Madam,

Re the article about Ms Hooker-Stroud quitting the role of youngest leader of the Wales Green Party due to untenable financial arrangements (last week’s Cambrian News).

She states that the financing of political parties needs urgent reform. What she obviously means is that political parties should be funded by the tax-payer and that political activists and wannabe politicians should not have to demean themselves by trying to raise funds by their own labours. This has been the dream of political parties for many years.

Ms Hooker-Stroud is either ignoring or is not aware that the gold old taxpayer already rewards political parties by giving them Short money. This is money paid to opposition parties based on the number of MPs they have, plus the number of votes they get. Ie at the last election, with figures yet to be finalised, Labour will receive approximately £6.2m, SNP £1.2m, UKIP £650,000, Lib Dems £540,000 and the Greens £212,000. Nice work if you can get it and not to be sneezed at. The Greens in Wales are obviously not satisfied with this free taxpayer-funded money and want more.

It must be asked why political parties think they should be treated as a special case and that the basic rules of commerce do not apply to them. In simple terms they are just like any other business trading in the UK today. Instead of food, clothes, televisions, etc, the commodity they are trying to sell us consists of ideas, promises, changing things for the better, etc, and like all businesses they hope that prospective customers will like their product and pay for membership and donate to the party. Therefore, as in any business, if the commodity you are trying to sell does not excite or interest the buying public then the business fails. In simple terms there is nothing magical about a political party. If they cannot pay their way then, like every other business, it’s regrettably goodbye.

It’s a fact of life that, when people have worries or concerns, they never feel that more politicians and more political parties would solve their problem.

Yours etc

Alan Hansell

Trefenter