ANDREW PIERCE: Starve the Tories of funds, party donors are told in Peer’s startling speech
The ballroom of the Kimpton Clocktower Hotel in Manchester was the scene for a Tory peer’s extraordinary call for donors to de-fund the party. Even more astonishing was the attendance of more than a dozen Conservative MPs.
Lord Cruddas gave his startling speech at a black-tie dinner on Sunday evening hosted by the Conservative Democratic Organisation (CDO), with 15 Tory MPs present — including former home secretary Priti Patel and party deputy chairmen Jack Lopresti and Lee Anderson.
Founded in October last year by Cruddas, the CDO is demanding that party members be given the power to determine Conservative policies. The peer had stumped up £4.5 million before closing his chequebook after the toppling of Boris Johnson.
With an in-tray already groaning, the very last thing the Prime Minister needs is an insurrection among party donors.
‘Proper representation for party members means a party no longer controlled, manipulated and corrupted by a handful of vested-interest people,’ said Cruddas.
Lord Cruddas gives a speech during the Conservative Democratic Organisation conference at Bournemouth International Centre in May
‘The party is heavily reliant on donors. I know — I used to be one. So I’m asking all Conservative Party donors, big or small, to stop funding the Conservative Party because it is the only way they are going to listen.’
So what will Rishi Sunak and the leadership make of Cruddas’s entreaty to starve their party of funds?
Jeremy Hunt kicked off his speech with a customary roll call of ministerial colleagues and aides, including one Anthony Mangle. What he should have said is Anthony Mangnall, MP for Totnes. But somehow the Chancellor managed to mangle it.
Is Rishi in the doghouse?
At an event hosted by Women2Win, a group promoting women in the Conservative Party, Rishi Sunak confessed he had bought a dog for his wife, Akshata, and daughters Krishna and Anoushka in order to make up for his long absences from home.
Nova, a fox red labrador, was the result. But Rishi felt a little hard done by.
‘I found myself at Pets At Home buying stuff for a brand new labrador puppy that I didn’t want in the first place,’ he said.
Oh dear! Has no one told the Prime Minister that Britain is a nation of incurable dog lovers?
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has bought a dog for his wife, Akshata, and two daughters to make up for his long absences away from home
At his first Tory Party conference since the 1980s, the former Brexit Party MEP and leader Nigel Farage. Could he be hatching a plan to rejoin the Conservative Party he left after the fall of Margaret Thatcher? ‘Absolutely not,’ insists Farage.
Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross was one of the first Conservatives to call for Boris Johnson to stand down as PM last year.
But is he now gunning for Rishi Sunak? At the Tory Scottish reception, Ross announced: ‘I am the final speaker before the PM comes. I have some small housekeeping duties to do. As the PM will be coming up on the stage I need to sort this out.’
Ross then lowered the adjustable microphone to waist height.
Philip Collins, a former speechwriter for Tony Blair and now part of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s inner circle, complained in an article yesterday that Rishi Sunak ought to ‘accept defeat’ and stop coming up with new policies.
Hang on a moment. Only three weeks ago, the Labour leader was trying to lampoon the PM as ‘Inaction Man’. Has Rishi’s fightback in the polls started to sow panic among Starmer’s people?
At the Conservative Home reception, Rishi reserved his best joke for Sir Keir — the third successive Labour leader to make his home in the metropolitan idyll of north London: ‘Starmer thinks that the Angel of the North is a Tube station in north London.’
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