The £5 Million Question: What Else Could This Election Money Have Built?
Nearly £5 million could move political pieces around the board, or it could help hundreds of people take a serious first step into work, self-employment and business ownership.
ARTICLES
The Establishmelt
6/19/20263 min read
Democracy costs money. Polling stations have to be staffed, ballot papers have to be printed, votes have to be counted and vacancies have to be filled. Nobody serious should pretend elections can be run for nothing, or that voters should be denied a choice because the process comes with a bill.
The issue here is different. This is not about whether elections matter. They do. It is about whether this election was created by public need or political convenience.
The Makerfield by-election has been reported as having an administration budget of £226,208. If Andy Burnham wins that seat, he would have to leave his role as Greater Manchester Mayor, which would then trigger a mayoral by-election. The last Greater Manchester mayoral election cost £4,719,754. Put those two figures together and the bill is already around £4.95 million.
That is not a small administrative inconvenience. It is public money, and public money should always come with a simple question attached: what else could it have done?
In The Establishmelt, we estimated that £12,000 would provide a modest but useful startup package for a tradesperson. Not a fantasy package. Not a polished business launch with a leased showroom, a branding agency and someone saying “strategy” every few minutes. A practical start: a second-hand van, tools, insurance, basic marketing and a working float.
On that basis, £4.95 million could fund around 412 modest startup packages for tradespeople. Even if we raised the package to £20,000, giving people a slightly easier start with a better vehicle, more equipment, a stronger float and more breathing space, the same money could still support around 247 new trades businesses.
Nearly £5 million is not just a number. It is vans, tools, insurance, training, websites, first customers and working people getting started.
A new plumber, electrician, joiner, decorator or repair business does not just help one person. It creates local capacity. It helps households and small firms get work done. It brings money into communities. It creates future tax receipts. In time, it may create jobs. It may not make the evening news or give political commentators another dramatic leadership angle, but it would produce something we badly need more of: useful economic activity.
This is where politics too often escapes the question that every business owner, taxpayer and household has to face. If we spend the money here, what are we not spending it on somewhere else?
That question should not be treated as awkward. It should be automatic.
If an election is needed because a representative has died, become seriously ill, broken the rules or can no longer serve, the cost is part of democracy. But if a by-election is effectively created to solve a political career problem, then voters are entitled to ask whether the public is paying for democratic necessity or party convenience.
There is a difference, and it matters.
Because £4.95 million can either move political pieces around the board, or it can help hundreds of people take a serious first step into work, self-employment and business ownership. That does not mean the money could simply be lifted from one budget line and dropped neatly into another tomorrow morning. Government does not work that cleanly, and pretending it does would be too easy.
But comparison still matters, because it reveals priorities. It shows what we accept without question. It shows what is described as unavoidable when politics needs it, and unaffordable when ordinary people need it.
This is the Establishmelt test. Who benefits? Who pays? What changes? How do we measure the value? What else could the same money have achieved?
Those are not anti-democratic questions. They are delivery questions, and we should ask them far more often.
