The Spectator’s Notes | 25 March 2006

‘There is such a thing as society — but it’s not the same as the state’ is the best of the David Cameron soundbites. The row about the funding of political parties offered the Tories an opportunity to put this belief into practice, but they have passed it up. Political parties exist on the principle of voluntarism. They are not organs of the state, but vehicles for citizens to band together to advance their beliefs and interests. Their ability to raise money is a rough index of their success in winning public support, and the methods they choose are a good test of their fitness for government. Generally, it proves hard to raise money. Faced with that problem, any normal charity or church or campaigning group would ask itself how to win greater loyalty from its supporters, how to persuade potential donors of the importance of their cause. Political parties react differently. Believing that their time is much more important than that of their donors, they curse the rich people to whom they suck up, and can’t be bothered to go out and win over the poorer masses. Modern politicians are always pointing out that people today do join organisations interested in public affairs — Friends of the Earth, the Countryside Alliance etc. — but not political parties. The funding row is part of the reason why: it is so blatant that parties are self-serving, not serving others. So the solution that naturally enters the parties’ minds is state funding: we have to pay and their lives are easy. In this latest row, the main parties have emerged as morally the same. By choosing pure voluntarism, the Conservatives could have marked out, for the first time, a real difference.

Strange how, in scandals such as these, the bit that is truly scandalous so quickly gets forgotten.