Fun with Tory funding

There’s more dodgy Tory funding news this morning, linked to rubbish millionaire shadow chancellor George Osborne. He’s definitely the weak link in the Tory front bench and we ought to target him as a result. In the words of Admiral Ackbar: “Concentrate all fire on that super star destroyer!”

Inspired by Osborne’s claim to have merely been walking past when a possible £50k donation to the Tories was coincidentally discussed with a Russian oligarch (rather than actually “soliciting” it) or something, I thought I’d have another look at City outfits funding the Dark Side. As I’ve blogged several times before, there are a couple of investment businesses that are open Tory supporters.

First a quick update on the “generally non-partisan” fund manager Fidelity Investments, which has given the Tories half a million quid over the past few years. Fidelity just picked up a £250m global equities mandate from the Tory-controlled North Yorks pension fund. Anyone in touch with the Labour group up there might want to alert them to Fidelity’s donations in case they don’t already know about them.

The other outfit of note is investment trust Caledonia Investments, which has passed resolutions at its last two AGMs giving it authority to provide funding to the Tories. It passed these resolutions with the support of a number of fund managers. A quick search on the Electoral Commission register last night revealed that Caledonia’s donations are now starting to feed through to local Tory associations. Ealing Central and Action received £3000 earlier this year, whilst Milton Keynes and Sutton and Cheam got £5000 each. Anyone in touch with the CLPs in those areas might want to pass this info on.

I’ll keep posting the info as I get it. Next one to watch for is whether Fidelity gave the Tories anything in Q3 this year. They’ve given the Tories £60K so far this year.