Labour receives 15 times more in large donations than Tories

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Labour far out-raised the ruling Conservatives in the second week of the general election campaign, according to the latest data, including a £2.5mn donation for Sir Keir Starmer’s party from Lord David Sainsbury.

Electoral Commission figures published on Friday showed the Tories raised nearly £300,000 in large donations from donors in the seven days ending June 12 compared with more than £4.4mn for Labour and its affiliates, including the Co-operative party.

The donation figure for Labour was roughly 15 times larger than that for the Conservatives.

The Liberal Democrats raised £335,000 over the same period, while Reform UK attracted £742,000 — although the right-wing party’s largest donor was its chair Richard Tice.

Tice donated £500,000 through Britain Means Business, a company he used to fund a campaign — since wound up — calling for a referendum on net zero climate policy. Holly Valance, a former pop star and wife of property developer Nick Candy, donated £50,000 to the populist rightwing party.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s party has raised roughly £900,000 since the beginning of this year’s campaign, compared with £8.6mn in the first two weeks of the six-week election in 2019.

The donation figures shine a difficult light on the state of the Conservative party’s coffers, as Sunak reels from recent gaffes and a betting scandal that engulfed his party this week.

Labour leads the Conservatives by an average of around 20 points in the polls and while it started the year on the back foot in terms of campaign contributions it has in recent months started to pull in a raft of large donations.

The opposition party accounted for three-quarters of all single donations above £11,180 received in the second week of the campaign, with a total of £5.8mn reported to the commission in the period.

A senior Conservative official said the party had built a sizeable war chest in the last year and argued that Labour was “playing catch-up”. They said the 2019 election was not comparable, insisting the Tories were well financed for this campaign.

The Tories received £47.4mn in donations last year, well in excess of the £35mn limit on election spending. Labour took in £21.7mn, including a record £13mn in individual donations.

In total, all UK political parties raised £79.2mn in 2023, up from £38.3mn the previous year.

Data from the period between when Sunak called the poll on May 22 and May 29, when some large donations will have been made to parties, will be published by the Electoral Commission as part of data for the second quarter of the year after the campaign ends on July 4.

Sainsbury, scion of the eponymous supermarket chain, has gifted Labour £5.7mn since the beginning of 2023.

The party also received £900,000 from Gary Lubner, former chief executive of Belron, parent company of Autoglass, in the second week of the campaign taking his contribution to the party since the beginning of 2023 to roughly £6.5mn.

The Liberal Democrats have raised £3.7mn since the beginning of this year, with the party’s largest donor Safwan Adam, a franchisee of video games retailer CeX, gifting £500,000.