Hi ,
Do you have enough money to bribe a politician? That's the question many Americans have been asking themselves in the ongoing prosecution of disgraced Mayor of New York Eric Adams for a laundry list of corruption allegations, including a $100,000 bribery charge from Turkish officials. His administration of New York has been marked by abuse of power; not just the allegations of corruption, but also in his championing of police powers to abuse New York's residents, policies found to be illegally racist by courts, and attacks on elected critics. Democratic backsliding is not isolated to Trump's Republicans in the US – this is what happens when power becomes unsustainably unequal.
But we don't necessarily have to look across the Atlantic to see this problem. As we approach Reeves' October Budget, lobbying in the UK has reached a fever pitch as the ultra-wealthy try to defend or even expand their tax loopholes. Last week, Barclays, HSBC, and Lloyds Bank agreed to pay £175,000 to sponsor a "summit" between themselves and Rachel Reeves in order to argue against taxing the rich, while Labour's business team offered £30,000 roundtables over breakfast to corporations. A large government investment in carbon capture and storage – a technology that is dubious at best – was preceded by 16 meetings with the Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA). And of course, there's a lot of precedent in the UK government for this kind of strange association, from the Covid protective equipment scandal to Conservative leadership candidate Robert Jenrick's unlawful planning decision taken after a £12,000 donation.
The lobbying doesn't just focus on MPs, either. Advisors to the ultra-rich are popping up all over the media to say, often entirely unchallenged, that attempts to tax the rich will end in disaster. In the Financial Times, for example, non-doms say they'll definitely leave the country if they're taxed, despite numerous studies finding that's unlikely and didn't happen in other countries. The results are clear: reports indicate that taxes on non-doms and plans to close loopholes on hedge fund managers may be scrapped from the budget thanks to heavy lobbying.
Why are the ultra-wealthy allowed to wield such influence over policy? People who rely on benefit payments are not given the opportunity to speak to government officials about whether planned austerity measures will push them into poverty. Replacing politicians isn't enough in a system that structurally encourages the ultra-rich to buy influence and incentivises policy-makers to only listen to concerns from certain sources.
Concentrating power makes it easy to influence. That's why we need to not just devolve power out of Westminster, but also open power up to the people. Take participatory budgeting, where community members decide for themselves how money is spent. Successful trials in South America, New York City, and Scotland allocated money and increased trust, empathy, and social development. Citizens' Assemblies can help solve intractable issues, while Community Reporting and storytelling gives people the ability to highlight the issues they think matter to their community in their own words, and make their own demands unfiltered by institutions.
Ending undue influence over policy will be incredibly difficult, but we can start by giving people outside the ultra-wealthy the chance to be heard by power on a level footing. |
