Well, well, well. It appears that Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has managed to secure yet another notable donation – and this time from Tory donors who backed Boris Johnson. According to the MPs’ register of interests, the Tory party leader has received a £150,000 donation from Lord Bamford, who was a generous donor to Johnson before rumours began to swirl that he was moving to Reform UK. It’s certainly a well-needed win for the current Conservative leader!
The donation entry notes that JC Bamford Excavators Limited donated £150,000 to Badenoch at the start of June. It’s another coup for the Conservatives, after recent Electoral Commission figures revealed that the Tories received a whopping £3.3 million of donations between the 1 January and 31 March 2025 – taking £1 million more than the Labour lot who received £2.3 million, and over double the £1.48 million of donations Nigel Farage’s Reform UK received. Carphone Warehouse founder, the philanthropist David Ross, has also resumed his donations to the party for the first time in three years – and he will shortly become the party’s senior treasurer in the autumn.
The Bamford family name is significant to Tories – after Johnson’s register of interests in 2022 showed he had received almost £50,000 from the donors after he resigned from the top job. The Bamford family contributed more than £23,800 towards the Johnsons’ wedding celebrations over the summer of 2022 and hosted Boris and Carrie at Anthony Bamford’s 18th-century mansion, Daylesford House, in the Cotswolds. But the relationship between Lord Bamford and Johnson goes back earlier than that, with the donor supporting Johnson’s successful leadership bid in 2019 – while the pro-Brexit Tory peer has given more than £10 million in donations and gifts to the party since 2001.
There were fears that the Conservative peer was considering switching sides to Reform UK after his firm funded a £8,000 helicopter trip for Nigel Farage last November. Today’s revelation will assure the Tory leader’s allies that for now, at least, Bamford is backing Badenoch.
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