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Longtime Conservative donor Lord Anthony Bamford has thrown his assist behind Reform UK, together with his firm donating £200,000 to Nigel Farage’s populist social gathering because it seeks to switch the Tories as the principle social gathering of the precise.
Bamford, who hosted Boris Johnson’s wedding ceremony celebration and has donated greater than £9mn to the Conservatives, disclosed on Saturday that JCB would make the contribution to Reform — and considered one of equal measurement to the Tories.
“Each the Conservative social gathering and Reform UK consider in small enterprise and it’s for that motive JCB has donated £200,000 to every in current weeks,” JCB wrote in a press release.
Bamford, a champion of Brexit who helped bankroll Vote Go away, final 12 months revealed he had paid for an £8,000 helicopter flight for Nigel Farage, flying him from Kent to Rocester in Staffordshire, the place the chair of the development and agricultural gear firm is predicated.
Though Bamford has not donated to Farage’s social gathering earlier than, JCB was an official exhibitor at Reform’s social gathering convention in September. On the launch of Reform’s native election marketing campaign in March, Farage arrived at his keynote speech driving one of many firm’s pothole machines.
Bamford, who was awarded a peerage by former prime minister David Cameron in 2013, was among the many Conservatives’ most beneficiant backers throughout Johnson’s premiership, donating greater than £3mn over that interval.
His firm’s donation is being seized on by Farage to reveal rising assist for his social gathering amongst enterprise figures. Final week, Reform’s deputy chief Richard Tice known as for assist from the Metropolis of London because the social gathering set out plans to overtake monetary regulation.
Information of the funding got here simply days earlier than Farage introduced on Monday that he’s launching a brand new group led by Kevin Byrne, founding father of Checkatrade, to advise Reform on its insurance policies for small companies.
“In contrast to different social gathering leaders I arrange my very own firm in 1993 so I understand how powerful it may be,” mentioned Farage, referring to “the burden of laws” to small companies resembling off-payroll working guidelines. These make sure that so-called disguised staff, together with some contractors, pay the identical tax and nationwide insurance coverage contributions as everlasting staff.
“It’s the large companies that form coverage . . . The small companies don’t even get a glance in,” mentioned the Reform chief as he additionally promised to arrange lobbying infrastructure for the “single most overlooked group within the nation” if his social gathering got here to energy.
Reform has been struggling to transform its public reputation into large-scale donations, regardless of claims from senior figures within the social gathering that giant Conservative donors had been poised to make big-ticket donations.
Within the first half of this 12 months, the Tories secured £6.3mn in donations, in keeping with Electoral Fee information, 3 times the £2.1mn raised by Reform, which has remained closely reliant on a handful of social gathering insiders together with Tice for funding.
Information for the third quarter of this 12 months might start to color a unique image. Get together treasurer Nick Sweet introduced final month that he had made good on his pledge to donate £1mn to Reform.
Reform declined to remark.
