Did Elon Musk buy the US election?
The world watched last week as President Trump and his former ally Elon Musk engaged in a heated public spat over Trump's spending bill.
Amid the drama, Mr Musk posted -
"Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude."
Musk is of course referring to the $288 million he donated to help elect Trump and other Republican candidates during the 2024 election. He also handed out several one million dollar cheques to registered voters in swing states, and threw the weight of his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) behind the President.
It's impossible to know whether Trump would have won the election without Musk's backing, but Musk was Trump's largest campaign donor, and a quarter of a billion dollars is bound to sway some voters. With that kind of money, you can flood swing states with targeted ads and hire hundreds of canvassers. And that’s on top of the free advertising Trump gained from Musk’s loud support on X.
Why should one man be able to wield such enormous power over an election?
Particularly disturbing is Musk's complaint about "ingratitude". He seems to believe that his huge donations should force the President and Congress to follow his political agenda, and up until now, he was right. President Trump appointed him to the Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE), which had access to vast amounts of government data and oversaw brutal cuts to foreign aid.
It's obvious that when mega-donors give huge amounts of money to a political party, they are trying to gain access and influence. Most donors, however, don't come out and admit it! Perhaps Mr Musk will ask for his money back next!
This blatant buying of influence undermines democracy.
And while it's easy to point fingers at the US, it could happen here in the UK too.
The UK currently has no cap on how much individual donors can give to a political party. Our elections are almost as vulnerable to mega-donors as America’s, and we’re just waiting for someone to exploit it.
Rumours circulated last year that Musk was thinking of donating £79 million to Nigel Farage's party, Reform UK. This now seems less likely after Musk rebuffed Farage over his refusal to support far-right activist Tommy Robinson.
But that's no excuse for the government to leave our donation rules wide open. Musk could return with fresh determination, or another wealthy donor could turn up and try to sway our next election.
The government, however, seems unfazed by this risk. Last week in the Lords, Minister Baroness Taylor of Stevenage confirmed: “There is no current priority on capping donations.” She added that “we are very keen on strengthening the rules around how donations work.” Yet nearly a year into this government’s term, we are still waiting for their proposals to be announced, and without a donation cap, they won’t be tough enough.
We think it’s time to chuck big money out of our politics - so that political parties have to respond to the concerns of ordinary voters, not their billionaire backers. A £5,000 annual donation limit per individual and per company would achieve this - while still allowing parties to solicit donations to pay for their operations.
The upcoming Elections Bill must also close the loopholes that allow foreign nationals to make political donations. Both unincorporated associations and shell companies can be used to funnel money from abroad into UK political parties, leaving us highly vulnerable to foreign interference in our elections.
The Committee on Standards in Public Life put forward a report in 2021 with 47 recommendations on how to make our elections fairer and secure. Four years on, barely any of them have been implemented.
The risks to our elections continue to grow as technology advances. Reform UK has recently become the first European political party to accept donations in cryptocurrencies. These transactions are more difficult to trace than traditional money transactions, meaning political parties will have a harder time verifying the source of the money they accept. We could see cryptocurrencies also being used to sneak foreign or illicit funding into our political parties.
The government and Electoral Commission must identify the risks that arise from political donations given in cryptocurrency, and then set out a strategy on how to get ahead of these threats.
The upcoming Elections Bill is the government's big chance to get serious about protecting our democracy.
Elon Musk said the quiet part out loud, but other, more subtle donors are trying to buy influence in our politics.
The Elections Bill must stop them.