Crowdfunding — A new model for Politics?

Earlier this week a strange post popped up on my timeline; it was the leader of the opposition party in the UK Parliament Jeremy Corbyn, for whom members of the public had raised money to buy him his dream bike after he revealed in an interview that a specific model of bike was his object of desire.

Magnanimously he accepted the bike but donated it’s value towards the charity fund where the excess funds were to be directed.

“Last week, I responded to a question from Stylist magazine about my “object of desire.” I said it was an aluminium-framed Raleigh Criterium bicycle.

I could not have imagined when I replied that a crowdfunder would be set up to buy me this bike. People’s generosity has been remarkable and incredibly the total raised is over £6,000. The average donation was £2.70.

I’d like to say a huge thanks to every person that has donated. It’s truly humbling and I’m pleased that others will now benefit from this — as the organisers have suggested that they donate the substantial excess money raised to a charity of their choice. I will also be donating the cost of the bike to charity.”

Source: Facebook

It’s hard to imagine voters doing the same for David Cameron (also an avid cyclist in his early political career.) Perhaps that’s the difference between Labour and Conservative voters? Labour voters would buy their leader a bike even though he could easily afford it whilst Conservatives are more likely to want to downgrade the bike their leader rides in the interests of austerity?

I’ve been waiting to see how long to took for crowdfunding to enter politics seriously. From the early days of the technology being available I had thought it would be an ideal model with which to launch an entirely new party, also using internet communications to communicate directly with party supporters, form policies, gauge opinions and build support via social media networks. Certainly political parties have taken things like Facebook advertising very seriously, however I wonder if this old-media thinking of a push approach fails to engage in the way crowdfunding does. Crowdfunding is inclusive and means that everyone donating is a stakeholder — thus interested in what happens as a result of their action. From where I sit this little bike campaign should awaken a few people to the possibilities of crowdfunding.

Imagine… anyone with an idea, with a set of ideas, perhaps about how they would like to change society for the good — they could form a political party and raise funds to run an election campaign. The numbers are feasible — in the UK for example it’s reasonable to say that an election campaign budget of £50m would be pretty decent… that’d be £10 from 5 million people — about 1/10th of the population. The process would also be delightfully democratic and indeed it would mean no big corporate donors and lobbyists getting in to forward their interests.

This might be worth some consideration…