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.

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.

The way in which money is solicited for election campaigns has become as intense as it is ingenious, and almost an end game in itself. To the standard fundraising dinner designed to shake down the fatter cats, add in the ostensibly cuddlier route of online giving aimed at pulling in smaller sums from a wider database.

The alms race is a dangerous one, and not just because it invariably encourages the wrong sort of ingenuity: how to solicit contributions which circumnavigate the rules. In terms of the events unfolding in Scotland, the pertinent question nobody seems to be asking is why any campaign team should construct their pitch in such a way as to give the donor guaranteed anonymity. It is an odd route to transparency. Secret lists merely transform generosity into apparent furtiveness.

But this disorder effortlessly crosses party lines. Nobody seems able confidently to name the precise whereabouts for tax purposes of the Tories' erstwhile treasurer Michael Ashcroft, a multi-millionaire funder of his party whose peerage from William Hague in 2000 was predicated on his relocating to Britain from Belize. It is Ashcroft's largesse that has so put the wind up the UK Labour Party, since he has concentrated on pumping money into marginal seats, a perfectly legal if morally dubious slanting of the electoral playing field.

The core issue all this raises does not lie in ever-more-fevered debate about alternative means of party funding. What we need to examine is why the business of politics has become just that. Think of the effort expended by Gordon Brown's team over the years to ensure their man at last inherited the crown. And then think of the "where's the beef?" questions which post-dated his coronation. You do not locate the vision thing in ledgers recording lists of donors, or ancillary material outlining their areas of interest.

If any one policy tells us all we need to know about the unhealthy development of big money buying political influence, it is surely the English initiative, launched by Blair and endorsed by Cameron, of selling off partial control of city academies to anyone with the requisite two million quid in their back pocket. The enthusiasm of the proprietor of the Daily Mail for wanting to sign up, and the disdain of Oxford and Cambridge when solicited to do likewise, tells you all you need to know about this sorry dereliction of duty in education policy. If Scottish teachers want to lie down at the border to stop this madness migrating north, save me a space.

We seem to be living in an age where knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing has addled the minds of the policy developers. An age, too, where the energies of those labouring in the backstage vineyards of the political game seem transfixed by the sheer process of funding and winning polls - essentially making election victory the sole object of their exercise, rather than raising their gaze to examine why they sought office in the first place. Gurus who run private party polling and organise focus groups have turned the political game on its head. No longer do men and women of vision hone and perfect policy reflecting personal beliefs and hopes for their country; instead they pore over percentages and perceived prejudices. Hence the appalling kite being flown this week about denying all but emergency healthcare to asylum-seeking families without official leave to remain. Hence the mid-term stalling of the necessary resources to relieve child poverty, as reported by the Rowntree Foundation.

Politics is essentially about public service, and, in fairness, many politicians still have that as their core motivation. But too few of them are immune to the fevered whispering of sharp-suited mini-acolytes who have overdosed on The West Wing and ditched soul food for spin. For them, politics is a game, and the only thing that matters is scoring points over the perceived enemy.

They've acquired ideas well above their intellectual station, while failing to display anything resembling plain common sense. When Martin Luther King electrified a generation he told them he had a dream, not a bank draft.