What this vote exposed was less a verdict on money in politics than a split screen by age: the young and youngish backed a £10k cap on individual donors even while trade union contributions stay effectively uncapped, and the older middle-aged pulled the other way, leaving the 58% Yes result looking narrower than the raw enthusiasm of any single generation.
The under-45s were emphatic, three in four or more in favour across the 16-24s, 25-34s and 35-44s, the sort of consensus that suggests the union carve-out troubled them less than the principle of curbing wealthy private donors. The 55-64s were the one bloc to reject it outright, and combined with a cooler-but-still-negative showing among the 45-54s, they did enough to drag the overall margin down to sixteen points. Men and women, by contrast, barely diverged, both comfortably in favour by similar margins.
The pattern echoes a familiar fault line in party-funding rows: reformers of "big money" politics tend to gloss over the asymmetry that a per-member union exemption creates, and it is precisely the generation that came of age watching union-Labour ties and non-dom donor scandals unfold who proved most resistant here. Younger voters, it seems, are readier to take the cap at face value.
6 Opinions
No donations at all, all parties should live from membership fees, selling merchandise etc. Actually parties should be banned as well - corruption and surpassing individual opinions. Direct democracy.
Its should be less, something reasonable for the average person. Theres no reason to donate large sums of cash unless you want something in return.
I dont know exactly what the cap should be or what makes sense, but 10k certainly seems a good start. Maybe even too high
Not a large fan of donations regardless. A start but the union exemption does concern. Would prefer a budget based off voting metrics or votes themselves, though unsure on specifics.
It's biased against every party but Labour