Stella Tsantekidou column: ‘One quid to rule them all’

I need everyone reading this to donate to the Labour Party the smallest amount its website will accept. Now, before you read on. Their email asked for £3. Go for a quid, and make it monthly, and while you are at it, join Friends of LabourList too (if you are reading this, you clearly value it).

Remember when we all freaked out about Elon Musk buying Twitter? With all the money in the world and the most influential eyeballs in his palms, Elon Musk and his formerly preferred candidate, Donald Trump, eradicated all the norms of civility and political correctness from our online political communication. The result, however, was not infinite voters for the Republican Party. Inviting the formerly cancelled back into public life turned out to be less like lifting a boot off a throat and more like turning over a rock to see what scuttles out. Scroll on X today, and you’ll see the right electorally benefited from the selection bias of cancel culture far more than the left. By cancelling their worst freaks, the left forced them to smarten up. Without our self-righteous scolding, they have revealed their true colours.

The Labour Party has enjoyed a summer of harmony and pleasant polling ratings. Our new PM has been blessed with an opposition mired in scandal. But I just know it, somewhere in Manchester or London, there are neurotic Labour strategists battling Buzzball hangovers, itching to act out. Over the weekend, Labour’s anti-Farage iron dome, Angela Rayner, suggested Farage may have to return his 72 million bribe donation that resulted from the willy-waving between our homegrown, foreign-seduced, multi-billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne.

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I suggest they don’t. Reform has enough rope; let them decide what to do with it. Complete the law changes, but don’t focus on them. Labour’s vibe must never be that of petty bureaucrats waving rulebooks around. Reform voters don’t care, and undecided voters don’t find legislating brave or of any direct benefit to them.

My favourite political advice is “don’t just do something, stand there.” It was made famous by Ronald Regan, but it entered my lexicon from a stirring memo Damian McBride sent out to Emily Thornberry’s office when I was still graced with a job in it. The lesson is simple – when things are going well, don’t be tempted to act out. If you are well-liked and you do nothing, you continue to be liked. But if you do something that makes you look less fun or cool, the fall from grace can be lethal.

Labour’s fundraising request over the weekend, asking supporters to chip in as little as £3 is brilliant strategically – which is why the right-wingers are mocking it. I was summoned to the airwaves on Sunday to be asked whether that was pathetic or even hypocritical, noting the subject line being “an urgent request” and the body peppered with alarmist phrases.

I would instead describe it as a simplified American fundraising email, and I can assure you that the ones I usually receive (you sign up once, you will never get off their email lists) are as subtle as a Nigerian prince locked out of his bank account. But they work as fundraisers and, most importantly, drawing in individual small donations will give Burnham numbers he can recite for maximum populist clout. When I was a field organiser on the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, I was addicted to the Senator’s incessantly repeated line, “the average campaign donation is $27”. It never got old because it was so illustrative of Sanders’ populist commitment and the stark difference between him and his corporate super PAC-bankrolled opponent.

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In politics, just like in a physical fight, money can’t guarantee victory; indeed, it may actively hinder it. A rich man’s hands are soft and useless in battle, and his instincts and visuals are a liability in politics. There are plenty of examples where throwing money into an election made electoral chances worse. In a Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April 2025, Musk poured $21 million into the race, only to spook local Democrats into showing up and turning independent voters against the Republican candidate. The liberals’ campaign strategy was simple: they portrayed the trillionaire as trying to buy a Supreme Court seat with his money, and declared that: “WINSCONSIN IS NOT FOR SALE.”

Now imagine this: it’s 2028 and Burnham is at his first election barnstorm in Manchester. What is his main message as to why he is the People’s Prince and not the beer-chugging, Trump-sucking boomer? It has to be simple and uncomplicated; it also needs to be realistic – and positive results for the economy are hard to come in the current climate.

Which is why I want you all reading this to donate £1 to the Labour Party right this second. 

If Labour HQ is reading this, can you guys find out how many Labour supporters need to chip in to bring the average donation way down?

Let’s give our Andy a figure so low, so dignified, so classy, HQ sticks it on every leaflet in every constituency from the canal locks of Inverness to the warehouses of Hackney Wick. We can do this. 

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