Every now and again, the British State pauses from censoring its dissidents and shipping arms to its proxy militias abroad, and issues a communique of such unintentional hilarity that it deserves to go under glass in the Museum of Terminal Decline. Today’s specimen is a press release from the Electoral Commission, solemnly announcing that the political parties accepted £12.95 million in donations in the first quarter of 2025. We are told this with the air of a priesthood declaring the harvest results to the masses—meant, one assumes, to reassure us that the democratic system is alive and well.

But there is something arresting buried in the spreadsheet of this glorified audit. The Conservative and Unionist Party, a political corpse in its late stages of decomposition, accepted £5,519,805. Of this, over £3.3 million came from private donors. The question that arises—if one has not yet fallen into catatonia—is who could be so credulous, so morally degraded, as to part with that kind of money in exchange for affiliation with a gang of sexual perverts in expensively tailored rags?

We are not told. The Electoral Commission, in its smug little footnotes, reminds us that it has called on the Government to tighten rules—requiring parties to conduct “know-your-donor” checks. One assumes these would be about as rigorous as the due diligence applied to PPE contracts during the lockdown years. If the Conservative Party were a registered charity, its trustees would be in prison. As it is, the donors remain anonymous—corporate shells, unincorporated fronts, foreign agents passed through three layers of laundering.

The donation statistics are then split into columns: private funds and “public funds.” These latter include “Short” and “Cranborne” money—millions handed over by the state itself to subsidise the parties that are claimed to run it. We are meant to regard this as normal. It is not. In any sane polity, the notion that the Government pays the opposition to oppose it would be regarded as a joke. In Britain, it is policy.

Nor should the Electoral Commission itself exist. It was set up by Tony Blair in 2000, under the pretext of “ensuring integrity” in elections. It does nothing of the sort. It exists to suppress insurgent movements and enforce the managerial monoculture that has displaced the ancient liberties of this country. It makes no difference whether you are a Green, a Reformer, or some harmless crank: if you so much as spell your name wrong on a campaign leaflet, the Commission may open a file on you, freeze your accounts, and refer you to the police. It is a prophylactic for the regime, not a safeguard for the people.

As for the sums, we are supposed to be impressed that Labour has raised £2.6 million this quarter. But of course it has. It is the designated vehicle of the new consensus. It is the party of the incorporated NGO, the foundation-funded think tank, the university Vice-Chancellor and the HR department. It is the smiley face on the battering ram. It is, by design, the party that gets to administer Thermidor. It gets the money because it has been pre-approved.

Reform UK, meanwhile, took £1.48 million—though one suspects that this came mainly from the wallets of its members, and not from the backroom of a Chinese casino or the Cayman branch of HSBC. The Reclaim Party scraped together £100,000—perhaps from a generous divorcee who watched GB News one evening and mistook Laurence Fox for a man of action. The SDP received £15,000, presumably from an eccentric pensioner who remembers the days when politics had vocabulary. UKIP, in a state of zombie animation, gathered £19,045. One hopes it came from a T-shirt sale, rather than a drug cartel.

All of this is presented to us with an air of managerial virtue. Jackie Killeen, the Commission’s Director of Electoral Administration and Regulation, informs us that the UK has “high levels of transparency.” The figures, she says, “enable voters to see where parties get their money.” This is risible. What these figures show is not transparency, but choreography. We are given the illusion of scrutiny, the performance of openness, while the real mechanisms of influence operate behind several screens.

More telling than what is revealed is what is not. Where did the Conservative Party find a donor—any donor—willing to part with seven figures? Were they under duress? Did they mistake the Conservative Party for a money-laundering vehicle? Or do they have business pending with one of the regime’s still-functioning departments: Defence procurement, Net Zero compliance enforcement, or perhaps one of the newly minted “social impact bonds” for managing the homeless? In modern Britain, a party donation is not a statement of belief; it is a transaction. And the currency is future exemption.

Consider this gem: “Loans with a value of £436,278 were fully paid off.” One is tempted to ask: by whom? And for what? The press release does not say. Nor will any respectable journalist ask. The entire political finance regime is a laundromat, and the Electoral Commission is the man standing outside with a clipboard and a high-vis jacket, telling the world how clean it all is.

We are further told that 375 political parties are currently registered in Britain, of which 46 submitted reports this quarter. This statistic, far from suggesting vibrancy, reveals the true nature of the system. We are governed not by parties but by brands. The parties exist not to debate, but to absorb. New movements are permitted only if they are already harmless. If they show signs of being otherwise, they are demonised and eventually prosecuted. The Electoral Commission’s role is to facilitate this process. It is not a watchdog but a sheepdog. Its job is not to protect the flock, but to keep it from straying.

In a sane country, the Electoral Commission would be abolished, and political donations treated like the sale of goods: caveat emptor. If a man wishes to spend his fortune backing a cause, he should do so without interference. But then, in a sane country, there would be no need to track donations to decaying political carcasses because these would no longer be the instruments of power. Real power in Britain does not sit in Westminster or even Whitehall. It sits in the City and its transnational satellites. It is the monied interest—the class that underwrites all governments and survives all elections. What the Commission offers us is a pageant of respectability to disguise this fact.

We are supposed to marvel at these numbers. What we ought to do is laugh. £5 million to the Conservatives is not a lifeline. It is an obituary payment. It is the price of buying the final loyalty of a dying beast, before it is put down by the same hands that have always fed it. As for Labour, its enrichment is not victory—it is the privilege of being allowed to carry the can for policies now dictated elsewhere.

And so the theatre continues. The Commission counts the coins. The parties rehearse their lines. The voters are invited to applaud. And behind the curtain, the real owners of Britain adjust their portfolios, secure in the knowledge that whatever colour the rosette, the outcome will be the same.

That is what transparency means in 2025. That is the democracy your taxes bought.

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