the times | Saturday June 11 2022 51

CommentBusiness

Dominic O’Connell

Giving cash to political parties is not a charitable

donation, but a transaction like any other

there are significant numbers who

give to Labour and the Lib Dems.

The second group is the single-

issue donors, who give in the hope of

receiving a specific thing: a hedge

fund trader looking for a tax break or

a property developer looking for a

planning approval. These people were

almost always, my donors thought,

disappointed. “If you go to

fundraising events over a long period

of time, you can see them a mile off.

It is a constantly changing cast,

because eventually they work out that

their money has not made a

difference or what they are asking for

cannot be given,” one said.

Third are those who are not really

interested in politics or business

policy but want something for

themselves. They want an honour —

a knighthood, perhaps, or a peerage

— and have a high degree of

confidence that giving money will get

them one. This, of course, would be

against the law. A 1925 act makes it

illegal to sell peerages, but there has

been only one successful prosecution,

that of Maundy Gregory in 1933. The

link between donors and honours has

political power wielded by the largest

contractors 40 years ago. One telling

anecdote recalls an annual dinner

held by the McAlpine empire at the

Dorchester, at which half the cabinet,

including Margaret Thatcher, sat at

the top table.

Now few public companies make

political donations. It is too much of a

headache. Shareholders want to know

why the money is not going to them,

staff may feel alienated and no one is

able to prove that the investment

yields a return. Instead donations

come from individuals, some mega-

donors giving astonishing amounts of

money and at times generating

astonishing amounts of

embarrassment. Bernie Ecclestone,

the motor racing billionaire, gave

£1 million to Labour in 1997 (which

was later returned). Stuart Wheeler,

the betting tycoon, has given

£5 million and more to the

Conservatives, Lord Ashcroft much

more. Michael Brown, the financier,

gave the Liberal Democrats

£2.4 million, before going on the run

after being accused of fraud. He was

sentenced to seven years in jail.

Scroll through the most recent list

of donations on the Electoral

Commission website (we are at a low

point in the cycle; most big gifts come

before an election) and you see a wide

range of people giving different

amounts. Many are gifts in kind,

prizes for local party raffles, and some

are obviously small amounts from

wills. There is, though, a steady beat

of one-off large sums that fit the

template of the traditional political

donation, given in the hope of

receiving something in return.

The “something” differs wildly. My

donors by and large agreed that there

were several broad groups of givers.

First, the tribalists, who think that

their money will help to keep the

other side out of power. In the past,

gifts to the Conservatives from this

group were dominated by public

companies and by “old” money:

generational wealth that wanted

protection from the threat of higher

taxes. Now it is more likely to be from

entrepreneurs, individuals who have

made their money from recent

ventures. They, too, want low tax, but

also have aspirations to promote

entrepreneurship and talk about

making Britain “the best place to start

a business”, language often echoed by

Tory politicians. Not all

entrepreneurs are pro-Tory, though:

Shortly before the

confidence vote in

the prime minister

last week, Nadine

Dorries tried to put

the fear of God into rebel Tory MPs.

In an interview with Sky’s Beth Rigby,

she invoked what she clearly thought

was the most mighty power in the

Conservative firmament: donors.

They had warned that they would not

support the party were Boris Johnson

ousted, Dorries insisted. They had

given the party £18 million and made

the last election win possible. “They

[the rebels] need to hear that

message,” she said.

The threat was real: 23 donors

signed a letter backing Johnson. I

doubt, however, that many MPs were

swayed. The Conservative Party has

relied on donors all its life and it

would be odd if they all lost faith

because one leader were deposed.

They did not flee en masse after the

party booted out Margaret Thatcher,

John Major or Theresa May, so why

get squeamish over Johnson?

It does, however, raise a question

that has often intrigued me. Why do

business people give money to

political parties? Not whether it

should be legal or if it is morally right,

but the motivation of the giver and

the return on the investment? This

week I spoke to six donors about why

they did it. Five had given money to

the Conservatives, one of those had

also financially supported Labour and

one was for the Liberal Democrats.

All had different reasons. All had

interesting and often amusing

observations to make about donors

and the politicians they had

encountered. One was fervently

attached to Johnson, one was

fervently opposed, one seemed to be

in it for amusement. One was utterly

disillusioned by the experience and

the surrounding publicity, to the

extent that he urged me to caution

people to think hard before plunging

in. Most politicians were in the end,

he said ruefully, “just parasites”.

The source of donations has

changed markedly in the past few

decades. Many public companies used

to give money every year, almost

always to the Conservatives. There

was a much closer relationship

between big business and the

leadership of the Tory party. In his

book Indictment: Power and Politics in

the Construction Industry, the late

David Morrell recounts the immense

and the probable direction of policy.

When business people have official

meetings with ministers, there is

almost always a civil servant present

taking notes. There is no such

scrutiny at a donors’ dinner. “I felt I

could tell them what I really thought

and they could do the same,” one of

my interviewees said. This was for

many the great attraction of David

Cameron’s Leaders’ Group, an

exclusive dinner club attended by the

Tory leadership. The price of entry

was a £50,000 donation.

It can be wrong to assume too

much about motivation. One of those

I spoke to, who had given £1 million

over a number of years, grew up in a

one-party state, a dictatorship. “I

thought it was a great freedom to be

able to support a political party,” he

said. The airline entrepreneur Sir

Michael Bishop, now Lord

Glendonbrook, who built up BMI

before selling it to Lufthansa, was

always regarded as a diehard

Conservative supporter. When I

interviewed him in 2009, though, he

said his association with the Tories

was more ad hoc, beginning with his

being impressed at Thatcher’s speed

of response to a request made on the

eve of the Falklands War.

Is it a worthwhile investment?

Returns are difficult to quantify, but

all my donors said the access to senior

political figures was the most valuable

part. Those happiest with their

experience fell into the “tribal” camp,

who would support their party over

the long term almost regardless of the

individuals at the top. They were also

less likely to be bothered by being

publicly identified as a donor, by far

the biggest downside for others.

Talking to donors, I also gained the

impression that there was often a

degree of self-delusion. When asked

why they gave, they talked about it

being the right thing to do or it being

for some greater, almost charitable,

good. In almost the same breath, they

would talk about the policy goals they

wanted the government to pursue, the

access they had received or others’

desire for a peerage. The very thinly

concealed reality is that a political

donation in Britain

is not a charitable

donation, but a

transaction like any

other.

never gone away, however, and “cash

for peerages” was one of the biggest

scandals of the Blair administration.

Tony Blair himself was interviewed

three times, but never under caution,

although Lord Levy, his fundraiser,

was arrested and later released. No

charges were brought. In the past

decade nine Conservative Party

treasurers have been made peers.

There is a fourth, smaller group

that is more difficult to define but

probably the most influential of all.

These are donors who have come to

know individual politicians personally

and have backed them financially

from early in their career. They might

believe in a party’s general goals, but

they are betting on a person and hope

that their close financial (and

personal) relationship with them will

eventually give them a seat near the

throne. It is a long-odds wager, but

one that might pay off spectacularly.

The greatest prize for many donors,

however, is not a peerage or a

planning permission, but access: the

ability to talk informally to senior

politicians and to gather information

about what is going on in government

‘‘

’’

Dominic O’Connell is business

presenter for Times Radio

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