Shunned by rich donors, Mr Cameron may soon regret his neglect of the raffle ticket buying Tory rank and file


By SIMON HEFFER


PUBLISHED: 23:57, 21 August 2012 |


Follow the money: Lord Ashcroft gave the Tories £1.7million five years ago but has donated nothing this year

Follow the money: Lord Ashcroft gave the Tories £1.7million five years ago but has donated nothing this year

A good rule for determining who is likely to win the next general election has always been ‘follow the money’. Applying the rule now, it would be a brave punter who bet on the Tories.

In 2007, Michael Spencer, a financier, gave the party £1.1 million. This year, he has managed £87,962.

Lord Harris of Peckham, a carpet magnate, gave half a million in 2007. He, too, stopped at £87,962 this year. And Lord Ashcroft, who gave £1.7 million five years ago, has given precisely £1.7 million less in 2012.

It isn’t just, we must assume, that Lords Harris and Ashcroft and Mr Spencer fear the Tories can’t win the next election, and therefore don’t wish to throw away their money.

It is, presumably, also because they find so little in the party’s policies to inspire them to give generously — or, in Lord Ashcroft’s case, to give at all.

Indeed, Lord Harris, who used to be a strong supporter of the Prime Minister, has said as much. ‘I don’t think David Cameron is representing core Conservative voters or values,’ he recently observed.

Other plutocrats are being similarly careful with their wallets. While some, like the hedge fund owner Michael Hintze, have drastically cut their donations, others are giving nothing; and it is possible some will never give again.

The overall figures speak for themselves.

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In 2006, the first full calendar year of the last parliament (and the year after Mr Cameron’s accession to the leadership), the Tories raised £24 million. In the first full calendar year of this parliament, they raised just £15 million.

The problem for the Tories is that they have come to rely on huge donations from a small number of people to remain solvent. So when those people stop giving, revenue plummets — along with the means to conduct election campaigns.

The Tories prefer the big-hitter approach to the old method of raising much of their money from activists in constituency parties.

Money: In 2006 - the first full calendar year of the last parliament - the Tories raised £24million. In the first full calendar year of this parliament, they raised just £15million

Money: In 2006 - the first full calendar year of the last parliament - the Tories raised £24million. In the first full calendar year of this parliament, they raised just £15million

How irritating for party leaders to see these grassroots members who pay subscriptions and buy raffle tickets and who like to think they are participating in a form of democracy, and then expect to be given a say on important political matters.

The truth is that Mr Cameron owes his position to those same rank-and-file members because they voted for him handsomely in the leadership plebiscite in 2005.

However, they also make their views clear in between leadership elections, notably in criticising the policies Mr Cameron is following — and this makes some in the Tory leadership wish they didn’t have any members at all.

A few weeks ago I was greatly honoured to be asked to speak at the annual dinner of a Conservative Association in a safe seat in the Home Counties.

Disenchanted: The Tory faithful are loosening their loyalties because of the leadership's stance on grammar school education and gay marriage

Disenchanted: The Tory faithful are loosening their loyalties because of the leadership's stance on grammar school education and gay marriage

The chairman told me that because of some successful investments in the past, the association was in good financial health, despite a steep decline in membership.

However, she also told me it would not be paying its quota this year — the sum levied by Conservative Central Office as a suggested affiliation fee — for two reasons.

The first was the leadership’s opposition to grammar schools, which outrages thousands of Tory members who were products of them, or who want them to be available for their children and grandchildren.

The second, as the chairman put it, was that ‘there is no guarantee that the money we send them won’t be used to campaign for the right of homosexuals to get married to each other’. Some ‘modernisers’ love to rub the noses of the Tory faithful in the dirt in this way. However, they forget it does have consequences.

I doubt that the captains of industry and generals of high finance who write large cheques to the party worry that much about grammar schools for their children or the idea of homosexual marriage, though I may be wrong.

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However, I know from talking to several of them that they have grave doubts about other important policies — and have stopped donations because they hold out little hope of the Prime Minister changing course and doing what they regard is sensible.

They want two things above all. The first is a change of direction in economic policy — specifically along the lines of the International Monetary Fund’s suggestion that, in the absence of growth, there should be tax cuts.

But this is opposed by Lib Dems, who hate tax cuts because even if they raise more revenue — which, because of greater consumption, they often do — they benefit rich people.

That brings us on to the second demand of the donors (or former donors): to stop bashing the rich. A number of wealthy supporters feel alienated by the constant attacks on a group that pays huge amounts of taxes and employs large numbers of people.

There is a salutary example from other countries that have few rich people or from which they have largely fled — and Greece is a prime example.

The result is collapsing public services and massive unemployment.

This, big donors argue, would happen in Britain if there was rich-bashing.

However, ministers seem intent on being rude not just about bankers, but also about private enterprise in general, on the grounds that such insults are thought to cause the public to warm to them.

Only the other day, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said that the debacle involving the private security firm hired for the Olympics had shaken his faith in private enterprise.

This was an absurd statement that gave the impression that the Tories are anti- business. So the party finds itself in a pincer movement, and the squeeze is particularly hard on its purse.

Serious capitalists, fed up with a party that spouts anti-business rhetoric and refuses to contemplate the serious tax and spending cuts that they deem vital to economic recovery, are finding better uses for their millions.

Rude: Philip Hammond said that the shambles surrounding the G4S debacle at the Olympic Games had shaken his faith in private enterprise

Rude: Philip Hammond said that the shambles surrounding the G4S debacle at the Olympic Games had shaken his faith in private enterprise

Meanwhile, battalions of card-carrying Tories refuse to renew their subscriptions or to buy tickets for the annual dinner and the strawberry tea because they feel a cynical, metropolitan party obsessed with minority rights and appealing to the Left could not care less about them.

They are almost certainly right.

The party still raked in just under £4 million from donors in the last quarter, so it is not yet broke. And it may be some consolation that, in the general atmosphere of public distaste for politics and politicians, Labour is raising even less.

When the party of business can’t secure the support of business, it is in serious trouble.

And when it stubbornly ignores the wishes of donors big and small to change tack and become something resembling conservative, there is only one likely outcome — and it isn’t good.