Tory Funding

The Tories in all probability will be the largest spenders come May. David Cameron has amassed a massive war chest with private donations of £17m over the last year.

How has Cameron gone about rebuilding Tory finance? The Guardian reports yesterday that old fashioned dinners and dances have been the key to success. A sliding scale of patrons clubs offer access to different tiers of the Tory leadership. The Leaders club, and a dinner with Cameron will put you back £50k per annum. Nice to see to the Tory Leader keeping to his man of the people image! The average household income in Wales isn’t even half that sum, which means not many people in Wales will be having lunch with the Tory leader.

The Guardian reports claims the key appointment of Aurelia Cecil as head of fundraising. Cecil is a member of the upper echelons of the ruling class. Cecil apparently knows how to run a good party and has brought the fun back into being a Conservative. She is a former girlfriend of Prince Andrew. I guess you can work out the sort of people Cecil has been inviting to her parties.

The relevance for the Assembly elections of course is that the Tories in Wales do not exist as a separate accounting unit. Their campaign will be funded from Tory HQ in London. Nice to know the sources of the funding the Tories will be using over the next 9 weeks to buy Welsh votes.