UK Labour yet to win over big donors

LONDON: Billionaire John Caudwell, one of the governing Conservative Party’s biggest donors before Britain’s last national election in 2019, says he no longer wants to back a party that he feels wasted 14 years in power.

But he’s not quite ready to donate to Labour. With a general election due early next month, Caudwell, who made nearly 1.5 billion pounds ($1.9 billion) in 2006 when he sold his mobile phone retailer Phones 4u, still feels he doesn’t know enough about the centre-left opposition party’s plans.With the race on to raise campaign funding after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak shocked politicians and big business by calling an early election on July 4, both the Conservatives and Labour are redoubling efforts to court donors.

Labour’s leader, Keir Starmer, a former public prosecutor, has charted a centrist course since he took over in 2020, moving the party away from a leftist agenda that saw it lose heavily at the previous election. Polls now suggest that Labour will sweep to victory in July.

But some wealthy donors, like Caudwell, are remaining on the sidelines, unconvinced the party has demonstrated it has the policy solutions to revive Britain’s flagging economic growth, modernise its infrastructure and protect public services from attrition.

“Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is untested...and that’s a risk,” Caudwell said at his marble-floored mansion in London’s luxurious Mayfair district. “I’d like to see more concrete stuff from Keir and the potential cabinet, in terms of what’s going to happen when they get in power.”