At least partial public financing of parties and elections is inescapable

States Martin Wolf (FT). We beg to disagree. While the purchasing of political power as currently demonstrated in the US is certainly objectionable we think that the introduction of direct democracy would put a major spanner into the works of lobbies. In conjunction with other reforms (term limits, less reliance on individual politicians such as Presidents, Chancellors to name just a few) power would be based on persuading the public rather than just bribing voters to tick a box once every so often to give nearly unlimited discretionary powers to certain parties.