Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives do not “deserve” to win next year’s general election, a leading Tory donor and peer has warned.
Philip Harris, founder of Carpetright, said the party’s behaviour over the past three years meant he could not back them to win another term in government.
Lord Harris stopped short of endorsing Keir Starmer’s Labour party – but revealed that he had given £5,000 to shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves last month.
“The whole situation in politics at the moment is very damaging to the UK,” he told The Telegraph.
“Does a party like the Conservatives, with what they have done in the last three years, deserve to get back [in power]? I don’t think so.”
He added: “You can’t think of many good things that the Conservatives have done and stuck to. At the last election, they said they were going to open 40 new hospitals in the next five years. Where are they?”
Lord Harris said his donation to Ms Reeves was many down to the fact she was a graduate of one of his Harris Academies. “I am 95% Conservative, but there are some good Labour people.”
But the Tory peer insisted that he was not going to vote Labour at the 2024 election. “If I were a Labour voter, which I am not, it wouldn’t be hard to beat the Conservatives after what’s happened in the last three years,” he said. “The only thing is, will Labour do any better?”
It comes after series of top Tory donors denounced the party and pulled financial support, with some major backers even defecting to Labour as Sir Keir tries to “woo” big business.
Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have been ‘wooing’ big business
John Caudwell, the Phones4U founder, said he will not back Mr Sunak after the “madness” of his U-turn on net zero pledges – and said he was thinking of giving to Labour instead.
Mr Sunak also appears to been have been damaged by plans to radically scale back HS2’s northern leg, first revealed by The Independent.
One unnamed donor threatened to stop supporting the party if the Birmingham to Manchester route does not go ahead. “I’ve spoken to other donors, and several of them feel – possibly for the first time ever – recent events seriously call into question the ability to continue to support people who don’t do what they say they’d do,” they told The Guardian.
Mohamed Amersi, who with his partner has donated £750,000 to the Tories, told The Independent earlier this month that he would give money to Labour politicians.
And Sir Rocco Forte – who gave £100,000 to the party to help fund the last general election – accused the party of reaping what it had sowed, claiming that the government’s “incompetence” had driven donors away.
Gareth Quarry, a former Conservative donor who defected to Labour, previously told The Independent that “dozens” of leading business figures – including Tory backers – had approached him asking how they could help to put Sir Keir Starmer in No 10.
Analysis by The Independent also revealed that the PM is being forced to rely on a dwindling pool of donors. An astonishing four-fifths of all individual donations made since Mr Sunak came to power have come from just 10 wealthy people.
The 10 super-rich backers have given a combined sum of £10.6m to the Tories since Mr Sunak became PM – accounting for 83 per cent of the £12.7m received from individuals since he took charge.
