Sir Keir’s prawn cocktail offensive is paying off. In the latest donation statistics, for Q4 of 2022, Labour out-raised the Conservatives, bringing in a stonking £5,054,462 of private donations – the Conservatives raised £4,744,114. It gets worse for the Tories when public funds are taken into the equation: they’re on £4,858,373 in total. Labour raked in £7,220,437.
Labour’s boon came in large part from billionaire Lord Sainsbury, who was their largest donor with £2,000,000. Notorious eco-fanatic and green tycoon Dale Vince’s ecotricity also contributed £500,000. Of course, the unions also chipped in their fair share. They coughed up £1,028,000.
Some time ago Guido predicted the death of Peter Mandelson’s Policy Network after Lord Sainsbury withdrew funding for centrist Labour organisations. Over the weekend it came to pass as the Blairite think-tank was merged with Progress, another wholly owned / financed Sainsbury project.* To bless their union they held a virtual conference jointly. Unsurprisingly the usual TrotsApp collective were spitting feathers after tuning in…
The primary source of anger came as Sir Keir told the small 55-strong Zoom audience:
“I’m not interested in focusing on manifestos of the past. I’m interested in focusing on the manifestos of the future, based on the values of our Labour Party”
Starmer won the 2020 leadership by, in the words of Owen Jones, “promising to preserve radical policies”, something he’s now “dumping”. John McDonnell also took to Twitter, reminding viewers that the same Keir Starmer who “today dumped Labour’s last manifestos” was enthusiastic for the 2017 manifesto being the foundational document of his leadership election:
In his speech to Progress today it appears Keir Starmer has today dumped Labour’s last manifestos. This is a reminder of what he said to secure his election as leader. pic.twitter.com/dcmpUzRVCL
— John McDonnell MP (@johnmcdonnellMP) May 16, 2021
Seems like almost all of Starmer’s 55-strong audience were hardline Corbynistas waiting for him to pander to a centrist audience…
*The Institute for Government is now the grocery billionaire’s well-funded lobbying operation in Westminster.
Top Labour donor Baron Sainsbury’s grant of over £2 million to the Lib Dems this year means, without any doubt, he has broken Labour’s strict membership rules. The 2016 rulebook, Chapter 2 clause I section 4 paragraph B calls for the automatic exclusion of any members who “supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group”. £2,125,000 to a rival party surely counts as support…
Sainsbury’s money, though much needed with the collapse of union donations on the horizon, can’t have been welcomed too much by the current leadership. Although Sainsbury has, particularly during the Blair years, donated some £15.6 million to the party, he’s given over £5 million to the New Labour faction’s Progress and £1.35 million to the Movement for Change – a now defunct front for David Miliband’s ambitions and that was once seen as integral to the New Labour continuity project in the way that Momentum is to Corbyn. The rules are however clear – with £2 million given to the LibDems – Sainsbury has to be purged by Labour’s Compliance Department…
