Whilst on holiday in Egypt, I visited the site of the Lighthouse in Alexandria, now a Citadel near a Casbah. The lighthouse, one of the ancient wonders of the world, is on the floor of the sea, in pieces. However, it was the Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa which piqued my interest. Not because of their incredible beauty, but how it struck me as a symbol of cultural disintegration. The site was discovered in 1900 when a donkey fell through the ground into an ancient access shaft. The donkey incident works as a kind of allegory of civilisational destruction. By chance, the remains of an ancient Alexandrian culture were discovered inside, from when the Roman emperor Caracalla had ordered a massacre of the locals.
Like the fallen statue of Ozymandias in Shelley’s poem, civilisations rise and fall. Most civilisations, for example the Easter Islanders, forget the reasons for their success, and plunder their habitat. Cultural destruction involves, not only forgetting, but legal prescription to maintain the status quo. The law becomes a conduit for authoritarian restrictions; in speech, demonstration and work. This is the danger of rational philosophies such as Liberalism and Communism. The Enlightenment is darkened by a cloud of righteous virtue, and the cultural revolution, led by the students of Gender Studies, falls into the sands of history.
Britain is like the Donkey of the Catacombs. Stepping into the abyss, but unaware of the abyss. The symbols of success: the work ethic, industry, Christian values, great Universities, are falling into the catacombs. The liberal elites, blind to the hellscape of modern Britain, double down. Watching the AdF triumph in Germany, the British elites use any machination to preserve power. Elites have incentives to preserve it. Institutions reward conformity, warning signs are ignored, and short-term stability is chosen over long-term adaptation.
The controversy surrounding donations to Reform UK is, in my opinion, an example of the encroaching erasure of dissent. It raises a constitutional question about the direction of democratic government. How far should a government be permitted to alter the rules governing the financing of its political opponents, particularly where those changes operate retrospectively?
There is also a paradox. Parliament may restrict Reform’s sources of finance today, but if Reform later obtains a parliamentary majority, the same doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty would ordinarily allow it to repeal those restrictions. As John Locke wrote in the Second Treatise of Government, ‘The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.’
Reform’s argument is that political-finance law should protect democracy without becoming a means of restraining legitimate political competition. ‘Abolish and restrain…’ It could be the Labour Party’s mantra and meme.
Political donations in the United Kingdom are principally regulated by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPERA). The present system does not impose a general maximum on the amount a permissible donor can contribute. The central question is whether the donor is a permissible source.
An individual registered on a UK electoral register is presently a permissible donor, including a registered overseas elector, while companies and other organisations may qualify under separate statutory conditions. A donation of millions of pounds is therefore not unlawful merely because of its size. If the donor satisfies the statutory requirements, there is no general ceiling on the contribution. This is the legal background against which the recent Reform donations must be considered.
The principle that law should govern through general rules rather than political discretion is central to the rule of law. A.V. Dicey described this as ‘the absolute supremacy or predominance of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power’. A donation accepted under the law in force at the time is therefore not unlawful merely because a government later decides that the rules should change. The government has proposed such a change through amendments to the Representation of the People Bill. The proposed regime would impose an annual £100,000 ceiling on political contributions by overseas electors and include a residence requirement intended to prevent an overseas elector returning to Britain immediately before making a large donation.
On March 25, 2026, the government announced its intention to introduce the £100,000 restriction. At that point it was not law, and the Electoral Commission stated that the law had not changed. The government nevertheless announced that, once enacted, the new provisions would apply to relevant donations dating back to March 25. The Bill now seeks to give effect to that approach. A party could therefore receive a donation lawful under the legislation in force on the day it was accepted, only for Parliament later to impose new consequences on that transaction. The government proposes that affected recipients would have to return amounts exceeding the limit once the provisions commence.
Ministers could not make donations unlawful on March 25 by announcing an intention to legislate. A press release cannot amend an Act of Parliament. Parliament is instead being asked to enact legislation that reaches back to transactions occurring after a specified earlier date. That is retrospective legislation. Friedrich Hayek’s formulation of the rule of law is relevant: government should coerce only through known rules. A rule enacted later but applied to earlier conduct creates an obvious tension with the principle that citizens should be able to know the legal consequences of their actions in advance. The Labour Party, not schooled in the niceties of the law, or anything in particular, head off towards the chasm of the catacombs. This is an indicative trend of UK and European elites, a mendacity to destroy the vestiges of culture for the price of power. Illegal immigration is seen, not as cultural absurdity, but a new electorate. Liberal policies ensure the disintegration of institutions. Recruitment by positive discrimination in all sectors has led to a disaster in public services and accountability. Whatever the trendy Liberal fad, you can be sure the hapless Labour Party will be galloping into the abyss.
Retrospective legislation is not necessarily unlawful, however. Under orthodox parliamentary sovereignty, Parliament has extensive legislative power and may, through sufficiently clear language, enact legislation affecting earlier transactions. There is, however, a strong common-law presumption against retrospectivity because people should normally be able to organise their affairs according to the law as it stands when they act. In Wilson v First County Trust Ltd (No 2), Lord Rodger emphasised that retrospective alteration may produce injustice because people conduct their affairs on the basis of existing law. Phillips v Eyre likewise recognised the objection to legislation changing the legal character or consequences of completed transactions.
The issue is therefore not primarily whether Parliament has the power to legislate retrospectively. It does. The issue is whether the use of that power is constitutionally justified. The proposed legislation identifies the date from which its provisions are intended to operate, leaving little doubt about legislative intention. The dispute concerns constitutional propriety rather than legislative competence.
The concern is greater because this is electoral law. Retrospective taxation may sometimes be justified where advance notice is required to prevent exploitation of an announced loophole, but electoral legislation has an added constitutional dimension: the government introducing the rules is itself a participant in the political competition being regulated. The governing party is both a competitor for power and a participant in determining how its competitors may finance their campaigns. Governments must be able to reform electoral law, but measures affecting political competition deserve close scrutiny, particularly where they operate retrospectively.
Reform UK could not disregard the legislation if Parliament enacted it. It would have to comply while the law remained in force. Particular decisions by the Electoral Commission or other public authorities might be susceptible to judicial review on ordinary public-law grounds. Political financing can also engage Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights and the electoral protections contained in Article 3 of Protocol No. 1. Restrictions on political finance may, however, pursue legitimate aims such as preventing corruption, improper influence and foreign interference, so any human-rights argument would involve questions of justification and proportionality. British courts do not possess a general power to strike down primary legislation merely because they regard it as unfair.
The more important issue may therefore arise if Reform later forms a government. Suppose Parliament enacts the overseas-contribution restrictions and Reform subsequently wins a general election with a working Commons majority. Could it repeal them? In principle, yes. The orthodox doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty holds that Parliament may make or unmake any law and that one Parliament cannot ordinarily prevent a future Parliament from changing its legislation. A future Parliament could repeal the £100,000 ceiling, alter the definition of overseas contributor and change the residence requirements. The constitutional principle enabling the present Parliament to impose the restriction is the same principle that would permit a later Parliament to remove it.
Past donations present a separate problem. Repealing the legislation would not necessarily erase liabilities already created under it. Prospective repeal and retrospective validation are different. If a future government wished merely to permit larger donations, repeal or amendment would be sufficient. If it wished to reverse consequences already imposed under the previous law, Parliament would have to address those consequences expressly, perhaps by extinguishing existing liabilities or changing the legal treatment of earlier transactions. Such legislation could itself be retrospective.
This produces the central constitutional irony. If Parliament has sufficient authority to legislate retrospectively against political donations that were lawful when received, it is difficult to argue that a later Parliament would lack the legislative competence to legislate retrospectively in the opposite direction. There could be strong political and rule-of-law objections, but parliamentary sovereignty does not depend upon which party controls Parliament. The danger is that successive governments could begin treating electoral rules as temporary instruments of political advantage. The Labour Party has dismantled the orthodoxies of the Law and, through secondary legislation, through policing and public order law, stifled dissent.
The deeper question is not whether one approves of Reform’s donors. It is whether retrospective changes to electoral-finance law are compatible with the legal certainty and political neutrality expected in democratic competition. The government argues that retrospectivity prevents the proposed regime being circumvented before commencement. The opposing argument is that transactions lawful under an Act of Parliament should not acquire adverse consequences simply because ministers had announced an intention to change the law. Parliamentary sovereignty permits both the restriction and its later repeal. The power cuts both ways.
The Reform debacle is just one example of the erosion of pluralism. The broader cultural chaos which Labour has brought is a type of liberal nihilism. The dissipation of liberty and democracy is seen through an authoritarian state which is increasingly anarchic and unprofessional. The basic social contract of the post-war period was built upon a working class building wealth and providing services. The new managerial class now takes up, through the civil service, an enormous budget. Wealth has transferred from a productive class to an unproductive bureaucracy. For primary legislation, Labour passed 422 Government Bills receiving Royal Assent between 1997-2010. At the same time, 17,685 statutory instruments (not voted on) were laid before the House of Commons. The system gives carte blanche to this regulatory nihilism. This secondary legislation illustrates the decapitation of democracy, as it transfers away from the community into the hands of unelected civil servants.
Britain, frozen in the spotlights of history, has fallen into the abyss on many fronts. The sandstone statues of liberalism are collapsing into the desert like Ozymandias…
‘Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
Brian Patrick Bolger. He has taught International Law and Political Philosophy at Universities in Europe. His legal articles have appeared in leading magazines such as the New Law Journal, The Spectator, Comment Central etc . He is an advisor to CEE Law firm.
