How much is my vote worth?

I’m not against the state funding parties as a matter of principle; I just think they don’t deserve it right now.

Short money is a logical state funding mechanism. It’s a modest sum that goes to opposition parties, proportionately according to the number of MPs they returned, to support them in holding the government parties to account. But a £100 million fund for the mainstream parties takes things to a whole new scale.

There’s a recurring theme in discussions about the nature of the Labour Party. Are we a party owned by its members or are we a club of supporters of a political viewpoint espoused by our leaders? The compromise position upon which we balance delicately enables the party leadership to have the best of both worlds.

Labour members are offered scraps of democracy, just sufficient to ensure they continue to pay their subs and knock on doors, but no more. If the leader wants to abolish shadow cabinet elections, rule changes are rushed through without delay, but if party members want a say in making policy, that’s subject to a long consultation process about how that might best be achieved, no doubt resulting in a negligible tweaking of the National Policy Forum.

This is the internet age. If you want to know what party members think about Free Schools for example just send us an email with a link to a survey. It’s not hard.

That’s not to say improvements don’t happen. But if a leader truly wanted the party to be democratic you would see a cascade of rule changes appear on the NEC agenda and the job would be done within a month.

Members’ subs aren’t the biggest portion of Labour’s finances – that would be the unions. But we are the bread and butter. We just keep paying the direct debits – a reasonably regular cashflow of a reasonably predictable size.

But giving the Labour Party £30 million a year of state funding (presuming 30% share of a £100m budget) would radically change the dynamic between the members and the leadership – perhaps even the unions too. There would no longer be any need to maintain the pretence of being a party of its members.

It could of course be spun. The unions could be told to back one member one vote or disaffiliate, setting up a healthy battle with the unions where the leadership wins the support of the Daily Mail. Equally, members who have a concern with “Purple Book” style reforms can be told that maybe they’re in the wrong party and perhaps they would like to leave – again to the applause of “Middle England”.

We could dispense with the discomfort of letting CLPs choose their candidates. An adoption of open primaries would be affordable with that scale of state funding and would be hailed as Labour looking to the public instead of focusing on internal discussions. But of course, once the members aren’t choosing the candidates, what logic is there for limiting your pool of candidates simply to those who are party members?

And for all the party members and activists we would lose, the calculation is that those activists would be replaced with bright young door-knockers doing so as “fans” of the candidate – American style – rather than as lifelong party stakeholders.

Party funding of this scale fills the gap that would otherwise prevent us from becoming US-style candidate fan clubs. In America they have a long tradition of philanthropy and political donations are seen as philanthropic. So there’s money in politics in the US in a way that there isn’t in the UK. A political slush fund of £100m a year would change that equation.

It would allow better funding of the “air war” – posters, media management and the like – with less reliance on getting activists onto doorsteps.

Members’ involvement in policy making wouldn’t be necessary at all. People who like Labour’s policies would be told they are welcome, people who don’t would soon find out they are not. Party Conference would soon slip into an annual jamboree of pep talks and aspiring candidates seeking a name for themselves. Any “business” wouldn’t really require member input.

I don’t believe this is what Ed Miliband wants. I don’t believe that those who do want it would readily admit so. Their logic is that the party needs the money and we should go for it.

But the middle-class-fetishising purple bookers, who would take over the party for ever, need one thing from us. They want the brand name; the Labour Party that has stood for people, for progress and equality for a century – that’s worth taking. That will be worth votes for a long while yet – regardless of the policies.

And when votes are calculated in pounds, the faction that takes over the party will have a distinct financial advantage over those people forced into new parties with new brands to build.

So it’s not that I oppose state funding of political parties as a matter of principle. But until the leadership concedes the impact it would have on the dynamics of power in the party and democratises it accordingly; until they lock pluralism into our structures and constitution so that we can withstand the change and remain a members’ party; until then, I just don’t trust them.