As we all gear up for party conference season, it's pretty shocking to read that these days barely a third of those attending the Conservative gathering are party members.
Having regularly spoken at fringe meetings at all the party conferences, I can testify that this is a cross-party trend.
There is something dispiriting about realising that instead of addressing the massed ranks of party activists, audiences largely comprise of ‘outsiders': there not to debate but lobby, usually in a professional capacity.
Cue perhaps a rant about the corruption of politics by evil, sharp-suited lobbyists, dubbed by one of my fellow hacks as ‘corporate toads' involved in ‘legalised bribery'.
Except the problem is less the growth of lobbying and more the collapse of conviction politics. My advice is that local government should stop joining in the increasingly shrill chorus demonising lobbying.
Rather, councils should stand up for lobbying as a vital aspect of democratic life, and certainly oppose the Coalition's new Transparency of Lobbying Bill. This official purge of lobbying is likely to deracinate political life even further.
What's so wrong with lobbying? Surely it's at heart no more than an attempt to influence local and national elected representatives by making a well-informed case for a particular cause.
Much is made of the undue influence of vested interests; as though legislating in a neutral, disinterested vacuum is preferable to being petitioned by all sides.
The more lobbying there is, the more likely a council can weigh up all sides of the argument, informed by those who have specialist knowledge and/or who are passionately involved in the intricacies of a debate.
Isn't it better when national government is making decisions about, for example, social housing, that they should hear the views of the Local Government Association, MJ contributors, housing associations, developers, builders and residents' groups?
In the end though, we elect politicians to make decisions regardless of how hard we lobby them. It's important, when they do – even against our particular point of view – we don't lazily cry foul and blame lobbying for their decision.
Recently David Cameron defensively explained that the Government didn't drop its plain packaging of cigarettes because they were knobbled by their election adviser Lynton Crosby, whose lobbying firm's clients include tobacco manufacturers.
What was galling was the hysterical accusations bandied around about sinister big business' manipulation of democracy.
Who were the accusers? The likes of ASH, Cancer Research UK and a myriad of anti-smoking campaigns – often state-funded – that supported plain packaging. In other words, the public health lobby. Could government not perhaps have been persuaded by a better argument rather than a dodgy deal? Even better, have they been basing their decision on the greater good or political principle?
One concern might be the rise of third-party lobbying via public affairs companies, which has fuelled the idea that corporates are hiding their attempts at influencing politicians.
My preference would be for more open, face-to-face lobbying. Ironically, one reason corporates increasingly use such arm's length firms, is the whiff of corruption associated with more informal channels of communication.
Dare a CEO get caught buying a pint for a politician, chatting through views off-the- record without both looking over their shoulders or facing accusations of underhand cronyism?
While in opposition Cameron warned: ‘We all know how it works. The lunches, the hospitality, the quiet word in your ear.'
This is insulting to all sides. Of course we all know of the media exposés of Lords taking cash-for-questions.
But are we to conclude that all politicians are so buyable and malleable that they'll change their views for the price of a good steak and a day at the races? If that is the case, lobbying is the least of democracy's problems.
There is too much cant in this debate. It is important to recognise that Greenpeace and the NSPCC are as much in the lobbying game as Cuadrilla or Bell Pottinger; that councils…can be lobbyists as well as lobbied.
At last charities and trade unions have woken up to the threat that the anti-lobbying legislation poses to their interests as campaigners. The TUC has attacked proposals that it claims are ‘an outrageous attack on freedom of speech worthy of an authoritarian dictatorship'.
Sadly their prejudice against those lobbying for views they disagreed with has hoist them on their own pertard. Councils must surely recognise the dangerous limits placed on municipal influence in the local Audit and Accountability Bill's provisions.
But to oppose these restrictions, councils, charities and unions need to defend the freedom for businesses to seek to influence too.
Claire Fox is the director of the Institute of Ideas
