Voters must know who is paying the political pipers
Even his erstwhile political opponents had some warm words to say about businessman Richard Cook.
Former Labour MP Jim Murphy, for example, ran against him in East Renfrewshire in 2010 as Mr Cook led the Scottish Tories’ ill-fated fight to retake a seat that was, not so long before, coloured the truest blue on Scotland’s political map. Mr Murphy won by 10,420 votes but remembers his opponent as decent company on the hustings, too right-wing for his taste, of course, too quick to talk up his green credentials, but, on the face of it, a decent enough egg.
So, a pleasant man, living in one of Glasgow’s most pleasant suburbs where he is president of the local tennis club, a businessman, something in waste management, apparently.
That would probably have been all we’d know, or would want to know, about Mr Cook until he emerged as the only named office holder, member, donor, or supporter of something called the Constitutional Research Council.
He is the chairman, apparently, and was the chairman when the CRC gave £435,000 to the Democratic Unionist Party to boost the campaign for Brexit during the crucial closing stages of the 2016 referendum.
Oddly, the Northern Irish party chose to spend more than half of the cash on an advert in a newspaper that no one in Northern Ireland would see. And, not only did his organisation indirectly pay for it, Mr Cook apparently booked it. That donation is still a mystery and the organisation that gave it to the DUP remains opaque.
In one of his very few public utterances, Mr Cook said only that the CRC has done nothing wrong, works to promote and protect the Union, and gives money to organisations and campaigns promoting and protecting the Union.
That is entirely up to them but the reason, the only reason, Mr Cook’s career in waste management is now under such scrutiny is that £435,000 and where it came from. Whoever gave it to the CRC, who gave it to the DUP, presumably hoped the money would help influence the result of what was arguably Britain’s most important vote. Perhaps it did, who knows? What voters must know – and, in today’s interconnected world, must be told – is exactly who is trying to buy their support. Political campaigns must be funded under bright, white light.
In recent years, the influence of so-called dark money in the working of Western democracies has provoked increasing concern with suspicion falling everywhere from the Kremlin in Moscow to Facebook HQ in Menlo Park, California and now, bizarrely, the leafier suburbs of Glasgow.
Mr Cook should no longer wait for MPS to ask him to explain this donation but should open the curtains on the CRC, tell voters exactly what it is, who is involved and where this money came from.