We may all have blinked in disbelief as Reform UK secured not one but two £36-million donations in the space of one weekend. The era of the mega-donor is throwing up all sorts of headaches. If it’s ruled that the donations aren’t within the rules, Reform will have to think about the optics of fighting to keep all the money. Labour, meanwhile, has promised to use its time in government to get a handle on the issue, but it, of course, is no different to other parties when it comes to the need for cash.
The whole affair leaves no doubt that the way in which UK politics is funded is a bit of a mess. Political finance expert Sam Power has been saying this for some time – and warning about the risks to democracy from the rise of the mega-donor. If the government wants a cap on donations, he argues, it has to apply it across the board. And that means extending it to unions too.
Decades after smallpox was eradicated, the virus that caused it has been identified in the mummified remains of two bodies in Chile. The remains are at least 500 years old and researchers recovered fragments of viral DNA, which they were then able to sequence with computers. The findings fill a gap in knowledge about how smallpox spread from Europe to the Americas.
And as politicians in Europe and the US grapple with the legal issues around prediction markets, one key question is emerging – should it count as gambling?
