State subsidy - of politics or industry - always has the same outcome

Polly Toynbee suggests:

As in other countries, the state would have to contribute towards political funding: parties are an essential element in democracy.

We’re not sure we agree that parties are necessary, but. The reason we’re against state funding here is the same reason we’re against state funding of industry and so on. It always, but always, protects the incumbents and works against insurgents.

For the simple and obvious reason that any extant organisation has significant political support - all the people who benefit from the organisation’s existence - and thus will be politically favoured. But those that exist in potentio only do not have that extant political base. Therefore they will not be favoured by politics. Thus, political payments to parties or industries benefits the current establishment at the expense of the new and different.

With the economy, in business, this is obviously detrimental for it really just never is the large and extant that bring on the new and exciting. That everyone quotes Apple as being a company that really did reinvent itself is one of the proofs of this - that everyone mentions Apple and Apple only shows how rare it is.

Of course, it’s possible to have views about the merits or not of new insurgent parties like Brexit/Reform, the Greens, Your Party (perhaps not so insurgent any more) or back in the day the SDP, the Common Wealth Party and so on. But that new insurgent parties are possible is essential to the vitality of the body politic. So, we should not, must not, bias the system against their irruption through concentrating the only source of party financing upon the extant parties.

But, of course, the people who make any new rules will be members of those extant, political establishment, parties so we doubt any new rules will be made upon anything so outre as merely sensible grounds.

Tim Worstall