How much have political donors gifted to their party coffers? Well, the results are now in. Today’s Electoral Commission figures bring some long overdue good news for Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives, who have come out on top: the Tories received a whopping £3.3 million of donations between the 1 January and 31 March 2025. In fact, Badenoch’s boys in blue took £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 took. Talk about raking it in, eh?
And the Tories have more than just the raw figures to boast about: it transpires that onetime Labour supporter and video game entrepreneur Jez San donated a staggering sum of £1 million this quarter. More than that, Carphone Warehouse founder, the philanthropist David Ross, has resumed his donations to the party for the first time in three years – and he will become, the party has announced today, the group’s senior treasurer in the autumn. Today’s stats follow figures from the last quarter that revealed the Tories had received £1.9 million in donations despite their historic election defeat. Swings and roundabouts…
Sir Keir Starmer’s army didn’t do quite as well, raising £2.3 million in donations with over 50 per cent of this sum coming from unions. Discounting the trade union input altogether, Labour took just over half a million pounds from donors. £350,000 of this was from a single bequest, as the Telegraph reports, while the rest comes from just four donors – including Lord Alli who, as Mr S reported at the time, has previously spent a rather large sum on the Starmer’s clothes…
Despite its performance in the polls, Reform UK hasn’t managed to draw in quite as much money it might have hoped. Today’s figures also throw doubt on the claim that Farage’s crowd raised £1 million at a fancy £25,000-per-ticket Mayfair dinner filled with ex-Tory donors. And while Reform’s treasurer and property mogul Nick Candy promised last year he would donate a ‘seven-figure sum’ to the start-up, the money hasn’t quite transpired yet. Given the company belonging to the party’s deputy leader Richard Tice had to contribute over £600,000 this quarter, Mr S looks forward to seeing whether Candy will plug the gap next time…
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