Do you recoil at the thought of the world’s richest man and US resident Elon Musk potentially donating nearly £80m to Reform UK to try and win the next election for Nigel Farage?

Right-wing Tory MP Miriam Cates asks: if you don’t like the idea, then would you feel the same if you saw a picture of Bill Gates pledging support for Sir Keir Starmer?

The implication is that people who oppose Musk’s interference only object because it’s Reform that stands to benefit.

Read more Rebecca McQuillan

The analogy is daft. Unlike Musk, Bill Gates is not best buddies with Donald Trump, who denied the outcome of a democratic election and fomented insurrection to try and overturn it. Nor has Gates bought a hugely influential social media company and diminished safeguards within it against misinformation, spread misinformation himself and then used the platform to support the election of his billionaire crony.

But let’s consider the point anyway. Would people be upset by both?

Yes, I believe they would. Why? Because there’s a very simple problem with allowing foreign billionaires to use their cash to influence electoral outcomes, whether it’s Musk, Gates or anyone else: it’s not fair and it’s certainly not democratic.

Democracy works on the basis that every person’s vote counts equally. The rest of us who live in this country, pay our taxes here, use the NHS, schools and other state services, have a deep personal stake in how the country is run, but we’re not in a position to use our money to change the political tide.

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