{"id":233620,"date":"2025-07-03T03:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T03:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/233620\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T03:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T03:05:11","slug":"labour-struggles-to-drain-the-swamp-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/233620\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour struggles to drain the swamp \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Those concerns were further cemented this week after the Guardian<\/a> reported claims from government sources that the process of setting up an independent body had been deemed too complex, and that a rebrand of existing regulators under a new \u201cumbrella\u201d was now the most likely outcome.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf, as is being suggested, that title is used as a tool to hoover up what is a complicated standards regulation landscape under one umbrella, but fundamentally not change how they\u2019re able to do their job, then it will fail,\u201d Bruce said. \u201cWe won\u2019t move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Multiple campaigners and policy experts suggested that the transition from opposition to government had resulted in responsibility for the brief being handed over to ministers with less appetite for the fight. Others have questioned whether Labour felt it had secured enough goodwill with voters during the campaign that it could afford to let the timelines and details slip.<\/p>\n

\"\"But the biggest frustration is that Labour has fallen directly into the traps that campaigners had spent months warning them to avoid. | Niel Hall\/EPA<\/p>\n

No matter the reason, Labour\u2019s stagnant progress has dented the confidence of campaigners, meaning a recent commitment to deliver an elections bill later this year has been met with less celebration and more trepidation than would have been expected just 12 months ago.<\/p>\n

Anti-corruption groups fear that welcome moves to limit foreign money in politics and enhance the power of regulators will be used as cover to avoid the contentious but vital step of introducing a cap on overall donations \u2014 a measure seen as fundamental to curb the corrosive public perception that parties are beholden to those with the deepest pockets.<\/p>\n

But the biggest frustration is that Labour has fallen directly into the traps<\/a> that campaigners had spent months warning them to avoid.<\/p>\n

For instance, while election reform is included in Labour\u2019s manifesto, ministers barely mentioned the plans in public until it was revealed that Elon Musk was toying with the idea of donating tens of millions to Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform UK Party \u2014 offering the insurgent parliamentarian a golden opportunity to paint the proposals as a knee-jerk establishment stitch-up.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the bits they were thinking of doing are now likely to be perceived as if they are trying to keep Reform out of power,\u201d Hawley added. \u201cThey\u2019ve already lost the first mover advantage on that, so they actually do have to go quite bold to make it cut through. If you\u2019re just going to tinker around the edges, then that really isn\u2019t going to move the dialog.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Those concerns were further cemented this week after the Guardian reported claims from government sources that the process…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[748,1193,2575,2814,31,2438,33,295,393,4884,807,11582,384,1144,5111,46,2443,712,11587,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-233620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-british-politics","11":"tag-corruption","12":"tag-data","13":"tag-democracy","14":"tag-department","15":"tag-elections","16":"tag-elon-musk","17":"tag-england","18":"tag-great-britain","19":"tag-keir-starmer","20":"tag-lobbying","21":"tag-nigel-farage","22":"tag-northern-ireland","23":"tag-parliament","24":"tag-policy","25":"tag-regulation","26":"tag-scotland","27":"tag-transparency","28":"tag-uk","29":"tag-united-kingdom","30":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114787092074133142","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}