Simon Kuper
speaker
89 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Sep 2024
last heard 4 Jun
Simon Kuper’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
You don't. So a lot of what political parties do is try to screw the donors. So often with the Conservative Party, you have this cohort of libertarian blokes in the city. Think of Crispin Odie or Paul Marshall. And these people, they genuinely want low tax, they hate the EU, they want no regulations, and they don't like any rules because they think rules don't apply to people like me.
So when COVID happens... The Tory donors are saying, just, you know, open it all up. Don't lock us down. Just let it all hang out. And they're very anti-lockdown. And the Tories have to be nice to these people and listen to them because they give you money. But the Tories are thinking, yeah, but our voters are pensioners. They like having an NHS. They often rely on pensions, other state benefits.
They're a vulnerable group.
Yeah, they want lockdowns. So the Tories have to say to the donors, yeah, yeah, you know, man, I hear you on these lockdowns, but they also have to keep the lockdowns. So it's a lot of the job of the party is disappointing donors, letting down donors.
I think it's now £15 million.
You can't. I mean, if it's so much, you can't return it. Like if somebody gives you 10 grand and then they turn out to have done something bad, you say, oh, I'm going to be very moral, give the 10 grand back. If somebody gives you 15 million pounds, that's your whole party organisation. I don't think anyone in the history of British politics had ever donated 15 million pounds in a single year.
What's someone like Frank Hester hoping to get out of that relationship? I mean, he says he talked a lot to Sunak about AI and how that would revolutionize healthcare. And I think that he feels, you know, I'm at the cutting edge of healthcare. That's the main field he's an entrepreneur in. Obviously, there's going to be, the government's going to want to regulate stuff.
I need a hotline to government. And I think he also thinks, you know, the Tories are much better than Labour. The Tories are a good party for the country. Labour are a bad party for the country. So to some degree, it's genuine belief. But also, I mean, the man is running a serious business that can be regulated by government.
So he has an interest in getting in the way or influencing what that regulation could be.
Well, it's getting close to that. But the Labour donors, the three main ones, so David Sainsbury doesn't really have a business. Gary Lubner was Autoglass and he's kind of, he's stepped out of that. And then there's Dale Vince, who's a green entrepreneur. Those are the three big ones.
It's deliberate. So there's, I think, a three-month window in which you have to declare donations. So you discuss with the donor. you know, donate before the election so we can spend the money, but donate at a time where three months later it's going to be August or something, nobody's going to care, everyone will have won the election anyway.
So you time the donations for the best possible moment. And, you know, you declare it at 7pm on a Friday when the news desks are empty. So, yeah, all this is thought through beforehand.
It is now true. So these parties, Labour and the Tories, used to be mass member organisations. Paul McCartney's first gig when he was about 15 is at, he says, a place called the Conservative Club in some suburb of Liverpool, because there were millions and millions of members of Conservative clubs all over the UK.
And they'd go there on a Saturday night to listen to music, to play billiards, to have cheese parties. And They, you know, they paid membership fees and that funded the party. And Labour had a version of that, which was more through trade union members giving money to Labour. And as that wanes, you know, obviously all those conservative clubs are now shuttered. They don't exist anymore.
You then start to need donations. And so that from the 80s, 90s becomes the big story. Now you could do it differently. So in other countries, like in France, where I live, there are significant government money going to fund parties. And in the UK, there's virtually none. The opposition gets a bit of short money, it's called.
I think other parties also get it, but mostly it's what keeps the opposition alive. But it's very small. And obviously, if you said to British people, look, I reckon if we had 130 million quid, a year, so that's £2 per brick more or less, we could get rid of political donations. Then the parties could have organisations, they could have think tanks like German parties do.
But if you were to try and pass a law saying... The taxpayer is going to give 130 million quid to political parties. I think it would not be very popular right now.
Dogs are a problem. I'm not sure I would allow them anyway. That might be the most unpopular policy in British history.
I don't think I would dare go there.
It would save an enormous amount of money. So with the COVID inquiry, they're going to come to the COVID VIP lane scandal, which is March 2020. COVID's reached the UK. We need loads of protective kit, masks, gowns in a hurry, just millions and millions of masks. And where are you going to get them? It's just a crisis. It's a nightmare.
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