Only the Tories are election-ready

13 January 2007

The Conservatives are assumed to be in financial trouble. Fraser Nelson reveals that the truth is just the opposite: the Tory leader has set up a successful fundraising machine that will force Labour into abject dependence on the unions

There was a time when such ideological indifference would have been a magnet to New Labour fundraisers. But the once-formidable Blair-Levy double-act has been closed by the Metropolitan Police’s investigation, soon to be handed to the Crown Prosecution Service. It will not, I understand, end in charges for Tony Blair or any of his senior lieutenants. But the damage to Labour has been done, because there is no team of fundraisers to replace them. The Prime Minister was so effective because his admiration for millionaires was genuine. And, much as he sometimes squirmed when engaged in the long hours of fundraising, he saw in this contact with the business world the long-craved chance to escape Labour’s financial dependence on trade unions.

The Chancellor, by contrast, regards donors as gardeners regard worms: ugly creatures necessary to till the financial soil. Unfortunately for Labour, this comes across all too clearly. One donor describes Mr Brown at work. ‘Every group of people he met, he’d come up with the same phrase: “Good crowd you have here”, and then tell the same unfunny story.’ While this ill-concealed distaste may strengthen Mr Brown’s appeal to core Labour voters, it is doing nothing to help the party buy time from the creditors who are demanding their money back.

In the next year, Labour must find £8.7 million to repay millionaires calling in their debts. Next year Richard Caring, founder of The Ivy restaurant, wants his £2 million back, and Barry Townsley, a stockbroker, wants £1 million repaid. Such names will haunt Mr Brown when he becomes Labour leader, for they, and others like them, will be the party’s metaphoric bailiffs. But the Tories will have no such pressure, having repaid any creditor made anxious by the loans-for-ermine scandal. Their next major repayment deadline is March 2011, the earliest date by which Lord Laidlaw wants his £2.5 million.