DAN HODGES: We're being taken for fools. Starmer won't drain the swamp

Perhaps it's just another of those strange coincidences. We all know that Energy Secretary Ed Miliband loves a nuclear power station. While in the same job in the last Labour government, he wanted one nestling in just about every backyard in Britain.

'Miliband paves way for most ambitious fleet of nuclear reactors in Europe,' roared The Guardian in November 2009, as Nuclear Ed unveiled his plans for ten new plants in Suffolk, Cleveland, Lancashire, Cumbria, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Essex and Anglesey.

Labour losing the 2010 Election threw a minor spanner in his plans. But 14 years in the political wilderness failed to dampen his isotopic ardour.

As Labour zeroed in on power and Miliband was back on the campaign trail, he doubled down on his New Nuclear vision. 'We need nuclear!' he triumphantly declared on a visit to the EDF power station in Labour's target seat of Hartlepool.

Yet not everyone was convinced. In May, it was announced Dale Vince, the green energy entrepreneur who has donated £5million to Labour, had joined the campaign to stop a nuclear plant being built in Hinkley, Somerset. Nuclear was 'hugely expensive and slow to develop', Vince chided.

At which point an odd thing happened. Labour won, and Miliband was reappointed Energy Secretary. And almost overnight his long-standing passion for nuclear cooled. His officials were told plans for nuclear were to be 'placed under review'. 

The official government target, originally announced by Boris Johnson, of 24 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2050, was to be re-examined. A planned new plant on the Anglesey peninsula was to be put on hold. And a decision on the funding of a controversial second plant, in Sizewell, Suffolk, was to be deferred. This was despite Sir Keir Starmer having said last year that 'Sizewell needs to move forward at pace'.

Now, it's important to make clear there is no evidence of any direct link between Dale Vince's financial generosity to Labour and the PM and Energy Secretary's sudden radioactive reticence. 'Dale Vince had no influence over this decision,' No10 confirmed.

Which then gives rise to what I like to call the Mrs Merton Question. 'So Debbie, what first attracted you to the millionaire, Paul Daniels?' comedienne Caroline Aherne famously asked the late magician's wife.

Similarly, what precisely is it that makes these disparate billionaires, millionaires, entrepreneurs and corporates keep splashing their hard-earned cash on Keir Starmer? 

The answer we are consistently given – and have heard ad infinitum over the past few weeks as the Lord Alli Wardrobegate saga has raged – is that all they want is a Labour government. Fine. But precisely what kind of Labour government does this strangely eclectic band of individuals and corporations hanker after? And, more pertinently, is it the same kind of Labour government that the British people thought they were electing in July?

Take again, for example, the case of Dale Vince. He seems to have a rather narrow – some might say extreme – political agenda. He has given money to Extinction Rebellion, which has brought chaos to Britain's streets. He has given money to Animal Rising, which disrupted the Grand National.

He flew the Palestinian flag above the ground of his football club Forest Green Rovers and stated in the wake of last year's Hamas massacre of Israeli men, women and children 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter'. These latter comments earned him a rebuke from Angela Rayner, who branded them 'appalling'. But the Election was then called. And Labour pocketed his cash anyway.

A lot of the recent political focus has been on cash and gifts. But a look at the Electoral Commission register of party political donations for the period covering the Election also reveals other favours handed to the government-in-waiting.

Consultancy firm Ernst & Young gave donations of £29,378, £6,000, £3,863 and £18,716 for 'staff support'. PricewaterhouseCoopers handed over £42,239. HSBC gave Labour £6,372.40. Again, all provided in the form of staff support.

To repeat, there is no suggestion of any direct benefit in return for this corporate largesse. Heaven, no. But unless the offices of these capitalist monoliths regularly echo to the strains of the Red Flag, the explanation of merely wanting a Labour government doesn't fly. So there is another boilerplate response to queries about these pre-Election secondments.

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'Demand for secondees tends to come from opposition parties which don't have access to the same resources and expertise as the government. These are generally junior staff who provide limited and technical support. We have no political affiliation and don't develop policy on their behalf.'

Such a commitment to ensuring balanced opposition and good governance is laudable. But, again, the question has to be asked – are Britain's bankers and consultants really in alignment with pro-Palestinian eco-warriors such as Dale Vince on what good governance actually looks like?

Unions. Wealth managers. Gamblers. Social entrepreneurs. Football clubs. Engineering firms. Music promoters. Property developers. We are told that their donations to Labour – which totalled £28million in the run-up to the Election, compared to a relatively trifling £16million for the Tories – were not to directly influence policy. Each and every contributor just happened to independently conclude Keir Starmer was the man for them. No, sorry, not the man for them. The man for Britain.

How much longer is this charade going to continue? The fantasy that a supposedly mature democracy can continue to fund its politics in this way.

'There is no scandal here,' Ministers have been solemnly declaring as Wardrobegate has swirled around them. Oh, please. Cash for Honours. The MPs' Expenses Scandal. Asil Nadir. The Hindujas Affair. Wallpapergate. Bernie Ecclestone. Michelle Mone. There's always a scandal. And when it breaks, politicians of all parties announce 'it's time to clean up our politics'. And then, as sure as night follows day, another scandal comes roaring down Whitehall.

How many more times are the British people going to be taken for fools? How many more times will they be told the intersection between cash and gifts and 'office support' and government is simply benign political paternalism, driven by the national interest.

'I will restore standards in public life,' Starmer vowed in January.

But he won't. Because he can't. No one can until someone has the courage to finally say 'enough', cut some drainage trenches through the Westminster swamp, and introduce state funding of political parties.

Until they do, Dale Vince and Lord Alli and the blue-chip good governance corporate Samaritans will continue pump their riches into the coffers of our main parties. And, for some inexplicable reason, demand nothing in return.