Tory donations twice as high as Labour’s in last part of 2024

The Conservatives raised twice as much in donations as Labour at the end of last year, including £250,000 from Michael Ashcroft.

Despite some Tory donors flirting with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and others switching to Labour at the election, the party managed to raise almost £2m in the last three months of 2024 as Kemi Badenoch took over the leadership.

Labour raised £1m from donors, at least half of which came from trade unions. One party source said Labour had struggled to gain enthusiasm from businesses to donate amid worries about the impact of the national insurance rise and other tax choices.

Lord Ashcroft, a dual British and Belizean citizen and former Conservative party treasurer who is also a pollster and political publisher, donated more than £5m to the Tories in the decade running up to 2010 before cutting back during the David Cameron years. His £250,000 donation was his largest since he gave £500,000 in the 2017 election campaign.

The Conservatives also brought in £200,000 from the Northern Irish industrialist Chris Rea and more than £150,000 from Richard Harpin, the founder of HomeServe. A number of other donations of £50,000 appeared to be annual subscriptions for membership of the party’s donor clubs.

Some Tory sources sceptical of Badenoch’s leadership still claimed the party was struggling for its usual level of funds and was at risk of losing further donors to Reform.

Bassim Haidar, a major Tory donor, and Mohamed Amersi, another donor, both contributed to Reform by attending a fundraiser this January.

Overall, the political parties collectively raised £100m in 2024 – substantially less than the £117m that was donated in the previous election year of 2019, when Boris Johnson went head to head with Jeremy Corbyn.

In the last quarter of 2024, Reform UK raised £280,000, including £100,000 from Roger Nagioff, a private equity boss who appears to be based in Monaco, according to his LinkedIn profile.

When the former Tory donor Nick Candy took over as Reform’s treasurer in December, the party boasted it would be bringing in seven-figure donations. However, its new donations are yet to make a significant impact.

The party had looked like it could attract a £100m donation from Elon Musk, but he subsequently seemed to back away from this prospect after a spat with Farage about Farage’s decision to distance the party from the far-right leader Tommy Robinson.

Overall, the parties raised just over £7m in the last quarter of 2024, compared with £22.6m in the same period in 2023.

Jackie Killeen, the director of administration and regulation at the Electoral Commission, said: “Almost £100m in donations was accepted by political parties during 2024. It is not unusual to see a spike in donations in the lead-up to general elections as political parties began to campaign, and a drop in donations in the quarters after.”

She said the Electoral Commission would like to see strengthening of the law around limiting company donations to the money they have made in the UK, requiring parties to conduct know-your-donor checks on donations to assess and manage their risk, and ensure those who donate to unincorporated associations are permissible donors.