Politicians lie gleefully, making wild claims that can be shared instantly with millions of people on social media. He starts with the Brexit referendum and the various kinds of unsavoury practices that took place during that doomed plebiscite – from the various illegalities of Vote Leave, through Arron Banks’s lavish expenditure to the astonishing tale of the dark money funnelled through the Ulster DUP and a loophole in Northern Ireland’s electoral law. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. Democracy for Sale is the story of how money, vested interests and digital skulduggery are eroding trust in democracy - and a powerful account of what must be done about it. This is the story of how money, vested interests and digital skulduggery are eroding trust in democracy.

One of the most depressing parts of this narrative is the bland indifference of most mainstream UK media to these scandalous events. The final part of the book deals with the transformation of our information ecosystem: the ways in which the automated targeted-advertising machines of social media platforms have been weaponised by rightwing actors to deliver precisely calibrated messages to voters, in ways that are completely opaque to the general public, as well as to regulators. It’s a great case study in how ruling elites can be infected with policy ideas and programmes via those “second-hand traders in ideas” of whom Hayek spoke so eloquently: academics, thinktanks and media commentators. Payments made using National Book Tokens are processed by National Book Tokens Ltd, and you can read their Terms and Conditions here. He investigates politicians, fabulously well-funded partisan think tanks, propagandists who know how to game a rigged system, and the campaigners and regulators valiantly trying to stop them.Photograph: Frank Augstein/Pool/Reuters View image in fullscreen ‘These threats to democracy have, for decades, been visible to anyone disposed to look for them’: Boris Johnson in 2019. He shows how antiquated electoral laws are broken with impunity, how secretive lobbying bends our politics out of shape, and how Silicon Valley tech giants have colluded in selling out democracy. And in the UK, Martin Moore’s landmark study Democracy Hacked showed how, in the space of just one election cycle, authoritarian governments, wealthy elites and fringe hackers figured out how to game elections, bypass democratic processes and turn social networks into battlefields.

If you're concerned about the health of British democracy, read this book - it is thorough, gripping and vitally important' Oliver Bullough, author of Moneyland.

Instead, the referendum and its aftermath have revealed something far more fundamental and systemic. One of the most striking points the political philosopher David Runciman made in his seminal book How Democracy Ends was that democracies don’t fail backwards: they fail forward. ACT Contact / FAQ About Events / Videos Merch / Subs Sign in/up Democracy For Sale : Dark Money and Dirty Politics Geoghegan, Peter More by this author. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin.

Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's daily session limit. Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsonaro and populists in many other countries are the beneficiaries. This title tells the story of how undisclosed donations – ‘dark money’ – have infiltrated British politics, undermining public faith in democracy and fuelling the rise of populism across the West. Politicians lie gleefully, making wild claims that can be shared instantly with millions on social media.These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. For more details, please consult the latest information provided by Royal Mail's International Incident Bulletin.

Praise for Democracy for Sale: ‘Thorough, gripping and vitally important’ Oliver Bullough’A brilliant description of the dark underbelly of modern democracy. For example, Lawrence Lessig’s Republic, Lost and Jane Mayer’s Dark Money explained how a clique of billionaires has shaped and perverted American politics. The integrity and trustworthiness of elections is a fundamental requirement for a functioning democracy. The existential threat to liberal democracy comes from the fact that those who have successfully exploited some inadequacies of the current regulatory system – who include Boris Johnson and his current wingman, Cummings – have absolutely no incentive to fix the system from which they have benefited.It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance.