public choice

From the Lebanese elections:

Three groups of election monitors were deployed for the vote, including former President Carter’s organization. But even before the race began, it was marred by charges of unprecedented vote buying. In the most contested districts, there were reports of votes being bought for as much as $2,000, and thousands of expatriates received all-expense-paid trips to Lebanon to vote.

The Angry Arab quotes an opposition figure as saying that the Syrians and Saudis had come to a deal for each not to spend money, but the Saudis went ahead anyway. Sour grapes, I guess. You just can’t outspend the Saudis if they really want to pile in. That’s around £1200 per vote. Jesus. Or rather: Allah.

Wouldn’t it be terrible if the Saudis started to take the same interest in British politics? In fact it would be so terrible that I kind of hope they do, so I can have the chance to spurn their money in person. My bank manager feels the same way.

As a matter of interest, I wonder if you really could buy a British election at 1200 quid a vote, cash down? My guess is that you could, and if you limited it to key marginals you could probably do it for under £10 billion, even including the necessary bribes to officials, cops etc. That’s a good deal given the size of the tax base and the general legislative opportunities

Comments

[ajay]

Why bother buying the electorate when you can buy the Prime Minister for £125k?

http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2002_08_01_archive.html

"I have that much equity in my house. Any one of our fine British banks would probably lend me 125 grand with only a short delay for the paperwork... Lakshmi Mittal swung a hugely profitable privatisation deal for a Romanian steelworks for less than the price of a fully loaded Porsche Boxster. The return on investment on these political contributions is just fucking unbelievable, even by Internet standards. What's keeping me awake at night is that I can't think of any reasonably discreet ways in which the government could make me rich, because I know that if I had that idea, I could pay them to do it..."

[jamie]

I was thinking more of a long term tap into GDP or political operation (like the Saudis in lebanon)rather than a score. Obviously this would be more likely to come from a country or institution than an individual.

[Chris Williams]

Typo there, Jamie - you wrote 'lebanon' when you obviously menat to write 'Britain'. HTH!

[Richard J]

I remember reading that, Ajay, at about the time I found out how much Piers de Cuntbubble [(c) Viz] had paid for the Press Gazette... Let's put it this way - the transaction price/press coverage ratio was an incredible outlier.