Tory donations fall despite video game entrepreneur’s £1m gift

Donations to the Conservatives fell between April and June this year as parties declared £11 million in support, figures from the Electoral Commission have shown.

The Tories received £2.9 million in private donations in the second quarter of the year, down from £3.4 million in the first three months of 2025.

A third of the Conservatives’ total came in the form of a £1 million donation from video game entrepreneur Jez San, following an earlier £1 million gift to the party in February.

The party also received £250,000 from its current treasurer, Graham Edwards, and another £200,000 from businessman Kamal Pankhania, half personally and half through one of his companies, Westcombe Homes.

Strike

Despite the fall in donations, the Conservatives still out-raised Labour, which received £2.6 million in donations, slightly more than the £2.4 million it declared between January and March.

More than half of that figure came from trade unions, including £746,000 from Unite, which has threatened to “re-examine” its relationship with Labour over the Government’s handling of a long-running strike by refuse workers in Birmingham.

Other donations included £442,000 from the GMB union, £246,000 from Usdaw and £106,000 from the Communication Workers Union.

Labour’s largest private donation during the period came in the form of £80,000 from property company Activepine, owned by Birmingham-based businessman Maqbool Ahmed.

Donations to the Liberal Democrats fell by around half, to just £773,597, while despite Reform UK’s consistent lead in the polls, donations to Nigel Farage’s party remained relatively steady at £1.4 million.

Donations

Reform’s donations, slightly down from the £1.5 million in the previous three months, included £300,000 from the party’s treasurer, Nick Candy, and £200,000 from Lebanese-born businessman Bassim Haidar, who claimed last year he planned to leave the UK over plans to scrap the non-dom tax status.

Mr Farage’s party also accepted £100,000 from Greybull Capital, the company which bought a struggling British Steel in 2019 before selling it to Chinese company Jingye later that year.

Reform had previously returned a £100,000 donation from Bellcave Ltd after it was deemed impermissible. Bellcave is owned by Marc Meyohas, one of the owners of Greybull.

Parties must declare all donations of more than £11,180, as well as smaller donations that add up to more than this figure.