Tory finances boosted by billionaire’s biggest donation in 20 years

A £5m gift from billionaire businessman Mohamed Mansour has helped the Conservative Party raise more than £12m in donations in the first three months of this year.

Mr Mansour's donation - the biggest to the party since 2001 - boosted takings, which topped all other parties.

Labour raised £5.8m in the same period, including £2m from Lord Sainsbury, former chair of the supermarket chain.

The Lib Dems received £1.6m, the SNP £291,000, and the Greens £215,000.

The new figures from the Electoral Commission show that UK political parties have accepted nearly £21m in donations and public funds during the first quarter of 2023 - an increase of about two thirds on the same period last year.

The Conservatives have reclaimed the top spot for donations, overtaking Labour, which raised the most money in the final quarter of 2022.

The party has reversed a dip in donations since Rishi Sunak became Tory leader and prime minister in October last year.

A Tory source said last year was "very difficult for donations" in the wake of Boris Johnson's premiership, but insisted the latest Electoral Commission figures showed "a big recovery".

The source said the increase in donations was important "because we're hiring lots of campaign managers to target the marginal seats" ahead of the next general election.

A large chunk of the £12.1m in donations the party raised between January to March this year came from Mr Mansour, who was appointed Tory treasurer by Mr Sunak last year.

Writing in the Telegraph newspaper, Mr Mansour said he felt reassured by Mr Sunak's leadership and revealed he had donated £5m to the party's "election fighting fund".

The Egyptian-born business tycoon, who has British citizenship, said the country had "a very capable prime minister" who "understands how growth is generated in the modern economy".

"I look at what he has achieved in his first months in office and think what he could do in five years," Mr Mansour wrote.

Mr Mansour himself was once a politician in Egypt, where he served as a transport minister from 2006 to 2009 under Hosni Mubarak, the late Egyptian president who stood down in 2011 during the Arab Spring.

He is the chairman of the Mansour Group, which employs 60,000 people, and founded the London-based investment firm Man Capital.

A Tory source said Mr Mansour's function as a treasurer was to "open up networks" and introduce the party to new contacts in the business world.

Mr Mansour's £5m gift was second only to Lord Sainsbury's in 2019, when he gave the Liberal Democrats £8m - the biggest individual donation ever.

The Conservatives received two more big donations, both valued at £2m - one from Amit Lohia, a wealthy Indian industrialist, and Graham Edwards, another Conservative Party treasurer.

The largest individual donations to Labour were £2m from Lord Sainsbury, a long-time backer of the party, and £375,000 from Gary Lubner, the former chief executive of the company that owns Autoglass.

Mr Lubner is expected to donate £5m to the party before the next election and told the Financial Times he wanted to give Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer financial help to put the party in power "for a long time".

Labour also received £2.3m from its trade union backers, including £1.1m from Unite and £359,168 from Unison.

The Liberal Democrats' largest donation was £200,000, from a company called Peak Scientific Instruments, a nitrogen generator manufacturer.

Tim Bale, a professor of politics and author of The Conservative Party after Brexit, said the money raised by parties ahead of general elections was important because "it can actually make a difference to what a party can do in the campaign itself".

He said it is difficult to tell if the latest donations "represent a vote of confidence in the current [Conservative] leadership or instead smack of panic and desperation".

The professor said there may be a "growing fear" of a Labour government among those who "worry they'll lose out if that happens".

Professor Bale said, as far as some donors are concerned, the Conservative Party "ultimately exists as an insurance policy against a social democratic government they believe will take the country in the wrong direction and, in so doing, damage their wealth".

Louise Edwards, of the Electoral Commission, said publishing the figures was vital to ensure transparency but called on the government to do more to raise confidence in the system.

She said: "We know transparency of party and campaigner finance is important for people, but our research tells us that only 24% of people believe party funding is transparent.

"It's clear that publishing this information is not enough. We continue to recommend to the UK government that it reforms the system, to help protect parties from those who seek to evade the law, and give voters more confidence."