Eliza Lockhart reacts to the Joint Committee on National Security Strategy (JCNSS) report into UK political finance and foreign influence

The report paints a stark picture of the UK’s ability to withstand foreign financial interference in politics. Rising state threats, fragmented regulatory oversight and widening technological vulnerabilities have left a political finance system that is, in the committee’s words, ‘too brittle, permissive, disjointed, slow, retrospective and underpowered to respond adequately’. In short, we are trying to fight digital threats with analogue tools.

A theme throughout the report is the lack of ambition in the government’s reforms as they are currently drafted in the legislation before Parliament. In many respects, it feels like the government is bringing a knife to a gunfight. The committee identifies clear, practical fixes – such as creating a national enforcement unit to coordinate political finance regulation, empowering the Electoral Commission to do its job, and closing obvious loopholes in corporate donations – that would materially limit the ability of foreign actors to weaponise political finance. Yet they are all absent from the legislation.

The committee endorses an immediate moratorium on crypto donations – reflecting what RUSI’s Cryptocurrencies in UK Politics project has found – that a ‘last mile’ ban on money at the point of receipt creates a false sense of security because it does not address the risks posed by crypto-enabled financial flows throughout the full payments chain.

A crypto ban might look decisive, but it will leave underlying security vulnerabilities free to evolve between now and the next election. By contrast, a moratorium would pause immediate risk exposure, while creating the space to design and implement the safeguards our system currently lacks. Without a moratorium, the UK risks building a political finance regime that is secure on paper but weak in practice – pushing risks out of sight, where they become harder to detect and easier to exploit.

Eliza Lockhart is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Finance and Security at RUSI, specialising in the intersection of law, finance and global security.