluded from the spending cap.
Newspapers - and regulated broadcasters - can spend unlimited amounts employing journalists and broadcasters and filling their newspapers or magazines or TV channels or radio stations with racist, anti-immigration, anti-trans, anti-abortion, climate science denialist lies which support the elections of political parties like the Tories and Reform.
There is literally no restriction on how much you can spend doing this. And there is literally no restriction on foreigners doing it. So both (1) the US based Murdoch family, which runs The Times and The Sun; the German based Axel Springer group which owns the Telegraph; and the Dubai based NZ led Legatum Limited which co-owns GB News and (2) the Rothermere family which owns the Mail; and Paul Marshall who owns Unherd and the Spectator and is the other co-owner of GB News can spend unlimited sums pushing for the election of the Reform or Conservative Party.
Removing this loophole would be simple: you would delete paragraph 2(1)(a) of Schedule 8A Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act. The consequence would be a profound change in the behaviour of our newspapers, periodicals and broadcasters in the year preceding a general election. Instead of an unlimited ability to pursue the political agendas of their owners they would, instead, be obliged either to spend less on lobbying readers or report more neutrally.
And there is no good reason for this loophole. Why should newspapers and broadcasters be free to spend unlimited sums trying to persuade their readers to vote for Right or Far Right political parties?
Why should they alone escape a restriction that applies to the rest of us?