Thinktanks should rethink their funding models | Letters

Hylton Guthrie says the UK has a problem with opaque political funding, while Andy McWilliam wonders if the closure of the High Pay Centre presents Andy Burnham with an opportunity

Polly Toynbee laments the decline in funding of various (mostly centre-left) thinktanks because the Aberdeen Group terminated its Financial Fairness Trust (This thinktank exposed fat cats and obscenely high pay. Guess what has happened to it?, 10 July). I suggest that the financial vulnerability of thinktanks being dependent on the largesse of profit-driven financial businesses like the Aberdeen Group is a weakness of their funding model. A point which is obvious without even considering the morals of Alistair Darling founding such a trust based on a demutualisation, which just underlines the tokenism at the heart of such a model of funding.

In contrast, in Germany, the state funding of political parties is accompanied by state funding for party political foundations – each party has its own foundation funded on the basis of the size of its vote share.