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  "path": "/2026/03/big-money-has-corrupted-britains-politics/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-13T15:42:50.000Z",
  "site": "https://tribunemag.co.uk",
  "textContent": "### If Labour wants to rebuild trust in democracy, it must confront the growing influence of extreme wealth on our political system.\n\n* * *\n\nThe influence of big money underpins Britain's democratic crisis. (Credit: Getty)\n\nThe nature of our democracy is not measured alone by the words in legal texts or the volumes lining the corridors of Parliament. It requires constant fine-tuning and course correction. And the public are telling us clearly that something is wrong. Half of the country think politicians do not care about them. A sizeable minority even think elections are rigged or manipulated.\n\nI don’t find these figures shocking anymore. Fourteen million people experienced hunger in Britain last year. When communities feel poorer year on year, it’s not hard to see why many draw a bleak conclusion: either the system is broken, or it’s simply designed to screw them over. Whichever it is, the result is the same: public faith in our democracy is eroding.\n\nThis raises a deeper question. How does a Parliament elected to represent the country so often produce outcomes that see the majority lose out as a wealthy few amass obscene wealth?\n\nThere’s a connection between the crisis of inequality driving the cost-of-living crisis and the political choices producing it. Countries with extreme wealth concentration are far more likely to experience democratic erosion. The pattern of political donations reflects this. In 2015, just 1 percent of private donations came from individuals or companies giving £1 million or more. By 2024, that figure had risen to over a third.\n\nIf this trend continues, more than half of all political donations could soon come from a handful of individuals, leaving elected politicians increasingly reliant on the patronage of a small elite. Wealthy individuals and companies will amass even more influence over the direction of our country, despite never having won a single vote.\n\nThe recent Oxfam report _Resisting Rule of the Rich_ found the super-rich exert influence in three main ways: buying political influence by funding parties and candidates, gaining direct access to decision-makers and institutions, and shaping public opinion to defend elite power.\n\nThe mark of a successful left-wing government project has historically been defined by two connected aims. First, raising the living standards of the working class and improving the services available to them. Second, ensuring the masses have the tools to defend those social advances.\n\nThis Labour government obviously must go further in rewiring the economy, so it works for the majority. The Chancellor’s Spring Statement assurances that the plan is working won’t cut it. People need to feel that change in their pockets. Even then, any effort to deliver a bold Labour programme to raise living standards will meet major opposition if it isn’t coupled with a militant approach to rooting out the corrosive influence of big money in our politics.\n\n# Reclaiming Democracy\n\nThe super-rich will fight tooth and nail to protect their wealth. That’s why we need measures like a wealth tax or windfall taxes on sectors like water and energy. We need the funds for emergency living standards support, and we need to bring their power down to size: the bigger their coffers, the more influence they wield.\n\nI will support amendments to the upcoming Representation of the People’s Bill to help achieve this — including limiting donations from harmful lobbying interests and restricting the ability of companies to donate to political parties and then go on to land lucrative government contracts.\n\nOver the past 25 years, companies that donated to political parties have secured £60 billion in government contracts, including during the COVID era. Quite frankly, this stinks. In the middle of a national crisis, the public need confidence that decisions are made on merit and in the public interest, not shaped by big donors or the promise of a future cushy job.\n\nThe government is quite rightly working to claw back some of the public money pilfered during the pandemic, but it would also benefit from distancing itself from those donors who are only interested in the party as a vehicle for achieving their own ends.\n\nAssociating with these super-rich donors, however many suits they buy or breakfasts and receptions they sponsor, in the end only causes harm to the Labour Party and wider movement. This is not just because things like the ‘freebies’ controversy harden the perception that our politicians are for sale, but also because of the wider message it sends about how, and for whom, our democracy works. If we aim to expose Reform as just another party in service to the super-rich, we have to show that we’re something else.\n\nOne way to do that is by empowering working people and rebalancing our democracy. Even if the super-rich were barred from donating tomorrow, their wealth would still give them enormous influence — they control TV stations, newspapers, online media platforms and can move markets through speculation and financial manoeuvres. That power must be countered.\n\nThere are lots of ways of doing this including further strengthening employment rights, but perhaps most pertinent at the moment is the importance of defending the right to protest. My colleague in Parliament, Andy McDonald, has led the campaign against the government’s proposals to restrict ‘cumulative protests’.\n\nMinisters may enjoy playing the strong man and targeting the pro-Palestine movement, but restricting the ability of people to organise effectively only serves the interests of those already powerful enough to shape politics without ever stepping onto the streets. The right to protest is a vital counterweight to extreme wealth. It is how ordinary people make themselves heard when they lack the money and access of the powerful.\n\nA Labour government should be redistributing political power in favour of working people, not adding new layers to the already draconian restrictions on protest left behind by the Conservatives. Though battered and bruised, the Labour government still has the chance to pair a bold economic agenda with policies that curb the power of the super-rich and restore faith in our democracy.\n\nFail to act, and rising poverty and broken public services will fuel the far-right, while the democratic right to protest is eroded and the super-rich tighten their grip. Communities would be left exposed to policies that enrich the few, with diminished power to resist them. The choice is clear: rebuild the economy and democracy together or let inequality and disempowerment define our future.\n\n* * *",
  "title": "Big Money Has Corrupted Britain’s Politics",
  "updatedAt": "2026-03-13T15:42:50.000Z"
}