Electoral Funding and Labour

Here are two handy links from the Electoral Commission:

Loans reported/credit facilities reported for political parties

A searchable register of all donations to political parties

Play around with it. You can search by party, by type of donation, by period (e.g. Q1 2005 to Q3 2005). It's fun for ages 9 to 99.

From Q1 2004 to the present, the Green Party has had 116 donations with an overall total of £353,736.69. Most of this is a bequest from the will of the late David Gillet (£132 000). Only 9 donations were for more than £5000. The Green Party is not hostage to any one interest. We want to be independent. That way, we can represent you without keeping one eye on our bank balance.

In comparison, from Q1 2004 to the present, the main parties reported the following:

- Labour: 3599 donations with an overall total of £ 47,279,666
- Lib Dems: 1368 donations with an overall total of £ 13,413,929
- Conservatives: 2769 donations with an overall total of £ 53,546,463.02

A number of loans to the Labour Party, the ones that all the political who-hah is being made about, are coming due.

It represents a big cash flow problem. In fact, it looks so constraining that any new Labour leader, elected by the party before or after the local elections in 2007, won't be able to go to the electorate to renew their mandate. They simply won't be able to afford to.