Do We Live In An Age Of Anti- Politics? Asks Whitehead

Dr Alan Whitehead, MP for Southampton Test, today launches his pamphlet "Anti-Politics and Political Parties: The Case for State Funding" in parliament.
The pamphlet which was written shortly before the recent "loans for peerages" row, summarises the state of British polity and identifies how the media and public policy conjoin to create a culture which assumes that party politics is a nasty business and that those involved in it are to be mistrusted and denigrated.

Until now, parties have attempted to hide from their problems at a local level by relying on large donations and loans to the central party. This has only distanced them still further from the local electorate and added to perceptions of corruption and sleaze.

Our polity depends upon political parties. It is therefore vital that they are healthy and able to inspire trust in the populace. Dr Whitehead believes that a system of regulated state funding for political parties, targeted to reward activism and participation at a local level, may be the answer. It would not only help to restore trust in parties; it may also create a deeper understanding of the role that parties play in maintaining our democracy.
 
Concluding, Dr Whitehead writes:
 
"'Bottom-up' state funding can be regarded as 'added value' funding in that it restores to parties the ability to act in and enhance participative politics as well as contest posts in representative elections.”
 
"State aid cast in this light does not subsume parties into the state and set their role in stone.  Rather, it provides the guarantee that the civil life of the state functions well, and it restores the proper role of politics to the civil life of citizens, for example, those in Southampton. If we do not introduce state aid and continue to react pathologically to anti-politics then the result will be a centralised, shrunken political function, divorced from community and participation."
 
Peter Facey, Director of the New Politics Network, which published the pamphlet, added:
 
"This essay comes not a moment too soon, with the government finally moving on the need for party funding reform.  Whereas the bulk of the debate thus far has been about millionaire donors and national parties, Dr Whitehead's focus is on the decline of local politics and the role public funding could play in regenerating political culture at the grassroots.
 
"Dr Whitehead's critique of how a culture of anti-politics has become deeply ingrained in the UK is also a salutary reminder at a time where it is all too tempting to make generalisations about political sleaze."
 
Dr Alan Whitehead is MP for Southampton Test and a member of the Constitutional Affairs Select Commission and the Standards and Privileges Select Committee.