Billionaire Tory donor John Caudwell switches allegiance to Labour
Phones4u founder John Caudwell (PA)
The billionaire founder of Phones4U who donated £500,000 to the Tory party in 2019 has switched his support to Labour in a fresh blow to Rishi Sunak’s stuttering election campaign.
John Caudwell has said he will be voting for Labour citing his amazement at Sir Keir Starmer’s transformation of the party.
Mr Cauldwell was one of the biggest donors to the Tories ahead of the 2019 general election, when he gave half a million pounds to Boris Johnson’s campaign.
Encouraging everybody to vote for Labour, Mr Caudwell said he was “amazed by how Keir Starmer brought it back from that Corbyn brink.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said he was “delighted” that Mr Caudwell had “thrown his support behind the changed Labour Party”.
He said: “The message is clear: business backs change and economic stability with Labour, and rejects five more years of chaos and decline with the Tories.
“John was not just a Conservative voter but a substantial donor to the Conservative Party in 2019 – so it’s not a decision that he will have taken lightly.
“But it’s clear that he shares my plan for growth that I set out in the Labour manifesto.
“I’m campaigning non stop between now and 4 July to win the votes of other people who have backed the Tories in the past but see change with Labour as the best future for Britain.”
Mr Caudwell said he had supported the Conservatives for 51 years but had been “despairing” about their performance for many years.
He said: “Only five years ago, I donated half a million to the Conservatives to help avert the disaster that would have been Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street.
“But I’ve been increasingly critical of Tory failures since then, particularly over Rishi’s mismanagement of the economy during Covid, Boris’ lowering of ethical standards and, of course, associated with that the accusation that Tory cronies benefited improperly regarding Covid PPE – and then the Liz Truss debacle.
“Over the last two years especially, I have been amazed by how Keir Starmer has transformed the Labour Party and brought it back from that Corbyn brink.
“As I have always said, the Government must be much more commercially minded to grow GDP in order to finance the public services that benefit all of society without increasing taxes.
“When Labour launched its manifesto last Thursday, I was delighted to see that accelerating economic growth was front and centre, and that projected growth is clearly tied into making Britain a clean energy superpower.
“So, I can declare publicly that I will vote for Labour, and I encourage everybody to do the same.
“We need a very strong Labour government that can take extremely bold decisions and you can rest assured that I will be doing my best to influence them wherever I can, in putting the great back in Britain.”
The setback came as Rishi Sunak was warned he is “fighting the wrong campaign” after placing his hopes on Boris Johnson stave off an election meltdown.
The prime minister today took a trip to southwest England in a bid to rescue seats from a pincer movement by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK on the right and Labour and the Liberal Democrats on the left.
But as Mr Sunak was openly mocked by his rivals amid images of him speaking on hay bales and sheep running away when he tried to feed them, former chancellor George Osborne, who ran the winning election campaigns in 2010 and 2015, heaped criticism on the beleaguered prime minister.
Osborne said: “He should be trying to defend his blue wall seats which is where Labour are now running riot rather than focusing on the red wall seats that Boris Johnson won five years ago when, by the way, the Labour candidate was Jeremy Corbyn so it was a completely different election from having Sir Keir Starmer.”
In a bad day for Mr Sunak, two more polls delivered further bad news with Savanta finding that only one in five voters (21 per cent) believe his promises on reducing immigration, with 27 per cent thinking Labour were more likely to stop the boats.