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Nigel Farage’s Reform UK attracted almost £1m from former Tory donors in the second quarter of the year, including a long-promised £500,000 from property billionaire Nick Candy.
Candy handed over the sum across the spring and summer, after joining Reform in December as a treasurer and saying he would hand over a seven-figure amount to the party.
Reform’s other gifts from former Conservative donors included £200,000 from Bassim Haidar, a billionaire IT investor, and £100,000 from Johan Christofferson, a hedge fund manager and foxhunting enthusiast who previously gave money to Boris Johnson.
R20, an investment vehicle linked to property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz, is a further former Tory donor that has given to Reform for the first time, with a £50,000 contribution.
Farage’s party also accepted £100,000 from Greybull Capital, the company which bought a struggling British Steel in 2019 before selling it to Chinese company Jingye later that year.
Despite the flow of donors to Reform, the Conservatives still outraised both Reform and Labour significantly in terms of money from private donors.
Figures from the Electoral Commission showed Kemi Badenoch’s party received £2.9m – a third of which came from a £1m donation from video game entrepreneur Jez San.
The party also received £250,000 from its current treasurer, Graham Edwards, and another £200,000 from businessman Kamal Pankhania and his company Westcombe Homes.
Labour received £2.6m in donations, with more than half of that sum coming from trade unions, including £746,000 from Unite, £442,000 from the GMB union, £246,000 from Usdaw and £106,000 from the Communication Workers Union.
Unite has threatened to “re-examine” its relationship with Labour over the government’s handling of a long-running strike by refuse workers in Birmingham.
Labour’s largest private donation during the period was £80,000 from property company Activepine, owned by Birmingham-based businessman Maqbool Ahmed.
Donations to the Liberal Democrats amounted to £773,597, while Reform brought in £1.4m overall.
The Conservatives said Reform had “once again fallen short”, claiming donors were “clearly expressing continued hesitancy about their ongoing internal mess and billions in unfunded spending commitments”.
Tory chairman Kevin Hollinrake said the figures “underline the continued strength of support behind the Conservative party”, adding: “We are building momentum quarter after quarter, and it is clear that people recognise and believe in Kemi’s mission of Conservative renewal.”
Overall, in the second quarter of the year from April to June, political parties took more than £11m in donations and public funds. This was slightly lower than the £13.5m raised in the first quarter of the year and substantially less than the £57m raised in the second quarter of 2024, which included the last election period.
