Election latest: More bad news for Tory campaign as latest donation figures released (2024)

By Laura Bundock, correspondent

The election might seem like a two-horse race, but other parties are jockeying for votes too.

We put their manifestos to the Sky News YouGov Voters Panel.

Representing different political backgrounds and more than 40 different constituencies, they pored over the promises and policies.

You can read more from Sky News below:

Turning to the issue of social care, Labour frontbencher Alison McGovern admits it is a matter which is "often overlooked in politics".

Ali Fortescue points out that it isn't covered much in their manifesto - only one page - and hasn't been spoken about much in the Labour campaign.

Ms McGovern says: "I think that it gets overlooked because it's to do with older people, and it's a lot of women who work in social care.

"But the Labour Party has been talking about this for a long time... back in 2021, when we started talking about a new deal for working people, we knew that we wanted to have fair pay agreements where if you've got an industry but there's just so much poor pay and bad practice, you need a hole industry approach.

"We want to have that fair pay agreement for social care because at the heart of this big crisis in social care, all the staff on the workforce, we lose far too many of them because it's a low pay job and there's a lot of exploitative practice.

"By getting a better system where we can get a negotiated agreement on pay so that work workers can do better by taking on exploitative employment practices, I think we can reform social care."

Shadow employment secretary Alison McGovern is now asked about how the Labour Party would negotiate with striking workers in the UK.

It comes after Tata Steel announced its staff will be striking indefinitely for the first time.

The frontbencher says: "My heart goes out to those workers in South Wales because they've lived with, you know, serious uncertainty over their heads."

Ms McGovern adds that the UK has "needed a plan for steel" for "a long time".

So what will Labour do to stop these strikes going ahead?

"What we need is to get through this general election," she says.

"We are working so hard to get a Labour government, and we really can't take any vote for granted."

Shadow employment secretary Alison McGovern joins Ali Fortescue on the Politics Hub.

She is first asked about the latest donation data from the Electoral Commission, which shows the Labour Party was handed £4.3m in funds in the second week of the election.

Ali asks how Labour plans to keep both unions and Blairite donors on side.

"What we want is a big coalition of people who want to see an end to the chaos that we've had over the past 14 years, and to get the kind of changes that can start to make life better for people," Ms McGovern says.

"Whether that's rescuing or giving people good jobs that are going to help sustain them and be able to pay for the shop at the weekend and keep a roof over the family's head.

"That's the kind of big change that we need to make sure our country does better in the future than it has over the past 14 years."

Ali presses that it will be hard to please everyone - and asks again who Labour would choose, unions or large donors like Lord Sainsbury.

"It won't surprise you to know that I don't think that it's either or when it comes to being pro-business or pro-worker," Ms McGovern says.

"I think that you can do both, and I think that strong economies are ones that pay people decently, where people go to work and they're able to contribute and make our economy grow."

Conservative candidate Richard Graham is facing questions on the Politics Hub now and is first asked about news of falling Tory donations - and fears that donors are abandoning the party.

The Conservatives had £300,000 in donations in the second week of the election campaign, compared to £4.3m for Labour.

Mr Graham says: "I really don't know a great deal about who is giving and who isn't giving.

"But I do know we have a sizable war chest and it's enough to fight a very decent campaign.

"By now, people would have already been reached or be very close to reaching the maximum spending limits in their constituencies."

Here is a full list of candidates for Gloucester:

• Chris Farmer - Reform UK
• Steve Gower - Workers Party of Britain
• Richard Graham - Conservative and Unionist Party
• Alex McIntyre - Labour Party
• Adam Shearing - Green Party
• Rebecca Trimnell - Liberal Democrats
• Wing Commander (Rtd) Fred Ramsey - Independent
• Akhlaque Ahmed - Socialist Labour Party
  

By Tom Cheshire, online campaign correspondent

If you want a good idea of what matters to each party - its deepest desires, its darkest fears - look at where it's spending money.

What it shows is a story of Labour spending big and spending everywhere, as it pursues a plausible supermajority, while the Conservatives retreat to fight for some of their heartland constituencies, and spend much less.

It shows the current state of play for all parties across the country. The map shows which is the biggest spender in each constituency - which parts of the country they're fighting to win, or not to lose.

The map was created by Who Targets Me (WTM), which tracks digital political advertising and has partnered with Sky News as part of our online campaign team.

"Our map of advertising activity shows where the parties have targeted their Facebook and Instagram ads in the last week," Sam Jeffers, executive director of WTM, says.

Follow the money, the saying goes. But the money isn't following the Conservative Party in this election campaign. Tory donors are on strike.

The Conservatives are not only being massively outgunned financially by Labour, but also by Reform UK and the Liberal Democrats, according to new figures.

The slump in donations, compared with the millions pouring into Tory coffers during Boris Johnson's 2019 campaign, suggests massive disillusionment in Rishi Sunak among Tory tycoons and millionaires.

Why throw good money after bad? That's a question the Conservatives' former big money donors must be asking themselves, with Mr Sunak's campaign appearing to lurch from one crisis to another.

And the party's dismal showing in opinion polls, along with blunders like the PM's D-Day fiasco and now a scandal over insiders accused on betting on the election date, suggest the funding gap will get even worse.

The latest figures from the Electoral Commission, generally a fairly toothless watchdog, are the first since Mr Sunak's calamitous snub to D-Day veterans and also confirm that Nigel Farage's comeback has boosted Reform UK's finances.

The figures are staggering. Usually, league tables of donations to political parties put the Tories way out in front. Not this time. Donations between 6 and 12 June reveal the Conservatives are in fourth place. That's relegation form.

In that week, Labour received a breathtaking £4,383,400, largely due to a £2.5m cheque from Lord Sainsbury of the supermarket dynasty. That means £5.3m in donations rolled in during the first two weeks of the campaign.

A big Blairite, Lord Sainsbury is a long-time donor who stopped giving when Jeremy Corbyn was leader. But now he's back. Big time. Labour's other big donor, Autoglass windscreens tycoon Gary Lubner, gave £900,000.

Also, at election time, the general secretaries of the big trade unions typically get their cheque book out and hand over six or seven-figure sums. But in from 6 to 12 June the only union donation was £100,000 from the train drivers' union Aslef.

That means Sir Keir Starmer's Labour Party is relying more now on millionaires than union barons for its election fighting fund. The Labour leader says the party's changed. Well, this is certainly a very significant change.

But at what price? Are the millionaire donors buying influence on Labour's tax policy: capital gains tax, wealth taxes and so on? And what will the tycoons' millions mean for Angela Rayner's workers' rights proposals?

The Conservatives' election war chest, meanwhile, is almost bare and their finances are as dire as their opinion poll ratings: just £292,500 between 6 and 12 June and only £882,000 in donations in the first two weeks of the campaign.

The resurgent Reform UK raised £742,000 in donations, largely from two £250,000 donations from a company called Britain Means Business, which just happens to be run by Richard Tice, the party's former leader.

Mr Tice may have been elbowed aside by Mr Farage, who's replaced him as leader, but he's still personally bankrolling the party, which claims to have received £1.5m since Mr Farage bounced back.

Reform UK have also benefitted from a showbiz donation from celebrity supporter Holly Valance, the pop star and former Neighbours actor, who had a hit with "Kiss Kiss" and donated 50,000 smackers.

Even the Liberal Democrats, with £335,000, received more than the Conservatives, including £100,000 in the will of late party donor and former lawyer John Faulkner.

That should pay for more silly Sir Ed Davey stunts.

But for Mr Sunak, facing a donors' strike, perhaps he should tap up his millionaire heiress wife Akshata Murty. Between them, according to The Sunday Times rich list, they're worth £651m - more than the King.

Or perhaps not. What was that about throwing good money after bad?

The Labour Party raised almost £4.4m in the second full week of the general election campaign - close to 15 times the amount brought in by the Tories.

Rishi Sunak's party took in just under £300,000 between 6 and 12 June.

Reform UK raised more than double that, with £742,000 taken.

However, £500,000 of this money was handed over by Britain Means Business - a company run by Reform's deputy leader Richard Tice.

The Liberal Democratsalso raised more than the Conservatives, with £335,000.

The Green Party was given £20,000.

The Politics Hub is now under way, hosted by political correspondentAli Fortescue.

The fast-paced programme dissects the inner workings of Westminster, with interviews, insights, and analysis - bringing you, the audience, into the corridors of power.

Joining Ali tonight are:

• Alison McGovern, the shadow employment secretary
• Richard Graham, member of 1922 Committee
  

And on her panel are:

• Guto Harri, former director of communications for Number 10 under Boris Johnson;
• Caroline Flint, the former Labour MP for Don Valley.

Watch live on Sky News, in the stream at the top of this page, and follow live updates here in the Politics Hub.

Our deputy political editor Sam Coates and Politico's Jack Blanchard are back with their guide to election day.

This is day 30 of the campaign. Jack and Sam discuss the betting scandal clouding the Tory campaign, last night's Question Time and Labour's Rachel Reeves opening up.

👉Tap here to follow Politics at Jack and Sam's wherever you get your podcasts👈