By Daniel Wainwright, Data journalist
Labour declared more donations than all other parties combined during the general election campaign, taking more than £9.5m in total.
Final totals from the elections watchdog show the Conservatives raised just under £1.9m, less than a tenth of what they raised during the 2019 election, when the party declared over £19m.
The Conservatives’ biggest source of donations was a lottery, which raised £225,000 in total throughout the campaign. Labour’s biggest donor was Lord David Sainsbury, who gave the party £2.5m.
The figures cover donations from when Parliament was shut on 30 May up to polling day on 4 July.
Lord Sainsbury, the former chairman of the Sainsbury’s supermarket chain, was the biggest donor of the campaign.
He previously served as a science and innovation minister in Tony Blair’s government.
In total, more than £8m of Labour’s donations came from 10 sources. They included: two unions, the former Autoglass boss Gary Lubner, hedge fund managers Martin Taylor and Stuart Roden, the sculptor Antony Gormley, the production company Toledo Productions, tech investor Danny Luhde-Thompson and former professional poker player Derek Webb, who founded the Campaign for Fairer Gambling.
The National Conservative Draws Society, a weekly lottery licensed by the Gambling Commission, contributed a total of £225,000 to the Conservatives over the course of the campaign. It was the largest amount declared by the party from any one source, according to analysis of Electoral Commission data.
Labour and the Liberal Democrats also have their own lotteries.
The biggest Liberal Democrat donor of the campaign was Adam Management Holdings, a management consultancy and real estate company run by Safwan Adam. The company provided almost £480,000 to the Liberal Democrats and also donated £20,000 to the Green Party.
The biggest donor to Reform UK was Britain Means Business, a company with deputy leader Richard Tice as a director. The company run by the new MP for Boston and Skegness donated £500,000 in total to the party during the campaign.
Businessman Zia Yusuf was the second biggest Reform UK donor, providing £200,000. Since the election, he has become the party’s chairman.
Labour received significantly less from trade unions than it did in the 2015, 2017 and 2019 elections.
In 2019, the party declared £5m from unions. In 2024, it was £2.4m, with £1.49m coming from the public sector union Unison and the rest from six other unions.
Unite, a major union backer in 2019, did not donate to Labour during the 2024 campaign. It refused to endorse the party’s general election manifesto, saying it did not go far enough on protecting workers’ rights and jobs in the oil and gas industry.
There were over 130 different donors in the data, ranging from individuals to companies and unions.
Parties were obliged to submit weekly reports of any donations and loans over £11,180 received between 30 May 2024 and polling day.
In previous general elections, the threshold was £7,500 but this was increased in January 2024.
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