The alms race making politics a poorer place

American commentators have a time-honoured way of figuring out which candidate is likely to get a presidential nomination. They count up the dollars in their kitties, and the rate of entry thereto. While Scottish politics has gone into a tailspin over a £950 donation from an illegal source, the runners and riders in the battle to succeed George Bush have already banked and spent million of dollars with the actual poll still a year distant. They have contracted an advanced form of the disease that has afflicted the body politic in Britain: the substitution of fund-raising for policy development.