Labour’s exposé of the Tories’ reliance on “shady money” to try to swing the next general election in their favour does not come as a surprise.

That donations to the Conservatives from unincorporated associations, which do not reveal where their funds come from, amount to over £5.5 million since 2010 underlines the rotten and anti-democratic nature of the ruling party.

And these donations amount to over half the cash raised in 27 of the party’s target seats for 2015.

Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman is right to point out that the bulk of Tory funding is hardly clean.

The political wing of the City of London can rely on magnates and millionaires, spivs and speculators to ensure it can outspend its political opponents.

The rich will do everything they can to support a party they know will do their bidding — which is to continue the massive transfer of wealth from working people into their own pockets euphemistically known as “austerity.”

News yesterday that the number of property millionaires is rising confirms the trend we have seen in successive Sunday Times rich lists.

Wage freezes, massive public-sector layoffs and a ruthless drive to remove social security payments from the most vulnerable have forced millions to rely on foodbanks just to stay alive.

At the same time tax cuts for the elite, a cosseted financial sector and an orgy of outsourcing that sees lucrative government contracts handed over to privateers whose greed is only matched by their incompetence mean Tory policies are delivering the goods for the super-rich.

No wonder the money keeps rolling in — to the tune of £7.2m in the second quarter of 2014, almost twice what Labour has received.

That £372,000 of that total comes from unincorporated associations begs the question as to why major donors are so keen to hide their identities, but it hardly changes the bigger picture. Tory funds could not get much dirtier.

Ms Harman’s determination to win the election rather than buy it is admirable. 

Hopefully we will not see party leaders fawning before business moguls and taking their money in exchange for the party’s soul, as we did in the Blair years.

But the fact remains that Ed Miliband has shot himself in the foot on funding by his reckless and ill-considered weakening of the trade union link on March 1.

Tory ministers rolling in millionaires’ gold like to lambast Labour for relying on trade unions for funding. A Tory-dominated press, mostly owned by billionaire media tycoons, does what it can to help, slandering elected union leaders as “barons” and howling with rage whenever organised workers seek to make their voices heard in the party they founded.

But, as Labour MP Ian Lavery has repeatedly said, trade union money is the cleanest money in politics. Labour’s biggest donations come from organisations representing millions of working people, whose members have the democratic right to pull the plug on the donations if they wish.

Workers learned long ago that it is only by collective action that we can hope to challenge the power of the ruling class.

And only collective funding from mass organisations can compete with the bottomless wallets that bankroll the Tories.

If Labour hopes for a fair fight come 2015, it should stop underestimating the movement which gave birth to it and say proudly that it stands with and for the working class.