Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Labour’s top donor: My money’s on Keir for PM
Tycoon to fund party again as polls show it gaining on Tories
LABOUR’S biggest donor, who was a fierce critic of Jeremy Corbyn, today reveals he is ready to pump cash into the party again.
With the Tory lead in the polls cut to just five points since Keir Starmer took over, millionaire shopping channel tycoon John Mills said he was thinking of injecting funds once more.
Mr Mills gave Labour £1.65million worth of shares in his company JML under Ed Miliband’s leadership in 2013.
But he stopped filling the war chest during Jeremy Corbyn’s four and a half years in charge.
Now, in an exclusive Mirror interview, he says he could donate once again
He said: “Keir Starmer is a very impressive figure.
“You’ve only got to see him at the Despatch Box to see there is somebody who is a potential PM.
He seems to have struck the right note between supporting the Government [over coronavirus] and being critical.
“I was never a Jeremy Corbyn supporter, I was very sorry to see the Labour Party going in the direction it did.” Pointing to the Dominic Cummings affair and the harm it is causing Boris Johnson, he believes Labour could win the next general election.
He highlighted the rapid fall in Conservative support in 1992, after the UK dropped out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism.
Mr Mills, who recently published the first report from his thinktank, the John Mills Institute for Prosperity, said: “The Government’s popularity just plunged and never recovered, then the Labour Party got in with a huge majority in 1997. I think there is a parallel.”