The Tories raked in £25m in big donations for June’s election…and still lost 13 seats

Left Foot Forward

The Conservatives took more than double what Labour secured in donations for each percent of the vote they received.

The Conservatives raked in £25m from big donors to fight June’s election – breaking all records – and yet still managed to lose 13 seats.

Stats from the Electoral Commission show that large Tory donations made up nearly two thirds (635) of all private gifts to parties in the run up to the election.

That compares with Labour’s £9.5million, which mainly came from unions (Unite donated £4m).

The Tories’ result equates to almost £2million for each seat lost. Looks like they can’t buy their way out of trouble anymore.

The Lib Dems raised £4.4 million, while UKIP amassed a war chest of…£150,000.

In fact, for every percentage point of the vote parties won, they raked in:

  • Liberal Democrats: £588,974
  • Conservatives: £587,249
  • Labour: £237,313
  • SNP: £199,000
  • Green Party: £110,000
  • UKIP: £86,919

That means the Tories took more than double what Labour secured in donations for each % of the vote they received.

We don’t know how much the dodgy DUP raked in as party donations in Northern Ireland aren’t published – yet.

The Tories’ biggest donations were hefty – and were dominated by big businessmen (quelle surprise):

  1. £1.5m from construction machinery firm JCB
  2. £1.1m from John Armitage – Britain’s ninth richest hedge fund manager
  3. Over £1m from John Griffin – founder of taxi firm Addison Lee
  4. Another John – John Gore, the theatre mogul behind The Book of Mormon
  5. £750,000 from Mark Bamford – the JCB baron who directs eight of the group’s companies
  6. £566,750 from David Brownlow – founder of consultancy firm Huntswood and the Tories’ Vice Chairman for Campaigning. He was obviously very good at his role…
  7. £525,000 from hedge fund boss Andrew Law
  8. £500,000 from polling don Lord Ashcroft
  9. £400,000 from J.S. Bloor (Services) Ltd – owned by the floor, construction and motorcyle boss John Bloor
  10. £350,000 from property firm Countywide Developments Ltd

And here’s a fun fact: three of the Tories’ top 10 individual donors are Johns, two are Marks, and two are Davids.

Also up there was Lord Ashcroft (£500,000) and Flowidea Ltd – a company run by ‘Swiss-born London-based banker and political donor’ Henry Angest.

You can have a little dig around the figures here – there’s all manner of treasures in there.

With friends like these, is it any wonder the Tories have dropped plans to put workers on company boards? 

Josiah Mortimer is Editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter.

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One Response to “The Tories raked in £25m in big donations for June’s election…and still lost 13 seats”

  1. Dulari-leiylah markelle

    Theresa may should be utterly ashamed such astronomical amounts for a failed election -the landslide win with her big wealthy backers one even predicting landslide polls. In addition dup tory money to keep tories in power it’s a living disgrace and time us voters took serious stock of who are the tories. Today news investigation confirmed tory secret call centre. Will these wealthy backers be still foolish enough to keep their party in power. Personally disgusted wealth votes power zero respect for the many

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