Just 50 ‘donor groups’ have supplied over half of the Conservative party’s declared donation income in the last decade, a fact disguised by legal ‘fame avoidance’ techniques

Abstract

Although the Election Commission has published data before on who gives what to political parties, by splitting up donations across multiple family members or between personal and company donations it has been legally possible for huge donors to largely avoid publicity. Not any more though, because Stephen Crone and Stuart Wilks-Heeg have analysed all donation income received by the Conservative party since 2011 to give the most comprehensive picture every published. The Tories owe their financial survival to just 50 key ‘donor group’ sources that account for 51 per cent of their donor income. The party’s top 15 sources for almost a third of the total. This concentration highlights the need for new funding rules to require donors to keep to the spirit of laws to limit donations, and not to evade them via ‘fame avoidance’ techniques