The current state of party funding

On November 23rd, the Electoral Commission released the quarterly figures on party funding. These were for Q3 2011 – July, August and September.

The headline figures first:

Labour received a total of £3,529,270 the Conservatives received a total of £2,744,618, and the Liberal Democrats £1,199,623. Perhaps the most staggering figure is that the Scottish Nationalist Party received £1,988,657. UKIP are worth watching too, having made £25,525, while the Greens only received £11,530.

So on crude figures Labour seem to have one the funding war. Except, as I reported on Blottr yesterday, a grand total of 89% of Labour’s Q3 funding came from the trade unions. Ed Miliband is completely incapable of raising funds from private donors. He has received less than one private donation a month since becoming leader, and in the previous quarter only £120,769 was privately donated to Labour. However much Labour like to try and claim this is acceptable because they were founded by the unions, it is an absolutely damning indictment on Miliband’s leadership.

The Conservatives too suffer from a lack of diversity in donations. Michael Farmer, Lord Stanley Fink, and David Rowland are the party’s top three donors, and since 2005 they have donated a total of £10m. The party also received an average of £1m per quarter from City donors.

The Liberal Democrats though continue to punch well about their weight in terms of private fundraising. They have out done Labour on this for seven of the previous eight quarters, including the last five consecutive quarters. The total reported above is in fact the party’s best ever Q3 result. This is a pretty staggering achievement when the figures show that they do not receive money from either “Friendly or Registered Societies” or “Trade Unions”. In total the Lib Dems received £224,548 from companies, £321,290 from individuals, and £590,772 form Trusts. The diversity, as well as the amount of funding, really is very impressive.

Debt is a rather topical issue at the moment, and Labour have a lot of that too. They have £9,857,970 in outstanding loans, compared to for £2,675,769 the Conservatives and just £432,572 for the Lib Dems. It seems like they are doing to their own bank account what they did to the nation’s.

So not pretty worrying for Labour, pretty standard for the Conservatives, and very impressive from the Lib Dems. What would Ed give to have Lord Levy back in the fold?!