Anti-democratic Election Deposits
How to keep the poor down
There is lots to do when you stand as an MP in the UK.
Some of it is paperwork.
To become nominated as a candidate at a UK Parliamentary general election you need to submit a completed set of nomination papers to the local Council’s Returning Officer by 4pm, on Friday June 7th 2024 (19 working days before the poll).
I’m doing that today. Nominations, consents, witnesses, authorisations, emblem requests, subscribers, appointing agents: all terms I will be wrestling with as I work my way through it.
Wish me luck.
Show Me The Money
You also have to pay £500 in cash.
You might get the £500 back, but only if you receive 5% of the vote on polling day. Which, of course, is something you can influence to a degree (especially if you are rich and backed by a big political party and wealthy donors), but can not control.
It is one of the many rules designed to benefit large political parties, and penalise smaller ones or independents. It’s why Conservatives and Labour defend this situation, and won’t remove what amounts to a fine for many people standing for election. The well-off know their candidates will almost always get enough votes to return the deposit, even if they don’t win. All the money flows back into the party coffers.
As part of the deposit you do have access to some free postage. Parliamentary candidates are entitled to the delivery of one item of election material for every household in the constituency by the Royal Mail. However, unless you can also find £1,000 to print the leaflets to post, you won’t be able to use that offer. Whereas the big parties have no problem printing hundreds of thousands of leaflets in bulk (reducing unit cost) and always spam us with their guff. Another example of why election deposits should go, since they doubly penalise the smaller parties and independents.
Every time you’ve wanted to have a decent person to vote for in a General Election, but not been offered any good candidates to choose from, such as a Green, this £500 fine is the primary reason.
Why Is This?
I’ve asked many politicians why this deposit/fine still exists. I also asked them to work to reverse it. But politicians just fobbed me off with their prejudices, and refused to change this situation which benefits them.
In August 2022 the Conservative Alister Jack wrote to me and said:
“The deposit system is defended as preventing abuse of the electoral system”.
That same month the fellow Conservative Oliver Mundell told me:
“I am afraid I do not agree - I think £500 is a reasonable threshold and ensures only those who are seriously seeking election put their names forward.”
In September 2022, Sharon Dowey MSP, Scottish Conservative Party, wrote to me that:
“These deposits serve an important function, namely that they limit extremist or other fringe groups from being able to stand in large numbers across the country. If we were to remove the deposit then a huge amount of public money could go towards funding joke or extremist campaigns. I fully support this and will continue to do so in the future.”
As you can see, Conservatives are united on this. They think removing what amounts to a fine would lead to “abuse” by “extremists”, or “frivolous” entrants. (To be honest, the extremists are the Conservatives in my view, but whatever. I guess they’d rather huge amounts of public money went into their pockets, or those of their sponsors.)
As with most things Conservatives say, I can’t tell if they truly mean it and perhaps see the world only through mean and prejudiced eyes; or if they are lying to defend discrimination.
Why They Are Wrong
It’s anti-democratic that people have to pay £500 to stand as an MP (or Welsh AM, or Scottish MSP). It means poor people can’t ever risk it. Only the well-off (or those in political parties) can afford to stand. That excludes a significant and growing amount of people from being able to represent their communities.
It is nothing to do with stopping “frivolous” candidates. It only stops poor people from standing. Including dedicated, serious candidates offering a real alternative to the same old same old. Whereas if someone is rich, they can afford to stand on any frivolous whim they wish. That is exclusionary. It is based around wealth and inequality, not what you stand for.
Allowing anyone to stand would be democracy – putting wealth-related barriers in place is the opposite of a democratic situation.
As an example, I am passionate and serious about my local community. But I can’t afford to risk losing £500 because of something I cannot control. It’s only thanks to the backing of the Green Party that I can stand at all.
(The deposit for other elections is even higher: £10,000 for London mayoral elections, to make sure only the rich can play. We wouldn’t want someone with a working class background to have any say in politics!)
Lording It
The Conservatives love to imply that, without the £500 deposit, they’d be somehow enabling democratic scroungers. And yet, they’ll happily give far greater amounts to organisations which are primarily full of … Conservatives.
The House of Lords has 773 unelected peers who are paid £350 per day if they show up for a minimum required twenty minutes, while the rest of the country struggles to pay their household bills and put meals on the table. The point being, privileged people who may have no interest in justice get paid large sums, yet poor (but dedicated) people can’t risk even standing since they may get charged for exercising their democratic right. This is one of the systems designed to stifle change, and why conservative UK politics drags us down year after year.
Also see:
House of Lords expenses: More tax-free cash for unelected peers, as Lords get above-inflation rise
Fury over ‘ludicrous waste’ as peers claim £15m in allowances and expenses
It’s not just hereditary peers that are ‘hard to justify’ – It’s the whole unelected chamber
Yep, Conservatives will defend their members in that cushy institution, and the fortunes spent on it, whilst refusing to drop the comparatively insignificant election deposit.
How To Fix It – And Proportional Representation
For a true democracy, anyone should have an opportunity of standing and being elected, regardless of their financial status.
One of the ways to improve democracy is to remove the charge for standing if you don’t get enough votes. No £500 deposit. Or at least drop it if you are not wealthy.
Society is either inclusive (and accepts that sometimes that includes people you might not agree with) or you put barriers in place to exclude people, as here. Which also has the (fully intended) outcome of making change harder.
Obviously this is only one of the many changes needed. Proportional representation is another. The current First Past The Post System is completely broken and unrepresentative. For example, in the 2019 general election, the Green party received 865,000 votes nationally but won just a single seat. In the same election, Conservatives only got an average of 38,000 votes for each MP elected. At that rate, Greens would have had 20 MPs elected. Likewise when I wrote about Restricting Democracy, I calculated that in the 2019 election Conservatives were given 56% of the seats in Parliament (and therefore control of the government) – yet they had only received 27.6% of the votes from registered voters.
There’s also the whole situation with Election Agents. Well-funded parties like the Conservatives can afford to supply them to party candidates. Rich people standing as independents can afford to hire someone. But if you aren’t rich and want to stand as an independent, or even to stand for a smaller party without much of a budget, then you may have to be your own agent. In which case you can be fined if you make mistakes, or say the wrong thing: varying amounts that I can’t even find listed anywhere. And yes, you could lose your home as a result. Another way to stop anyone who is struggling financially from standing. We are more likely to get candidates who are financially secure – how are they going to understand or represent the vast majority of people who are faced with a cost-of-living crisis?
Those in power insist that we live in a democracy, whilst knowing that many institutional practices exist which are designed to stop the people from changing things for the better.
Also see:
Smaller parties may be squeezed out of UK election TV leadership debates
Tory donors pour cash into seats held by big names at risk of losing
Promoted by Karl Drinkwater (Green Party) at The Gate, Keppoch Street, Cardiff CF24 3JW.
Have to keep those elite aholes in power somehow 🤡 democracy my a**
I worked on a proportional representation campaign where I live a number of years ago. Unfortunately, we weren't successful. It's so much more democratic than first past the post. Best of luck to you, Karl.