This week we’re looking at proposals for democratic reform in the UK. What are the problems that reformers want to address, and is there any chance they’ll be implemented?
Democracy in the UK is under strain. Many voters feel deeply alienated from politics, believing that those elected to represent them often pursue narrow or personal interests rather than the public good. Political polarisation, intensified by changes in the media landscape, is undermining constructive debate. And for many citizens, it can feel as though money (rather than votes) is what really speaks loudest in politics.
Against this backdrop, there is growing interest in how democratic systems might be reformed to function better and become more resilient. A wide range of proposals has emerged, tackling different aspects of democratic decline. While we can’t cover them all in a single episode, today’s discussion focuses on two specific reform ideas explored in recent articles published in the journal The Political Quarterly.
The first examines the role of donations to political parties, asking how political finance shapes power, influence, and public trust in the democratic system. The second looks at the position of smaller parties in the House of Commons, exploring how parliamentary procedures affect their ability to contribute meaningfully to debate and scrutiny.
To discuss these ideas, we’re joined by the authors of both pieces:
Together, we explore whether reforming party funding and giving smaller parties a stronger voice in Parliament could help rebuild trust, improve representation, and strengthen UK democracy.
Mentioned in this episode:
[00:00:05] Alan Renwick: Hello, this is UCL Uncovering Politics, and this week we are looking at proposals for democratic reform in the UK. What are the problems that reformers want to address? What are the proposed solutions and is there any chance they'll be implemented?
Hello, my name is Alan Renwick, and welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics, the podcast of the School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science at University College London.
Democracy is struggling in the UK and around the world, many voters feel utterly alienated from politics believing that those who are supposed to represent them, in fact, pursue their own narrow interests. Polarisation, fed by changes in the media is inhibiting reasonable debate. It often feels as though money is what really talks.
So, many people are thinking about whether our democratic systems could be reformed in ways to improve their functioning and strengthen their resilience. Now, many, many proposals are out there seeking to address a whole range of problems in different ways. We can't talk about all of them unless in a single podcast episode.
So today we're going to discuss just a couple of proposals for reform of UK democratic institutions that are explored in recent articles in our sister journal, the Political Quarterly. One of these examines donations to political parties. The other looks at the role of small parties within the proceedings of the House of Commons, and I'm delighted to be joined by authors of both pieces.
Iain McMenamin is Professor of Comparative Politics at Dublin City University and an expert on political finance, and he's co-author of the article on donations and Louise Thompson is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Manchester, expert in all things parliamentary and author of the study on small parties.
Iain and Louise, welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics. It's great to have you on and we're going to start by digging into each of your articles in turn before exploring some wider themes, and maybe it makes sense to start with the financing of political campaigns and the process by which MPs are elected before we turn to what happens once they're elected.
So, Iain, let's begin with your article, which as I said is on political donations could you maybe just define what it is that we're actually talking about here? What do we mean by political donations and, and what are the current arrangements in the UK?
[00:02:49] Iain McMenamin: Well, well a donation is a gift, uh, given for political purposes or to a political actor. So most notably, uh, in the case of Britain, that's candidates and political parties. The arrangements for donations here are very transparent and they're very permissive. So in Britain, if you're a researcher like me or you're a journalist or you're a citizen, you can find information on what donations have been given to candidates and parties more easily and more conveniently and in better time than almost anywhere else in the world.
But then in terms of permissiveness, the UK is very unusual as well. So if anybody or anything that is British can give as much as they want, any amount of money, for, as a donation for political purposes and that's, that's really unusual. In other countries, is either a limit on how much you can give or, and or donations are limited to individuals, so basically voters, those who are entitled to vote. Whereas in Britain, actually most donations over the last 25 years have been given by, uh, legal individuals. So companies, trade unions, unincorporated associations, other types of legal individuals.
[00:04:19] Alan Renwick: So I guess the UK system is based on the idea that you regulate in terms of capping how much political parties can spend rather than how much they can receive, is that right? So there's kind of a, a different logic to the system in, in the UK from, I guess in many other places.
[00:04:34] Iain McMenamin: That's true. So it's, it's election focused, so they can spend as much as they want. But they can't spend as much as they want in an election campaign.
[00:04:43] Alan Renwick: Yes.
[00:04:44] Iain McMenamin: Right? So
[00:04:45] Alan Renwick: Yes
[00:04:45] Iain McMenamin: You can get, you can be given billions and you can spend billions outside of the election campaign, but within the election campaign you're quite constrained. And that's an important point. UK elections are cheap. They're modest. And UK political finance also as a whole is cheap or modest in terms of, for example, how much parties and candidates receive and spend per voter. It, it's quite inexpensive in the UK.
[00:05:18] Alan Renwick: Okay. So your article analyses whether these arrangements in the UK are fit for purpose. How should we make a judgment of fitness for purpose here? What's the, what kinds of criteria should we be using in order to, uh, to illuminate?
[00:05:32] Iain McMenamin: Well, you warned me of this in the intro, and it's not actually something we looked at in the article, so I've been desperately trying to theorise here, but I, I think that political finance is not important in itself. It, it's important insofar as it affects democratic competition in a more fundamental way. So you've gotta think about what are the effects of it on, uh, democratic competition and, and that I think is basically what we did in our article.
So the, the three things that we were worried about are related really to the permissiveness of the UK political finance system. The three things basically were inflation. So inflation in terms of the cost of politics. So obviously enough, if you think that anybody can give as much as they want, you have a danger of inflation, of politics becoming incredibly expensive. That hasn't happened so far. So over the last 25 years, if you look at the value of the reported donations, they haven't gone up, which is actually quite amazing.
Then the second threat is, uh, in terms of corruption so that people might be giving large amounts of money in order to get something back, to get a, uh, a policy benefit. Basically bribery or something which is so subtle that it's short of the legal definition of bribery, but from the ordinary citizens' point of view is something pretty similar to that.
Uh, and then the third one is the distortion of democratic competition. And that's the one that most of the commentary prior to us has focused on in, in terms of are you going to have an advantage of one political party or one type of candidate over another.
And so that in terms of corruption, it hasn't happened, we think so far, notwithstanding some, you know, particular scandals in a general sense it hasn't happened because one of the ways we think, okay, if, if you could buy public policy in the UK then that would be really valuable for economic actors and they would spend some money doing that. But the contribution rate for UK companies is three quarters of a percent. So they clearly don't think there's anything worth buying.
[00:08:10] Alan Renwick: As in three quarters of a percent of companies in the UK are donating to political persons
[00:08:14] Iain McMenamin: Yes. Annually, yeah.
[00:08:16] Alan Renwick: Yeah.
[00:08:17] Iain McMenamin: As far as that, that, that's the best calculation there is. It's the one we've done. So anyway, it's really, really low. That's the main thing about it.
[00:08:25] Alan Renwick: Yeah, I found that point really, really interesting and it was one that had never really occurred to me before actually. But it makes total sense. So the fact that very few companies are making donations, you, you see as a sign that essentially companies don't think that they're going to gain terribly much in terms of their own narrow self-interest from donating, which is a sign that the system has not been corrupted.
[00:08:48] Iain McMenamin: Yes, so that that would suggest that the system has not been corrupted. I mean, now it's very hard to know, but that is a sign that it hasn't been corrupted. One of the other ones would be that if you were spending money to try to get benefits from those in power, then the money would be correlated with who's in power.
So the government, the governing parties would get a lot more money than non governing parties. So we don't see that for the Liberal Democrats and for Labour. We do see it to some extent for the Conservatives, but it, that's hard to disentangle from another relatively unique aspect of political donations to the Conservatives.
We think that there's a fairly general relationship that the Conservatives get money when they're popular and you know, you have to be reasonably popular to get into government in the first place. Uh, whereas again, for Labour and the Liberal Democrats, there doesn't seem to be a general relationship there.
So in terms of distortion of political competition over the last 25 years, it does look like there is some potential for the system to have been distorted because of the relationship between the Conservatives and their popularity and whether they're in power. But overall, it's important to emphasize that we think the UK political finance system has been lucky.
So there hasn't been huge corruption. There definitely hasn't been inflation, and probably what distortion there has been has been limited as well. But this doesn't mean that having a system where you can give unlimited donations isn't really, really dangerous. And I'm delighted to say that since we published our piece, the biggest ever donation that there has been, uh, has occurred in the UK.
Now, it wasn't a hundred million as Elon Musk, uh, threatened to give, it was 9 million, um, but it's still the biggest one ever. Uh, it's, it's to an, a rising opposition party, uh, the Reform Party. But clearly if that were to set off a race between the parties, I think that would be damaging. Or if Reform were to continue to get more huge donations like that, that also would be damaging. So I think it indicates the risk that, uh, is there in the UK political system.
And I suppose the other one, just to link to some of what you know, Louise will be talking about. I think this was a risk when you had a stable political system with two largely centrist parties. Um, now you've got an unstable political system and you know, which the whole of the world now has in terms of voter preferences. But of course, in Britain, this whole risk is magnified by, unfortunately, you're stuck with the first past the post electoral system. So now you've got the fluidity of voter preferences multiplied by magnification and distortion from first pass the post multiplied by potentially further magnification and distortion from political finance. So that would be something that would worry me in the coming years in relation to the UK.
[00:12:28] Alan Renwick: Great. Thank you. So that's really, really clear. So the system, we can evaluate it against various, uh, standards. And so far, actually it's largely been performing okay against those standards, but inherent in the current system without any caps on donations, there are dangers, there are risks and you're suggesting that maybe we're starting to see, uh, those risks manifesting themselves. Most notably with this big, big donation, the biggest ever donation to a political party, just, just the week before we're recording this episode.
[00:13:02] Iain McMenamin: Excellent summary. You're a great host.
[00:13:06] Alan Renwick: Too kind. What then should be done about this situation?
[00:13:11] Iain McMenamin: Yeah, so again, our article doesn't talk about that very much. We really zero in on one very conventional option in terms of Western European or indeed, generally in European countries. And that is, if you like, a grand bargain where private political finance is limited and the state comes in and compensates political parties with more substantial public funding.
So there is some public funding in the UK. It's absolutely tiny. It's really miserly, uh, in comparative perspective. So that's the most obvious deal. And we argued in our article that maybe for the first time ever that a deal like that is in the interest of the three traditional parties, so the Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats, because obviously the Conservatives had a really terrible election and there's a lot of talk about the disappearance of the Conservatives. Labour won a lot of seats, but they didn't win a lot of votes and they've been doing terrible, uh, with the voters ever since. And of course, the Liberal Democrats know what it's like to be the beneficiaries of the electoral system in one election and then to really be shafted by it in the subsequent election.
So. If the three parties thought about it and if they thought they could dedicate the time to it, that is a deal that would be good for all of them, because again, it relates to the issue of the fluidity of voter preferences, that this would give you some temporal smoothing, right? So if you have a bad election, this would sort of cushion the effect of it and it would enable you to come back again. Whereas if you have a really bad election and there's no sort of financial support to keep you going over the five years, it's very hard to come back again. So we think that basic option, which has been rejected twice over the last 25 years now seems to make more sense to the traditional parties than it did previously.
At the other end, a colleague of mine, Samuel Power at the University of Bristol, he's made a really great, very simple minimalist proposal, which is just to limit donations at 1 million. You know, he's really hoping that somebody will take this up as a private members bill. because how do you argue against this, like 1 million pounds? Why, why would somebody need to give more than 1 million pounds? That's a minimalist one.
I think in between that actually is Germany. So Germany is very unusual in Europe as well in that unlimited donations are permitted and they're permitted from companies, but there's substantial political funding public political funding there so that makes the risk of distortion from private political finance, much lower than it is in the UK.
[00:16:32] Alan Renwick: Thank you, Iain. I'll probe further into how likely this actually is to happen. You've given some theoretical reasons for thinking it might, but, uh, but before we get there, let's bring Louise into this conversation and Iain has very much framed the changes that he's been talking about there in terms of the destabilisation and fragmentation of the party system in the UK.
And Louise, this is something that you've been thinking about very much in the context of parliament and understanding how parliament functions as well. So do you want to tell us what it is that you are focusing on in your analysis?
[00:17:08] Louise Thompson: Yeah. Okay. So I think I can probably pick up quite nicely from where Iain left off talking about, you know, what the last general election has told us about the political party system. Because what my article is essentially saying is that we increasingly have a, uh, electorate who is voting for a wide variety of political parties. Uh, and we can see that reflected in the situation on the floor of the House of Commons in terms of, you know, how many parties we have represented, but that, that is not necessarily reflected in the rights that we give these political parties you know, day to day in parliament.
And just as a, as examples of that, the last election was what you could describe as the least two party general election ever. So you know, we have a total of 12 political parties who took their seats in the House of Commons. We saw the Liberal Democrats perform the best they've ever performed, they get 72 seats. We saw the Greens quadruple their representation. We saw Reform become the most successful challenger party ever with their five MPs You know, and in terms of votes. The number of people voting for parties beyond the Conservatives and Labour reached over 40% for the first time.
So we can see that there's a real multi-party environment yet when you look at the House of Commons, you can see just from looking at the chamber, how much it is designed, essentially for one governing party, one official opposition party, and, since the sort of 1990s, a third party kind of tagged on at the side, and it's not really designed for everybody else.
[00:18:35] Alan Renwick: So that's, you were talking there about the physical design of the chamber being with the, the two rows of seats kind of facing each other in opposition. But this applies also to the, the rules of procedure in the House of Commons as well, doesn't it? Do you want to give us a few examples of the ways in which those rules are skewed towards an assumption of a two party system?
[00:18:56] Louise Thompson: Yeah. Yeah, I can do so. Um, I think probably the best way of looking at it is in terms of how political parties can contribute to debates on the floor of the House of Commons, and then what happens to parties in committees.
So if you think about debates on the floor of the House, um, if you are the Official Opposition party, so if you are the Conservatives right now, then you receive guaranteed speaking slots basically in everything. So that might be following a government statement. It might be the second reading of a piece of legislation on the floor of the House. And you will be the first speaker after, um, the government minister has spoken. And if you're the third party, you will then be the next one. You'll get that guaranteed slot and right to speak.
We see that at Prime Minister's questions as well. We get, um, Kemi Badenoch with six questions every week to the Prime Minister. We see the third party, the Liberal Democrats receiving two questions every week to the Prime Minister. The other parties in the house essentially get nothing. There are no guaranteed slots or rights for them in terms of speeches on the floor of the House. Um, we can also see it when we look at Opposition Day debates. So, time on the floor where opposition parties can choose the topic for debate each parliamentary session. There are 20 days in total. If you look at the standing orders of the House of Commons, 17 of those go to the Official Opposition, three of those go to the third party, so the Liberal Democrats. There is nothing guaranteed for any other political party.
Same essentially if we look at committee places the Official Opposition and the third party are guaranteed seats on every select committee and guaranteed chair slots on every committee. All the other small parties they have no rights to anything. Um, so you know, we have this multi-party system, but essentially the Official Opposition get all of the spoils more or less, the Liberal Democrats get a little bit, everybody else gets nothing.
[00:20:43] Alan Renwick: That's really clear. Thank you. And I guess the question is, the same question arises as for Iain around, well, what should the criteria be here that we apply? I mean, in the way you've described there, you're, you are implying, I guess, that a principle of proportionality ought to be applied and that so large parties presumably should get more time, but there should be a fair share of time for smaller parties as well.
[00:21:12] Louise Thompson: Yeah. And I think that's one of the major issues with how the present situation works. That the problem is that there are no guarantees of anything for these parties. There is no kind of sense of what they have a right for. Um, and I think it, it would be ridiculous to say every party should have a right to speak everything, and every party should have a committee place on it, you know, on every committee.
That's, that's not gonna work in practice. So it's more about how to think about how that proportionality should work. You know, maybe thinking about actually setting down on paper if you are a party of a certain size, then what you have a right to or what can you expect. What sort of, just to kind of build in some sort of consistency, I guess, and set of expectations about what each party should receive in the House.
[00:21:53] Alan Renwick: I guess there's an alternative view of the British Constitution that says that the role of parliament is basically to sustain a government, to provide a government and to provide an alternative government. And that's what, that's how the procedures are are are, I mean, that that's the purpose of design, the design of the procedures that it should deliver these two things. Are you just saying that that is a view of the Constitution that is wrong or is it unsustainable in the current time? What's your view of that?
[00:22:25] Louise Thompson: I don't necessarily think that's wrong, it's, we're never gonna move away, or I think we would struggle to move away from that majoritarIain idea that, you know, the Official Opposition should receive a right to a lot of, a lot of things in the chamber.
I think if you look at how it works in practice, and if you think back to the run up to the, uh, last general election, there were a lot of, polls showing that perhaps we might not have the Conservatives as the OfficialOpposition anymore, or that the Official Opposition and the third party could be very, very close in seats.
And I think even if you look at the balance now between how many Conservative MPs we have, so um, 119 Conservatives right now, 72 Liberal Democrats, the gap in the rights that we give those two parties it doesn't feel right when you look at the balance of MPs. And there could literally be one MP difference between those two parties and we would still give all those rights, extra rights to the Official Opposition.
So I think it's, it's thinking how do we work within that current idea of we need an Official Opposition within our political system. You know, they have that right as that perhaps government in waiting, but how can we make it fairer for the other parties and make the gap between those rights, you know, a bit less severe than it is at the moment.
[00:23:33] Alan Renwick: Yeah. And you framed that in terms of the rights that the system gives to the various parties and the kind of formal rules around these things, I guess. Is, is that also a description of how things work in practice or is the reality sometimes a bit different from the, the principle?
[00:23:52] Louise Thompson: Um, do you mean do the parties work informally in different ways?
[00:23:56] Alan Renwick: Yeah. So, so I mean, for example, you, you said that the smaller parties have no rights at all to opposition day debates, they have no rights at all to getting called, their leaders being called in Prime Minister's Questions, I mean, is that how it works in reality that they really don't get that time? Or is there some allowance made?
[00:24:16] Louise Thompson: Yeah. So in practice there are ways to kind of circumvent the rules and small parties have worked to find ways in which to get some of those rights that they currently lack. So Prime Minister's Questions Time will be one example of that where there's kind of an informal agreement with the speaker that one small party MP will be called to ask a question every week.
And if you look at the sort of, the Hansard transcripts of Prime Minister's Questions Time. You can kind of work out and see there's been a rough rotation across all the parties. But I think a lot of that relies on negotiation and it relies on good informal kind of working relationships with key people. So that might be the speaker, it might be the bigger party whips.
And that's one thing that I think makes it increasingly difficult when you've got so many small parties, because some of those smaller parties have really good relationships with the bigger parties and other small parties, perhaps less so, and that is perhaps what explains why if you look at the Greens, for instance, that they do very well to find seats on Select Committees. Every member of their party, parliamentary party, has sat on a Public Bill Committee in the current parliament.
But you compare that to, say, Reform and they've not had a seat on any Public Bill Committees. They've not got a seat on Departmental Select Committee. One of their MPs is on the Speaker's Conference Committee, but that's a little bit different. So, you know, the, you can see how parties may struggle if they haven't been able to maintain those kinds of relationships.
[00:25:44] Alan Renwick: So the Green Party is getting seats on Select Committees and Public Bill Committees, it's getting those basically because the leaders of the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party and the Conservatives are supporting that, is that right?
[00:25:57] Louise Thompson: Yeah, essentially asking the, the Greens may ask the Labour whip, for instance, if they could have a seat, and it would mean that Labour whips would have to remove one of the, um, MPs from that committee and, you know, let the Greens have a seat, which, which happens quite a lot in practice. But it, it requires you to actually go to the bigger parties and say, this is what I really like please, can you do this for us?
[00:26:17] Alan Renwick: How interesting. Gosh, I didn't know that. So how, uh, what, what should happen? How, how, how should things operate?
[00:26:25] Louise Thompson: Well, I would really like to see two things and one would be I'd like to see the informal rules at the moment kind of written down so that it's clear what every party has a right to. And that might be about rights to questions at Prime Minister's Questions Time, things like that. And I think it would also make sense to think about perhaps what some of the other devolved parliaments do and have some sort of threshold for, uh, the size of a party group that then might entitle you to a certain set of those rights, which could be written down.
Um, so I'm probably gonna get this wrong now, now I'm on the spot by thinking, um, Wales, it's, um, three members of parliament and in Scotland I think it's five to form an official political group. And if you reach that threshold, then you know you have those rights to to take part on different committees.
And you could see how that might function in practice in the House of Commons because it would mean that we could draw a line perhaps and say that, you know, parties with one or two MPs, maybe you don't have those automatic rights, but if it gets to parties that have maybe 5, 6, 7 MPs wherever you draw the line, I don't want to be the one to say where to draw the line that then maybe you would know what your rights were. And it would just make it much more consistent, I think. And it would show parties, what, what their guaranteed rights were.
[00:27:35] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm. This leads of course onto the question that I was pointing towards at the end of Iain's remarks as well, right? Is this actually going to happen? How, how likely are the changes that you've both been talking about here to take place?
Maybe we should, uh, flip back to Iain on this and pick up what you were saying. So you were suggesting, Iain, that actually you think there may be appetite in the main parties in the UK today for adopting donation caps and introducing spending, uh, public funding of political parties as well in order to compensate for the loss of funding to parties.
[00:28:17] Iain McMenamin: No. So I'm told by people who are much better informed than me that there is no appetite. However, what we are arguing is that that lack of appetite is because they're not thinking about their current situation and they're definitely not thinking forward. So,
[00:28:39] Alan Renwick: So, so your argument is that it's in their interest
[00:28:41] Iain McMenamin: Correct.
[00:28:42] Alan Renwick: To do this?
[00:28:42] Iain McMenamin: Correct.
[00:28:42] Alan Renwick: But it's not that they yet want to do it.
[00:28:45] Iain McMenamin: Yeah. Correct.
[00:28:46] Alan Renwick: Okay.
[00:28:48] Iain McMenamin: The subject of political finance reform comparatively is underdeveloped because it's a tricky thing to study and there are lots of other things to study, which are easier to study, but one of the core ideas of that literature is that in majoritarIain countries, which, you know, Britain was the archetype, it's sort of collapsing in various ways. that reform usually only happens if there's a scandal. And where especially a governing party is forced into a situation where it thinks it's really losing votes by letting the system stand as it is.
So that's obviously not the current situation in the UK. So you know, the most likely case for reform then would be if there's a big corruption scandal for Labour and then they think the vote, this has now become salient. Uh, we have to be seen to do something, something which sort of constraints the power of private money coming into our party and, and coming into government, and then maybe they would go for a deal which constrains private money and increases public subsidies.
In I mean, I, I've, I've, I've studied other countries where, more consensual countries where actually a scenario, a bit like the one in the UK has led to an increase in public funding and actually a distribution of public funding, which benefits the smaller parties rather than the bigger parties. Um, so I, I've seen in other countries a situation where there are parties which are losing support. And they really think they're going to get slaughtered at the next election. And they think, okay, one way of ensuring ourselves is through the political finance system and making sure it looks after smaller parties.
So that's, that's another type of scenario which is closer to the current, uh, British situation. You know, part of the problem is that I would say, even if, say, a Labour government thought this was a good thing, the nature of parliament and Louise knows this better than me, is that well, it's very busy and there's only so much time, uh, that the parliament itself has, or that a government has, or the department has, so they'd have to give up something else in order to make a big effort to bring forward, you know, quite a major change in the political system, and there doesn't seem to be an appetite for that at the moment.
[00:31:38] Alan Renwick: Louise, as, as Iain says, you're following what MPs are thinking in, in the UK parliament all the time. Do you have views on the likelihood of political finance reform in the UK?
[00:31:49] Louise Thompson: Well, I think the only thing I'd say is things like this tend to be more likely to happen if there is a threat that it might affect you in the wrong way. And if we see like that donation to Reform recently becoming more commonplace, then just like with smaller party rights, if you think it's gonna also mean it's gonna adversely affect you as a government, then you're more likely perhaps to actually put the effort into doing that reform than you would otherwise if it's really not gonna affect you.
[00:32:14] Alan Renwick: Yeah, and I guess the other aspect of this that politicians often are concerned about, I think, is that they just think that introducing higher state funding would be very unpopular, and they see it as necessary in order to deal with the shortfall in funding for political parties that would arise with a low cap at least, but they just don't think that it would be politically acceptable.
But maybe if you go the Sam Power route that, uh, Iain talked about earlier, uh, with a very high cap, then that danger is much lower and therefore, uh, you could get away with it. Very interesting. And Louise, um, what about the case of reform to the parliamentary standing orders? Do you think there's a chance of that happening?
[00:32:58] Louise Thompson: I think if it's going to happen now of this parliament is a really good opportunity for it to happen. Partly because there are a more small parties really pushing for things to change and, you know, Reform, Nigel Farage, perfect example of that. I mean, Nigel Farage, um, complains about not getting any time at Prime Minister's Questions Time, his decision to go and sit in the public gallery, um, rather than on the floor of the Commons.
Because of that, you know, it's making the issue of small party rights more, um, visible. It's a contrast to when I first started researching them. And really it was only me and a few of the people who cared, um, that this didn't seem very fair. But also alongside that, we've got the creation of the Modernisation Committee in this parliament which has committed to, you know, making things fairer for back benches.
And you know, Lucy Powell, um, before she left as Leader of the House committed to, um, trying to make things or think about how to make things fairer for small parties. So, you know, I would think now is a really good chance to actually try and get some movement on how, how the system is at present.
[00:34:02] Alan Renwick: It's interesting because you're both there referring to two kinds of mechanisms, I think. There's a sort of a present mechanism and a future mechanism. So there's a present mechanism around it being perceived that there's political damage to not changing the rules. So you're suggesting there, Louise, I think that Nigel Farage is given an extra hammer with which to bash the system and claim the system is unfair towards him and the people who, who are supporting him by the current rules and by changing the rules, Labour would be able to remove that hammer from his hand. And similarly, Iain was suggesting that. If you have corruption scandals, then politicians will feel the need to respond to those, uh, uh, corruption scandals with changes.
And then there's also the future mechanism that you're both alluding to that the part, the big parties now in a more unstable situation might fear that in the future they might no longer be big parties, and therefore they have to protect themselves against, against losses. Iain, do you want to come in?
[00:35:04] Iain McMenamin: Yes. I, I was just thinking, why don't they offer Reform a deal? They say, listen, it's not fair that the leader of, you know, what has been often the most popular political party in the country is, has very little chance to participate in parliamentary debates. That's not fair, we're gonna change it. And it's also not fair that somebody gives 9 million pounds to a political party. So let's, let's have a grand bargain, let's do both simultaneously, uh, as part of a modernisation of, uh, the rights of parties in parliament and of political finance. I mean, I'm not sure if anybody has any appetite for that, but, you know, that's, that's again, a bit like the Sam Power proposition.
It's one that's hard to argue against. It's only by sort of cynically ignoring the argument that you defeat it, but it's very hard, I think, to defend, given the current political environment, the disproportionate speaking rights of the traditional parties, and it's also really hard to defend massive donations once the debate begins.
[00:36:20] Alan Renwick: Louise?
[00:36:21] Louise Thompson: Yeah, I mean, you could see how you could, perhaps, government could suggest let's give Nigel Farage some extra time, a little bit just to make him feel better. Then we might not have all those protests and, and about how many, how little rights they have, uh, in the chamber, but then you can't give something to Reform without doing it to all the others. So then it's, again, it's like, you know, we've got to give Plaid the same rights, the SNP the same rights, otherwise it's not fair.
I think as we go along and get close to the next election, you could kind of see a situation where the Conservatives they are looking at what's happening, labour MPs are looking at what's happening and thinking, crikey, this could be us. You know, we wouldn't want to be in that situation. I think one of the really tricky things about party rights is that if you've only ever been a large party MP, you have no idea how the situation is for anybody else.
And and that was a big thing, you know, with the Change UK MPs a few years ago when they crossed the floor, they suddenly realised how hard it was and, and were very vocal in their protests about what rights should have, and Nigel Farage is sort of performing that for them now he's telling them exactly what it is like to be a small party. So I think it's probably much more in their heads. And if you think you're gonna be there one day, or you could be there, you are perhaps much more likely to actually think maybe we should maybe we start to do something about this.
[00:37:34] Alan Renwick: Very interesting. We could talk about this for a long time, but we are alas out of time. So watch this space to see what actually happens in the UK parliament over the next little period. But thank you so much Louise and Iain for stimulating our thoughts on these subjects and much more to get into in order to really understand what is going on.
We have been discussing two recent articles in the journal the Political Quarterly. The first article is called Unbroken, but Dangerous: The UK’s Political Finance Regime and the Rationale for Reform by Logan De la Torre, Kevin Fahey, and Iain McMenamin. And the second one was Modernising the House: Why the 2024 Parliament Highlights the Need to Formalise Party-Group Rights in the House of Commons by Louise Thompson. And we will, as usual, put the full details in the show notes for this episode.
And let me remind you that the Political Quarterly, like this podcast, seeks to make the best research in political science accessible to wider audiences. So do go to its website to explore recent articles on a whole host of issues including housing policy in the UK, what it will take for a woman to become president of the United States and the fragility of security in Nigeria.
This is our last episode for 2025. We'll be taking the next few weeks off to roast some chestnuts and hang up our stockings, but we will be back in January with more cutting edge research from UCL and beyond, and we'll look forward very much to seeing you then.
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I am Alan Renwick. This episode was produced by Eleanor Kingwell-Banham. Our theme music is written and performed by John Mann.
This has been UCL Uncovering Politics. Thank you for listening and have a very happy Christmas.