UK

Tory donations top £570,000 in first week of election campaign - down from £5.7m in 2019

Sky News
Updated Fri, 14 June 2024 



The Conservatives have raised just 10% of the donations they managed to collect in 2019 under Boris Johnson in the first week of the election campaign.

Electoral Commission data released today shows the Tories raised £574,918 in the period 30 May to 5 June, compared with the £5.7m they received from 6-12 November five years ago.

The figures show political parties reported £3.2m in donations in the first week of the election campaign.


Mr Sunak's party raised £574,918 through donations alone, on top of £22,453 that came from public funds.

Meanwhile, Labour generated £926,908 from donations alone and £652,411 from the public funds that are given to opposition parties with more than two MPs.

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They show a complete turnaround in Labour's fortunes from the 2019 election, when the party raised just £218,500 in the first week of that campaign.

This time round, the single biggest donation given to Labour totalled £500,000 from film company Toledo Productions.

The slump in donations will come as an additional blow to Rishi Sunak, after his party was overtaken by Nigel Farage's Reform UK in a single poll by YouGov.

Mr Sunak batted away Mr Farage's assertion that his party now represents the opposition to Labour after the poll put Reform on 19% of the vote and the Conservatives on just 18%.

The Electoral Commission figures showed that Reform received £140,000 in donations, while the Liberal Democrats declared £454,999, the SNP £127,998 and the Co-operative Party £120,000.

Plaid Cymru did not declare any donations but it did receive £33,194 in public funds.

The Social Democrat Party and the Climate Party both also declared £25,000 each but did not receive any public funds.

Louise Edwards, director of regulation and digital transformation, said: "This is the first of the pre-poll weekly reports, which we publish in the lead up to the general election.

"We know that voters are interested in where parties get their money from, and these publications are an important part of delivering transparency for voters.

"While there is no limit to what parties can raise, there are spending limits in place ahead of elections to ensure a level playing field."

The figures published by the commission, which oversees elections and regulates political finance in the UK, do not represent all donations because only those over £11,500 have to be declared.

In 2019, the threshold was lower, at £7,500.

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The donations received by Mr Sunak are a far cry from the vast donations Mr Johnson received from big business and wealthy donors in the run-up to the 2019 election, which he ran on the platform to "get Brexit done".

The single largest donation to the Conservatives in the first week of the 2019 election campaign was the £1m it received from theatre entrepreneur John Gore.

By contrast, the value of the single largest donation for the Tories over the same period this year was £75,000 and came from the entrepreneur Bassim Haidar.

Today a number of Conservative candidates reposted videos in which Mr Johnson appealed to local voters to support the party on polling day on 4 July.

The most recent YouGov poll put Labour out in front on 37% of the vote, followed by Reform UK on 19% and the Conservatives on 18%.

The Lib Dems polled 14% of the vote, followed by the Greens on 7% and the SNP on 3%.

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Responding to the poll, Mr Sunak said a vote for Reform would "give a blank cheque to Labour".

Speaking to journalists at the G7 summit in Italy, the prime minister said: "We are only halfway through this election, so I'm still fighting very hard for every vote.

"And what that poll shows is - the only poll that matters is the one on 4 July - but if that poll was replicated on 4 July, it would be handing Labour a blank cheque to tax everyone, tax their home, their pension, their car, their family, and I'll be fighting very hard to make sure that doesn't happen."

Sky News has contacted the Conservatives for comment.



Love Actually producer helps Labour raise more than other parties in first week

Christopher McKeon, PA Political Correspondent
Fri, 14 June 2024 


A £500,000 donation from the producer of Love Actually and Notting Hill helped Labour raise almost £1 million in the first week of the General Election campaign.

Figures released by the Electoral Commission on Friday show Labour received £926,908 in donations between May 30 and June 5, compared to £574,918 received by the Tories.

The bulk of Labour’s money came in the form of a £500,000 donation from Toledo Productions Ltd, whose owner Duncan Kenworthy produced several romantic comedies starring Hugh Grant.


Love Actually producer Duncan Kenworthy gave Labour £500,000 in the first week of the campaign (Ian West/PA)

It appears to be Mr Kenworthy’s first donation to a political party, although the producer did donate £5,000 to David Miliband’s unsuccessful bid for the Labour leadership in 2010.

Other significant donations to Labour included £100,000 from entrepreneur Tony Bury and £70,000 each from businessman Clive Hollick, also a Labour peer, and hedge fund manager Stuart Rosen.

Labour also benefitted from £652,411 in public funds from the House of Commons following the dissolution of Parliament, bringing the total raised by the party during the week to £1.58 million.

Labour’s sister party, the Co-operative Party, received £120,000, largely in the form of a £90,000 donation from Autoglass boss Gary Lubner.

(PA Graphics)

For the Conservatives, the largest donation was £75,000 from Lebanese businessman Bassim Haidar, who told the Guardian in May he was “urgently” looking to leave the UK after both main parties promised to scrap the non-dom tax status.

Mr Haidar also provided £13,085-worth of “travel” for the Conservative Party.

The party also received £75,000 from former oil services company chairman Alasdair Locke, and £50,000 each from former party treasurer Lord Michael Farmer and gas turbine company Centrax Industries, controlled by the Barr family.

The Lib Dems raised slightly less than the Conservatives, receiving £454,999 in the first week of the campaign, including £150,000 from businessman Safwan Adam.

Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives raised £574,918 in donations in the first week of the campaign (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

The party also received £100,000 from food company GADF Holdings, owned by Neale Powell-Cook and David Mordecai.

Donations for Reform UK totalled £140,000 during the week that saw Nigel Farage declare that he would stand as a candidate in Clacton.

This included £50,000 from aerospace engineering company HR Smith Group and another £50,000 from Fitriani Hay.

Ms Hay, a racehorse owner, has donated more than £500,000 to the Conservatives since 2015 and gave £100,000 to Liz Truss’s leadership campaign in 2022.

The SNP raised £127,998, while the Climate Party and the Social Democratic Party received £25,000 each.

Friday’s figures are the first in a series of weekly reports that will be released by the Electoral Commission over the course of the campaign.

Political parties are required to provide weekly reports of donations of more than £11,180, after the Government increased the threshold from £7,500 in January.

Parties still have 30 days after receiving a donation to check that it is from a permissible source and decide whether to accept it.

Louise Edwards, director of regulation and digital transformation at the Electoral Commission, said: “We know that voters are interested in where parties get their money from, and these publications are an important part of delivering transparency for voters.

“While there is no limit to what parties can raise, there are spending limits ahead of elections to ensure a level playing field.”

For most parties, the spending limit for the General Election will be £54,010 multiplied by the number of seats they are contesting.


Love Actually producer puts Labour donations on top in first campaign week

Henry Dyer

THE GUARDIAN
Fri, 14 June 2024 

Keir Starmer’s party received a total of £926,908 in the first week, according to the Electoral Commission.Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images

Labour received more donations than the Conservatives in the first week of the campaign, including £500,000 from the producer of Love Actually and Notting Hill, figures show.

Donors gave Labour £926,908, but only £574,918 to the Tories in the week starting with the dissolution of parliament on 30 May, according to Electoral Commission records.

Labour’s biggest donation, drawing them ahead of the Conservatives, was £500,000 from Toledo Productions Ltd, a film production company controlled by the producer Duncan Kenworthy, who worked on several Richard Curtis films. It marks a return to political donations for Kenworthy, who gave David Miliband £5,000 towards his campaign for the Labour leadership in 2010.

Conservative fundraisers may also be alarmed by the identity of two donors to Reform on 5 June, two days after Nigel Farage announced he would stand in the general election and take over as leader of the party. Reform raised £140,000 in total, all coming after Farage’s announcement.

Fitriani Hay was Liz Truss’s biggest donor for her leadership campaign in 2022, giving £100,000. She had previously given more than £500,000 to the Conservatives. Now Hay, the wife of James Hay, a former BP executive who has a construction and luxury goods empire, has given Farage’s party £50,000.

Her donation was matched by HR Smith Group Ltd, a company owned by Richard Smith, who gave the then Brexit party £100,000 through a subsidiary of HR Smith, Techtest, during the 2019 European election campaign. HR Smith Group also gave £10,000 to Iain Duncan Smith’s constituency association in August 2021.

Reform’s third donor, Peter Hall, gave £40,000 two days after giving £25,000 to the Social Democratic party. In October 2022, Reform and the SDP agreed a general election pact, standing aside for each other in six constituencies.

Further donations to Reform are expected to be published soon, with sources telling the Guardian that the party had raised £1.5m in the days after Farage’s announcement.

The Lebanese businessman Bassim Haidar gave the Conservatives £75,000 and paid for travel worth £13,000. Haidar, a non-dom, said at the beginning of May that he had decided to “urgently” leave the UK to avoid paying millions of pounds in tax after the Conservatives introduced policies to scrap non-dom tax status.

Political parties may have received other donations, but newly increased thresholds to the transparency regime mean that only the details of gifts of more than £11,180 sent straight to parties’ headquarters, made either one-off or cumulative, are published by the Electoral Commission.

Details of donations made in the general election campaign will be published twice more before polling day, covering the period up to 19 June.

Political parties standing across the UK can spend up to £35.1m in the year up to and including polling day.