John Moss works with 3rd Party Ltd to organise campaigns across the UK.
It might surprise you to learn that, on one measure, the right of politics in the UK was out-spent 5 to 1 in the 2019 General Election. Are they missing something?
During an election, one often sees a billboard poster or leaflet that doesn’t seem to be part of the campaign by one of the main political parties. These are likely part of a campaign organised by a ‘third-party campaigner’.
This quirk of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act allows those who want to campaign, but not through the medium of a registered political party or candidate, to collect donations, or use their own money, and spend this highlighting an issue or cause they care about, seeking to influence the way people vote. Such activity is regulated by the Electoral Commission, who use the term “non-party campaigner” as a catch-all for such organisations.
But who are these groups or individuals?
The Trade Union movement has a long history of this, but in recent elections, others from across the political spectrum have begun to use this channel to campaign on an issue, or for or against specific parties or candidates. In the 2019 election, just over £6 million was spent by those registered with the EC, who were not candidates or registered political parties.
So who are these people and groups?
It might surprise you that Momentum, the movement that brought Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour leadership and supported him through two General Elections, was regarded as a non-party campaigner by the Electoral Commission. They spent just under half a million pounds, presumably supporting a Labour victory.
Between them, four trade unions (Unison, Unite, GMB, and the National Education Union) spent over £1 million. It can safely be assumed this wasn’t spent to persuade people to vote for the Brexit Party or the Conservatives.
Lots of tactical voting and pro-EU groups also ran campaigns, perhaps not surprisingly given the particular nature of that election. Collectively they also spent over £2 million. Again, this is unlikely to have been backing the party saying it wanted to ‘Get Brexit Done”!
In total, groups, individuals, and organisations who could be reasonably assumed to be opposed to the return of a Conservative government, spent over £5 million.
By contrast, the groups who are directly identifiable as being on the right of the political spectrum spent less than £1 million. And over £400,000 of that was spent by Jeremy Hosking, one of the major donors to the Brexit Party.
So what is a “third party campaign” and who might want to run one?
Spending in General Elections by parties and candidates is heavily regulated and there are strict financial limits, especially on individual candidates in the last few weeks of a campaign. This tends to push parties and their individual candidates towards very centralised campaign organisation, with national parties creating literature templates, often with set national content alongside the local candidate’s pitches.
If you are interested in just a particular issue, this might not make it to these broad brush formats, even where it interests voters. Using third-party campaigning to raise the profile of your issue, and informing voters of where individual candidates stand on that issue, is a way to bring your issue to the forefront of a campaign. This can help voters engaged with that issue to make their minds up between candidates, irrespective of the main parties’ more controlled pitches.
The system of regulation was reformed in response to concerns raised after the EU Referendum and the 2019 General Election. It aims, as with party campaigning, to identify those who are funding campaigns and ensure that the voters are clear about who is seeking to influence their vote.
To donate, you must be an eligible donor under the PPERA. If a non-party campaigner intends to spend more than £10,000, they need to register with the EC. If they spend more than £20,000, they must report who donations were received from and how and where they spent their money.
There are individual country limits on what can be spent, up to a maximum of just over £700,000 UK-wide. If a campaign supports a particular party or candidate, there are tighter limits. The regulations do not allow a parallel campaign to support individual candidates directly, as this would make a nonsense of the spending limits that apply to their campaigns.
If a third-party campaigner wished to spend their money within an individual constituency, this is limited to a maximum of £17,533. This does not affect an individual candidate’s spending limits. There is even a small allowance for individuals to spend up to £700 of their own money as a “local campaigner” and that money can be spent endorsing a candidate.
Those on the right of politics largely ignored the potential of this type of campaign to support their preferred outcome. In the end in 2019, it didn’t seem to matter. In the coming General Election, this added firepower could be important in individual seats or in persuading people to think more deeply about the consequences of who they vote for.
Examples of the sort of things that could be suitable for such a campaign include a campaign to highlight the cost of VAT on school fees, the consequences of voting for minor parties who are unlikely to win, and highlighting aspects of a candidate or party that might not be favourable.
Campaigns could be entirely digital using targeted ads on social media platforms, or they could be traditional literature-based campaigns.
3rd Party Ltd campaigned in the 2019 General Election using a mixture of traditional and digital campaigning to raise the profile of individual campaigns, candidates, and causes. It is a non-party campaigner, registered with and regulated by the Electoral Commission.
