Big story breaking on @openDemocracy. We did a massive dive into the Leader's Group of top Tory donors - which party has stopped publishing - found £130m+ in donations from a handful of super wealthy donors w/ off-record access to Boris Johnson + ministers opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-…
@openDemocracy Labour shadow minister Jon Trickett has today written to Tory chairman James Cleverly calling for “much greater transparency in how the Conservative Party handles its political donations and relationships with rich and powerful elites”.
Really striking is just how dependent the Tories are on a very small number of very wealthy, very male, predominantly very Brexit and quite hedge fund-friendly donors. More than 80% of the money party has raised for this general election is from just 15 people.
Top Tory donors including Anthony (Lord) Bamford, Russian businessman Alexander Temerko, who calls himself a “friend” of Johnson’s, Lubov Chernukhin, Tory treasurer Ehud Sheleg. Lord Michael Farmer, co-founder of hedge fund Red Kite has donated over £6.4 million.
For this story we took a deep dive into Leader's Group of top Tory donors - if you pay £50k a year you get to go to quarterly private meetings with the PM and senior cabinet ministers.
Neil Record, chairman the Institute of Economic Affairs, previously said at Leader's Group "The donors are treated like an intelligent fan club. If there is a businessman who wants to have a chat with a future prime minister then this is his opportunity."
In 2012, Cameron promised transparency about Conservative fundings. But we asked a staff member in the Conservative Treasurer's Department for details of Leader’s Group donors. Six weeks later we've still received nothing. Where's the transparency now?
Interestingly Pro-EU donors have fled the Tories since the 2016 Brexit vote, while a number of Brexit Party donors have also attended Leader’s Group dinners. Earlier this year a top Tory donor warned that the party was reliant on the super wealthy. That's actually got worse
In the first week of the 2019 general election, the Tories raised more than £5.6 million in large donations. Just fifteen wealthy individuals gave the Conservatives £4.4 million. Labour took in under £220,000 over the same period.
“This is very serious. It shows how the rich and powerful can buy influence with the British government,” said Scottish National Party MP @TommySheppard. “What are they getting in return?”
Transparency International’s @SteveJGoodrich said: “Wealthy donors securing access to government ministers has continued to be a worrying practice... Such a transactional approach to rewarding donors can easily give rise to the perception of some form of quid pro quo.”
The Conservatives said: “All reportable donations are properly and transparently declared to the Electoral Commission, published by them, and comply fully with the law.”
TLdr: British political parties run on private (and union) money. Conservatives are dependent on tiny number of donors in a secret club w/private access to PM and government ministers. Is that transparency? Please do consider supporting @openDemocracy support.opendemocracy.net/campaign/wcf?s…
