Thread by @BestForBritain

Is the Elections Bill the end of electoral pacts in Britain? A thread... 🗳️🧵 1/
bestforbritain.org/is_the_electio…

This bill is a ‘once in a generation’ reform of our creaking Victorian elections system. Hidden in the Bill is a measure that takes a bit of explaining, but leads us to believe that on top of everything else, the government is trying to quietly outlaw electoral pacts 2/

For background, our polling from May 21 found 64% of voters say political parties that broadly agree with each other, should work together at election time rather than stand against each other, including 63% of Conservatives and 70% of Labour supporters 3/
bestforbritain.org/proportionalre…

The Political Parties, Elections & Referendums Act 2000 created the system we know today. It invented the Electoral Commission, required parties to be registered & publish annual accounts, set £££ limits for election campaigning & created the concept of third party campaigners 4/

‘Third parties’ basically means any person or organisation that spends over a certain amount on election campaigning, and PPERA set registration requirements, rules about who is and isn’t allowed to spend money on elections and introduced a spending limit for them 5/

Before PPERA, parties were free to spend as much £££ as they liked on national campaigning to promote an electoral pact they'd entered into. Joint candidates are a bit tricky, but not insurmountable - lots of current Labour MPs stand as joint Labour & Co-op candidates 6/

After PPERA political parties had to account for every £ they spent on election campaigning, make sure they didn’t spend over the limit & publish full details after the election. Crucially, it limited political parties to only spending £ on campaigning for their own candidates 7/

But there was a workaround. The Electoral Commission’s current guidance to political parties is to register as a ‘third party’ campaigner in addition to being a political party....(stay with us)...8/

...That way, the party could publish two spending returns that provide voters with transparency over what they spent to get their own candidates elected and, separately, what they spent on joint campaigning with their electoral pact partners 9/

There’s a problem though. By registering twice, the party then technically has two separate spending limits which are additive - that is, it increases the total amount they could legally spend at an election 10/

(If you're still here following this, by the way, we love you politicos)

So the govt says they're using Clause 20 of the new Elections Bill to close that loophole by banning parties from registering as third party campaigners. The Bill also tidies up the rules around ‘joint campaigning’, extending that concept to include political parties as well 11/

But then it misses a step. It doesn’t change the definition of parties’ election campaigning to allow them to spend money promoting other parties’ candidates...12/

...So while third parties can jointly campaign with other third parties and political parties can jointly campaign with third parties, political parties will now have no way to jointly campaign with other political parties 13/

Is this an oversight in the drafting of the Bill? Or is it a deliberate and sneaky attempt to quietly ban electoral pacts? The reality is that only the Conservatives have ever really come close to spending the full UK-wide £19.5m political party spending limit...14/

...the Conservatives spent £18m in 2017 and £16m in 2019. The other parties typically spend significantly less (Labour spent £11m in 2017 and £12m in 2019) 15/

People want less division and more cooperation. They want a fairer voting system which would make it even more important for parties to work together. But the system, and the tribal party politics it fosters, seem determined to forbid us from doing politics by consensus 16/

The bottom line is, if the Elections Bill passes without amending Clause 20 there will no longer be any way for political parties to be transparent about how money is spent on campaigning in an electoral pact 17/

Parties may still decide not to stand candidates in certain constituencies. Leaders could still talk about shared goals and one party could even quote another on their leaflets. But there could be no shared, common plan for how money is spent or targeted to win the election 18/

Yet another barrier to a better, fairer democracy in the UK. The Elections Bill is currently at committee stage - so now is the time to pile on the pressure for the amendments our democracy needs. You can join our campaign & write to your MP here 👇 19/ bestforbritain.org/theelectionsbi…

And if you made it down to here.../ENDS