Member

But frankly, who are we to judge? The honest truth is that in every political party people are chasing the millionaires. Labour Together donated more than £2.5 million to Labour ahead of the 2024 election, amalgamating millionaire donors. We took £4 million from Quadrature Capital—the largest single donation in our party’s history. The Conservatives are up to it, too. The IT billionaire Bassim Haidar gave more than £700,000 to the Conservatives and has since donated half a million pounds to Reform. That is the same amount that they got from JC Bamford. Then, of course, there is Jeremy San, a British video game entrepreneur who gave the Conservatives £3 million in 2025. If we do not recognise how distorting these sums are in and of themselves, we will be locked into an arms race that none of us want to pay the price to win, and every party will face that. I welcome talk of a lower spending limit, but that must go hand in hand with a cap that covers all this; otherwise, the measures are only retrospective, and political parties will simply become pre-paid-for.