Morys Ireland
 
There's an interesting article in today's Independent on Sunday about declining membership levels in the Conservative party, with research suggest a 21.5% drop since David Cameron's election as leader. But the phenomenon is not unique to the Tories, Labour too have seen drastic falls in membership levels since 1997. One could argue that the race to the 'centre ground' of British politics has led to the larger parties losing touch with their 'core vote' and becoming somewhat less inspirational. Whatever the cause, a dangerous by-product of this drop in membership is a real change in where parties obtain their funding.

Political parties are supposed to be popular movements, campaigning for the country to governed in one particular way or another, organised and funded by their members. But when membership levels start to fall, parties are obliged to turn to other sources for funding. The big three parties seem now to be more interested in soliciting donations from millionaires than from members. But while members expect little return from their contributions, millionaires quite naturally expect something more than a quarterly newsletter and a little plastic card from theirs. In other words, a level of corruption is now actually necessary in order to obtain adequate funding for a political party.

 While there are of course some wealthy supporters who genuinely back a particular political party and expect nothing in return for their donations, the increasing reliance on affluent donors is worrying. One solution to the problem could be state-funded political parties - removing the need to seek shady donations just to cover a party's day-to-day expenses. It could be argued that this would be the final nail in the coffin for the 'popular movement' - but the essence of a popular movement could be retained in such a system if the amount of funding a party received was proportional to its membership, with membership and funding of parties being overseen by an independent regulator.

Inevitably though, such a system would not address the key question - What is it about the main political parties today that has caused so many of their members to leave, and so few new members to join? It is this crisis of ideology, or perhaps lack of it, that must be addressed if we are to keep politics in the hands of the people.
 
 

Nick Clegg today became the first major party leader to call for the scrapping of Trident - Britain's submarine based nuclear missile system. He rightly identified the fact that such weaponry is outdated and no longer meets our defence needs; however it is a shame that Clegg did not go so far as to say that Britain should ditch its nuclear weapons altogether.

The LibDem leader simply said that Trident should not be replace 'like for like', implying that he favours some other, more cost effective nuclear weapons system. It's hard to tell exactly what this would be, Britain gave up it's airborne nuclear deterrent decades ago with the decommissioning of the Vulcan bomber and I can't see such a system being resurrected. Exactly what does Clegg suggest we replace Trident with?

However the arguments about the cost of the deterrent or the type of system used are largely irrelevant when you consider the moral implications of possessing such weapons in the first place. Weapons that are never going to be used, and are in fact utterly useless in terms of Britain's place in the world today and the threats it faces. Furthermore, our possession of nuclear weapons and our to determination to upgrade them totally undermines our position when attempting to lecture countries like Iran and North Korea about their own nuclear ambitions.

With the Conservatives promising a strategic defence review should they take office after the next election, it seems likely that even they will be forced to make difficult choices about Britain's defence expenditure and our nuclear deterrent. The fact that they have promised such a review after an election allows them to conveniently dodge pre-election questions on defence expenditure and shows that once again they are unable to commit to making tough decisions. With polls often showing real public support for nuclear disarmament, perhaps Labour is missing a trick here by not bringing this debate to the fore and creating a real dividing line between ourselves and the opposition.

 
 

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen is the President of PES, the grouping in the European Parliament which includes the UK Labour Party. This is his message to party activists following on from the dismal defeat of the recent elections.

While we await the final results of the European elections, it is obvious our socialist and social democratic family had a disappointing result.

We face a more conservative European Parliament, with a right that is more euro-sceptic and more nationalistic than before.

The low participation rate was a huge problem, especially for us. Our voters stayed away. They simply didn’t see the relevance of these elections. They did not see the political choices at European level - perhaps not surprising since these elections were mainly fought over national political disputes.

We had a European alternative, but it was not visible enough. Europe still needs a new direction. We are in the middle of a recession, and it will not go away. Wage earners are not to blame but they may end up paying the price. We will have 27 million unemployed next year unless we have a new and stronger European recovery effort. So we will continue our fight for more and better-coordinated investments in new jobs, and to save jobs. We will continue to stand up for social justice and equality. We will continue our fight for a global new deal, including a new strong global climate agreement in the coming months.

We have suffered a loss but we remain the second largest group in the European Parliament. We lost 3 percentage points overall, but we gained in ten member states including in the Czech Republic, in Sweden, in Greece and in Ireland where we are in opposition, and in Slovakia and Slovenia where we are in Government.

We need to reflect, and for our common European party to come forward with a renewed strategy and new ideas. But I say no to those who announce a profound crisis in European socialism. European citizens still depend on social democratic values for decent work, good schools, good health care and a clean environment. Europe still needs a society where everyone can participate, contribute and benefit. This is no time for dismantling our welfare states, it is time for strengthening them.

The centre-right cannot claim a victory for their policies. People are still worried abut the crisis, and the crisis remains our number one priority.

The far-right made worrying gains in the elections. People still need us to stand up for respect and tolerance for all, and to continue to fight to protect all workers from the recession.

We need more PES, not less PES. We will make new efforts to strengthen our European political party because we must engage more than ever as a political family in European politics.