Conservative party faces cash crunch as pressure grows on Theresa May

[kofi addo]

The UK Conservative party is facing a worsening cash crunch as some funders hold off from making fresh donations while Theresa May remains prime minister, according to several party donors. The financial pressures have prompted concerns over whether the party can afford to fight a snap general election as growing numbers of ministers and MPs believe that Mrs May’s refusal to countenance alternative proposals for leaving the EU may result in a dissolution of parliament.  Mick Davis, the Tories’ chief executive, has told supporters in recent meetings that the party urgently needs more donations to keep itself afloat. Sir Mick, former chief of mining company Xstrata, is also one of the largest individuals donors, giving £295,500 in the last quarter of 2018. “It apparently has just £1.5m left in the bank, an incredibly low financial buffer, and no donors want to give any money because of the total chaos,” said one fundraiser. One senior figure at Conservative headquarters said “donors are frustrated by the parliamentary party’s failure to get behind the prime minister”. However, one Tory donor said: “We are frustrated by lack of consistency: Mick plans to raise £32m in 2019 from donations, while at the same time it is obvious that the donors have lost confidence in Number 10. Hence no money is coming in.” Another senior Tory agreed that the party’s two treasurers, Sir Mick and Ehud Sheleg, an art gallery director, “themselves are putting in more than they expected to”. Conservative Campaign Headquarters declined to comment on the claims. According to the minutes of a recent meeting of party donors seen by the Financial Times, the party’s income last year was £26m and its expenses were £25m, leaving an operating income of £1m. Some £3m of legal costs detailed in the minutes, which are related to an investigation into election expenses in South Thanet during the 2015 general election, according a party campaigner, are thought to have eaten into the party’s cash reserves. The largest cost has been £5m spent on a team of campaign managers hired in the wake of the party’s disappointing performance in the 2017 election. These individuals have been working in marginal seats, but some donors have criticised the expense. “Adding to the worries is the direct and indirect costs for the campaign managers; costs Labour do not have to worry about,” said a donor. “Hence [Sir Mick] Davis’s odd claim that if an election had to be fought, CCHQ would be ready. It seems highly inconsistent with the actual finances.” One Conservative MP with knowledge of the situation said: “It is true that we should be doing much better on fundraising. But it is far from dire, the donors just want clarity.” But many Conservative donors have refused to increase funding to the party while Mrs May remains leader, with several Eurosceptics stating that a new prime minister must be installed before they will donate any more money. Recommended Brexit Cabinet minister Leadsom declines to support May after Brexit UPDATED 44 MINUTES AGO One funder predicted that the financial situation is “what will ultimately push May out” and noted that 8,300 seats are up for election in local polls in May, of which 4,600 are held by Conservatives. “The results will be a very important test for Brandon [Lewis, Conservative party chairman] and his campaign managers,” the individual said. Because of their concerns over Mrs May, some donors have opted instead to contribute to the nascent leadership campaigns of candidates likely to succeed her, such as former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab. Other Brexit-supporting funders are keeping their wallets closed until the Brexit stalemate is resolved. Jeremy Hosking, a prominent City of London asset manager, is one donor dismayed by Mrs May’s leadership. He told the Daily Telegraph that he was instead contemplating putting money behind other Eurosceptic causes. Conservative central office has traditionally remained neutral on leadership questions. However, at a recent meeting of the party’s 1922 committee of backbench MPs, Mr Lewis took the unusual step of bringing Sir Mick to address to the parliamentary party. “The chairman just literally brought the party chief executive and one of the party’s biggest donors into the ’22 so he could tell us all to get behind the prime minister. I genuinely could not believe my eyes: Brandon Lewis bringing a donor in to tell us off,” said one MP critical of the prime minister. A Conservative spokesperson said: “CCHQ’s campaigning and fundraising work continues as usual.”

In the tabloid press he was known as the hapless minister who left documents in a park bin, posed in a toga and let a burglar into his home at 3am. Now, however, Oliver Letwin has emerged as the driving force in a “parallel government” of UK MPs drawing up plans for an alternative Brexit. After MPs backed his proposal for the House of Commons to seize control of the Brexit process, Sir Oliver was described, in not entirely complimentary terms, as our “prime minister in all but name”. The Dorset MP’s plans break new ground by giving the Commons the scope to debate and decide between alternatives to Theresa May’s Brexit deal. According to John Bercow, the Commons’ Speaker, Sir Oliver will himself take charge of the unprecedented, and potentially historic, process. The Eton and Cambridge-educated 62-year-old started out in politics in the 1980s in the Downing Street policy unit of then-prime minister Margaret Thatcher. In 2015, he apologised “unreservedly” for having blamed “bad moral attitudes” in black inner-city communities for a series of riots in the 1980s in a paper he co-wrote for Thatcher at the time. He told the former prime minister that white people did not riot, despite living in conditions just as poor as those endured by black families. After working at NM Rothschild, the investment bank, he was elected to the Commons in 1997 and rose rapidly to become shadow home secretary and shadow chancellor. Colleagues describe a courteous intellectual with an unflappable manner and a dislike of tribalism. He also has a prodigious work ethic. While at Rothschild he worked on a contract in New Zealand, commuting there on a weekly basis. “Apparently he was British Airways’ top customer of the year,” said one colleague. Campaigning for the 2005 general election in Poundbury, Dorset © Rex/Shutterstock Sir Oliver played a vital role in setting up David Cameron’s Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition government in 2010 and then became minister of state for government policy — a fixer role — for the next five years. Mr Cameron appointed him to head a new Brexit unit the day after Britain voted to leave the EU on June 23 2016; but, less than a month later, Mrs May dismissed him on her first full day as prime minister. “His two things are intellectual creativity and problem solving, as well as incredible diplomacy,” said one former Cameron adviser. “They are the two things you need to achieve Brexit, which the current prime minister doesn’t bring to the table.” Take the survey Brexit Which Brexit option do you think the UK should take? As Britain’s MPs try to break the deadlock over Brexit, we want to know how you would vote. Tell us here. During the coalition years Sir Oliver’s formidable brain was applied to complex issues such as universal credit, renewable energy subsidies and flood insurance. “He is prone to overcomplicate things but very good at finding solutions to insoluble problems,” said one former Treasury figure. “He is back where he should be . . . being the prime minister’s fixer, even if this time she hasn’t asked for his help.” Yet there is an unworldly side to Sir Oliver. He once welcomed into his London home two burglars, who claimed to want to use the bathroom but instead stole his car keys and wallet. On another occasion he was spotted throwing secret government papers into a bin in St James’s Park. In the run-up to the 2001 general election he and his rivals for his West Dorset seat dressed up in togas for a debate. As shadow chancellor, he was forced to abandon plans to balance a £100,000-a-year advisory role at Rothschild with his high-profile day job. His reputation as a “hapless maverick”, in the words of one MP, has not been helped by the mixed success of his complicated political schemes. Oliver Letwin dumped sensitive documents in this park bin in 2011 © Jenny Goodall/Daily Mail/Rex When he worked at the Downing Street policy unit, Sir Oliver championed the poll tax, the fixed-rate charge that sparked huge protests and hastened Thatcher’s political demise. In 2001 he undermined the Tories’ election efforts by spelling out that his party wanted to make £20bn of spending cuts and was subsequently asked by his superiors to lie low. During 2013 he devised plans for state-backed press regulation in the office of then opposition leader Ed Miliband in the middle of the night over pizza — proposals that newspaper groups have since rejected. Sir Oliver’s political heritage is, perhaps surprisingly, on the Eurosceptic wing of the party. In his autobiography Hearts and Minds, he recalls his conversion to Euroscepticism, then a fringe cause, on a 1987 holiday to Lake Annecy in eastern France. “As I read these volumes [on the European communities], sitting by the lakeside and occasionally looking up at the mountains, I experienced my own small secular Damascene revelation,” he wrote. “It became clear to me that the Communities formed not just the free trade bloc that I had thought they did.” Recommended The FT View The editorial board Parliament must restore some sanity over Brexit But while Sir Oliver opposed the Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon treaties on further European integration, he did not vote Leave in the 2016 referendum. Instead, he argued that Mr Cameron’s renegotiation of Britain’s membership terms “gave us the opportunity to achieve what I have for so long desired: the creation of a Europe of concentric circles . . . so Britain can remain in the single market without being dragged into the federal state.” Sir Oliver maintains a similar position today, backing so-called “Common Market 2.0” proposals to keep the UK in the single market and customs union after Brexit. Speaking in the Commons on Monday, he denied he was undermining the government’s plans for an “orderly Brexit” and said, as a “loyalist”, he had never until recently defied the whip. Instead, he said it was the realisation that Mrs May could “by mistake rather than on purpose” take Britain out of the EU without a deal that inspired him to work on his “modest attempt” to examine alternatives. Oliver Letwin poses in a toga in 2001 © Ian Patrick/Rex But some Tory colleagues see Sir Oliver as the figurehead for an understated, “very British coup”. “Our Prime Minister in name only waits for our Prime Minister in all but name — namely, Oliver Letwin,” Paul Goodman, editor of the ConservativeHome website, wrote on Tuesday, before warning of challenges ahead for Sir Oliver. “Today, he sits triumphantly astride the Commons tiger. Tomorrow, for all he or anyone else knows, it could shrug him off and devour him.” MPs have already expressed strong feelings about Sir Oliver’s feat. Soon after his amendment won the Commons’ backing on Monday night, David TC Davies, a Tory MP, acidly asked how the House would hold to account the man who had “installed himself as a kind of jobbing prime minister”.