City bankers and hedge fund bosses have helped the Tories pull in more than four times as much general election funding as Labour, new figures reveal.
The Conservatives reported £1.6m in donations for the second week of the campaign, compared to just £382,925 for Jeremy Corbyn’s party.
The Liberal Democrats received just £160,000, UKIP £35,000, the Women’s Equality Party £18,936 and the Greens £18,500.
The dramatic difference in funding is even more stark than the first week’s figures, which showed that the Tories had attracted gifts worth £4m to Labour’s £2.6m.
Among the huge sums given to the Tories were £150,000 each from ‘Investors In Private Capital Ltd’ and John C. Roberts, £100,000 from financier Michael Lewis, £135,000 from oil and gas fund manager Andrew C Green.
John Sainsbury, a Tory peer and president of Sainsbury’s supermarket chain, handed over £100,000. Delivery firm tycoon Steve Parkin, who founded Clipper Logistics, donated £125,000.
Labour’s biggest donor for the week was the GMB union, which provided £290,000 – the vast bulk of its donations in the seven-day period.
There will be six weekly donations reports for the election period.
By law, political parties standing candidates at the election must submit details of any donations and loans of more than £7,500, as part of weekly reports to the Electoral Commission.
The election campaign cash follows a pre-election ‘wall of cash’ for the Tories reported earlier this week.
The Tories accepted more than twice as much as Labour in donations during the first three months of the year, new figures show.
The two main parties collected nearly £5.5 million and just over £2.6 million respectively from January 1 to March 31 2017.
Labour’s biggest cash donations unsurprisingly came from trade unions Unite, USDAW and UNISON, while the Tories took more from individuals, with one - business Michael Davis, who previously contributed £30,000 to Theresa May’s leadership campaign - handing over £317,000.