Lotto winners dig deep to bankroll SNP election campaign

0 Colin and Christine Weir have donated a total of £4.5 million to the SNP Euromillions winners Colin and Christine Weir handed a further £500,000 to the SNP ahead of June’s snap general election, providing more than 80 per cent of the party’s donations in the final quarter before the vote.

The couple from Largs, who won £161 million on the lottery in 2011, handed over £250,000 each – taking their total donations to the party to £4.5m

The Electoral Commission revealed the Nationalists also received £63,000 as a bequest and £23,000 from leading artist Gerard Burns. In total the party raised £596,000 in donations between 1 April and 30 June.

A record £40m was donated to 11 political parties in the runup to the 2017 general election, with the majority going to the Conservatives.

Theresa May’s party received just under £25m during the period between 1 April and 30 June.

The biggest donor during the three-month period was the trade union Unite, which gave £4,165,935 to Labour.

Jeremy Corbyn’s party also benefited from gifts of £1,253,711 from the GMB union, £1,039,794 from the Communication Workers Union, £922,586 from Unison and £411,340 from Usdaw.

The Conservatives’ largest donor was construction vehicle manufacturer JCB, which gave £1.5m. Mark Bamford, the brother of JCB’S chairman Lord Bamford, also gave £750,000.

Former Tory treasurer Lord Ashcroft contributed £500,000 to the election warchest – his first donation to the party since 2011.

Hedge fund manager John Armitage gave Mrs May’s party £1.1m and Addison Lee founder John Griffin £1.033m .

John Gore, the theatre producer behind musicals The Book Of Mormon and Phantom Of The Opera, gave the Tories £1m.

The Liberal Democrats’ largest single donor in the threemonth period was entrepreneur Andrew Dixon, who gave the party £305,100. Bob Posner, director of political finance and regulation said: “The snap general election prompted political parties to raise record-breaking sums in the second quarter of 2017.

“The reporting and publication of this data is key to providing voters with transparency about how political parties financed their general election campaigns.

“Voters can have confidence that, where parties fail to submit information by a statutory deadline and there is no reasonable explanation, we will take a robust approach in dealing with these breaches.”