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Dear John,

Keir Starmer has said that Britain’s crisis of confidence in politics is “the battle that defines our political era.” About that, he’s exactly right.

A majority of the public (54%) believe that “it doesn’t matter who you vote for, nothing will ever really change in Britain.” It’s an incredibly precarious position we’re in – the kind of moment that’s historically been seized by authoritarians and demagogues.

And yet, as an alarming story illustrated this week, Westminster’s rotten culture is still fuelling that sense of unfairness and exclusivity. We still haven’t properly examined the outdated laws, the shifting political norms, and the institutional failures that feed cynicism and disillusionment.

This week, an openDemocracy investigation revealed that a Labour-aligned lobbying firm, Arden Strategies, was offering companies the chance to pay for privileged access to senior political figures – including a private tech event involving current and prospective Labour ministers – through costly sponsorship packages.

Basically, it’s a classic cash-for-access scheme, and it sits well within the letter of Britain’s flimsy lobbying and transparency rules. Ministers will have to declare their presence should they attend the event, but openDemocracy notes that the “vast majority” of their engagement with wealthy businessmen and tech industry lobbyists will effectively be off the books.

The playing field is already tilted towards deep-pocketed tech companies with permanent lobbying operations. Selling more proximity to policymakers only entrenches that imbalance – it sidelines civil society, independent experts and a public that is rightly wary of Big Tech.

But this problem goes beyond any one industry or any one Government. It’s illustrative of a toxic culture that’s taken over British politics – one that treats policy-making as a commodity, sees influence as transactional, and public trust as a side consideration to the deals happening behind closed doors.

That culture is sustained by a system of flimsy regulation, glaring loopholes, and norms that have quietly degraded over the years. And it’s supercharging the pervasive sense ordinary people have that democracy no longer serves them.

Britain’s material problems – rebuilding public services, delivering growth, fighting the climate crisis, managing new technologies like AI, making life affordable – are nigh impossible to properly address in a political environment like this one.

If politicians ever want to get ordinary people invested in politics again, they need a systematic overhaul of our politics. A national, non-partisan project to renew democracy. We could start with binding lobbying rules, real transparency, and institutions geared towards the public interest instead of just the well-to-do.

The forthcoming Elections Bill will be ripe with opportunities to tackle dark money loopholes and the broader pitfalls of our campaign finance system. It may even finally open the door to a National Commission on Electoral Reform. But it’s just one piece of a bigger puzzle.

Starmer is right that this is the defining battle of our political era. But it’s not about the partisan games we play or the politicians we elect to office. It’s about the system itself – and we can all agree that what we’re doing just isn’t working.

All the best,

Matt Gallagher

Communications Officer

Open Britain
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P.S. This system won’t fix itself. Open Britain exists to challenge the quiet norms and weak rules that keep power tilted towards the privileged few. If you want to help us push for real transparency and binding reform, a donation today will make a real difference.


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