The American Declaration of Independence eloquently sets out the rights with which we are born:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But a close encounter with an alligator in the Everglades will soon show that our Creator forgot to tell it about man’s inalienable right to life. To say to a woman living in Afghanistan or Iran that she was born equal, with a right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness would be met with a look of despair rather than hope.

The reality is that we have ‘rights’ only if we, as voters, decide that the law of our country should give them to us and then only to the extent that they can be enforced against those (including governments and alligators) who would try to take them away. Rights are not somehow intrinsic to our lives. There is no gene for human rights. In the absence of an enforceable law, ‘rights’ are, at best, aspirations - a rallying cry.

And sometimes they are an imperfect formulation of what we want to be the case. There is a considerable difference between the views of the right and the liberals on the left as to how others should be treated.

Amongst readers of the Guardian and the Independent, human rights legislation is seen as obviously ‘a good thing’, whilst readers of the Express, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail are far from sure.

Liberals would consider it completely unacceptable to deport an illegal immigrant back to a country where he might be tortured or killed. Most others, by contrast, would look at what the person had done and, if he had committed a serious crime, would be likely to say ‘tough’ and send him back anyway. Their view would be that receiving humanitarian treatment is dependent on compliance with your obligations as a ‘guest’ here.

Both views are, of course, merely assertions incapable of justification on purely logical grounds. All cows eat grass, this is a cow and so therefore it eats grass is not a formulation which can be used to settle this particular issue. There are no premises which would be universally accepted as true from which a deduction could be made.

As we know, the judges of the European Court of Human Rights have recently made it crystal clear that sending someone back to a supposedly safe country is only acceptable if the whole of the country is safe. Right-wing parties however take a less absolutist view. Who is right? I’m afraid it’s subjective.

And so we turn to the mess which is the legal system in America. Mr Trump has successfully persuaded his very many supporters that his numerous criminal trials, as well as the various civil proceedings brought against him, are the result of an attempt to persecute him rather than being justified by the evidence against him. This, even though juries have convicted him of the criminal offences and, in civil proceedings juries have awarded very substantial damages against him.

We are therefore asked to believe that the juries have been chosen for their political views or that the judges in their summings-up have been so biased that they have turned the juries’ heads. This sort of perception is not exactly helped by the fact that judges and other officials in the Departments of Justice (Federal and State) are elected to their positions and so can easily be accused of prejudice. Or that the selection of Supreme Court judges was quite openly based on what the Republican party thought would be good for its political agenda.

Many past presidents have pardoned many people. Obama pardoned or commuted the sentences of 1,927 convicts during his two terms in the White House. But President Biden has now decided to pardon his own son for anything he’s alleged to have done over the last 10 years or so using the same reasoning that Trump has been using about his own woes. This, after he pleaded guilty to buying a gun when he was a drug user along with numerous tax fraud offences committed after he’d given up the drugs although not the escort girls, the cost of which he seemed to think was tax deductible. There was the likelihood of very lengthy sentences. It’s handy if your father is President and can pardon you - even if he had previously said, quite categorically, that he would not do so. Surely it’s just hypocritical?

And even though Trump had already indicated that he would pardon those imprisoned for their actions on January 6th, he now has much more justification for doing so. This is not how the rule of law ought to work.

But what we see in America is a transactional view of politics and use of the legal system as support. All of course good for my former profession. We also see vast amounts of money devoted to campaigning, So is this for promoting political views designed to be for the good of the country as a whole? No. Instead we have only to ‘Follow the money’. The major donors have financial interests they wish to promote or protect.

Elon Musk, for example, wants to overcome the various regulatory objections slowing down his space exploration programme and the launch of his internet networked satellite systems.

Financial interests are not new in politics, but their existence is no longer hidden. Companies like those selling tobacco products used to keep a low profile, whilst managing to find politicians willing to obfuscate the science.

Now though there seems to be no need to attempt to deny the reality when it comes to the donations to politics by multi-billionaires. It seems that the conflict of interest inherent in their involvement is not against the law,.

Which leads us to Nigel Farage. Nigel Farage can already lay claim to the title of most influential and successful politician in Britain today. He brought us the biggest political change in a generation in the form of Brexit.

But, as we heard over the weekend, it seems that he could be about to take his career to the next level. It has been rumoured that Reform UK is to receive from Elon Musk the biggest ever donation to any UK political party - $100 million, or around £79 million.

Any donation even approaching that size would be transformative for Reform. It remains a relatively unorganised party without the infrastructure needed to make progress. Reform’s 4.1 million votes were spread too evenly to translate into many parliamentary seats in this year’s general election. It managed to get just one seat in Parliament for every 823,000 people who voted for the party, whereas the Lib Dems, with their experience and organisation, managed to get one seat for every 49,000 votes. The Tories obtained one seat for every 56,000 votes.

Rules on foreign funding of political parties mean that Musk would have to make a donation through a British company, such as the UK arm of Tesla or X. Granted their relatively small size (financially speaking), however, the sort of amounts being talked about are probably not viable from legal point of view*.

In the year before an election there are also limits on what can be spent for promoting any party - £34 million for a party putting up candidates in every constituency. Whatever the limits on spending, however, we really ought to tighten up the rules on donations ultimately having a foreign origin. If not, then we shall turn ourselves into a country which can be bought - and so not in fact a democracy at all.

Paul Buckingham

3 December 2024


*Letter to the Times, Friday December 20 2024

Sir, The Electoral Commission is right to continue to say that political donations from British companies should be barred if those companies have not made sufficient profits in the UK to pay for them (“Law change may limit Reform gift”, Dec 19). But the importance of such a reform is more evidentiary than substantive. It is already unlawful for a foreign impermissible donor to use a UK company as an agent for a donation. In those circumstances, the legal position is that the impermissible foreigner remains the donor.

The difficulty the commission’s investigators face in normal circumstances is how to tell the difference between a genuine corporate donation and an unlawful agency arrangement. The proposed reform would help, but it is not necessary in all circumstances. For example, where a UK political party has announced that it is looking for ways for a very rich foreign donor to donate “through” a UK company, the party is already admitting that it is looking at an agency arrangement, which can never be lawful. A better solution would be to ban all donations from corporate bodies. If that is too radical for the present government, it should at least legislate to limit how much donors can give.

Professor David Howarth
UK Electoral Commissioner 2010-18; Cambridge