© Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons for http://tribunecartoons.com

The leader of the Labour party has responded to the traditional Conservative taunt ‘you are paid for by the unions’ by promising not to be.

The link is to an FT comment defining the argument as the battle Miliband cannot afford to lose.

This public promise, assuming it can be delivered, is an important moment because of the problem it also poses for the Conservative party and its own rather more opaque sources of funding.

The second link is to a Bureau of Investigative Journalism report into sources of Conservative Party Funding.

The Electoral Commission offer an overview of the dispute for all sides with some statistical breakdown of who gets what from who.

And for fun, here’s a fine old story about this very long-lived problem.

Updated 29th July 2013: Latest statistics on party political fundraising from the Electoral Commission covering 2012 and Q1 of 2013.