Tories’ biggest donor says party is ‘failing families’ and may pull plug on funding

THE Conservatives’ biggest donor is on the brink of withdrawing funding from the party because it has failed to put family at the heart of policy, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Michael Farmer, 73, a multimillionaire who has donated £7.5million over the past decade, said he felt “badly let down” by the Government after it failed to respond to his proposals to improve the lives of children. Asked if he would give any more money, the Tory peer and former Conservative treasurer told The Telegraph: “I’m getting older and I’m getting poorer, so I probably haven’t got so much and would have to think of old age. I’m in the Lords so I can speak instead of just giving money and hoping for the best.”

In the past 18 months alone, Lord Farmer has donated £350,000, including £75,000 in March. He ploughed millions into David Cameron’s election campaign and was once credited by George Osborne as being instrumental in ending Labour rule in 2010.

The married father of three and committed Christian accused the Conservatives of doing “too much virtue signalling”, adding: “Cameron said he was pro-family, but what did we get in the end? We got gay marriage.”

Accusing the Tories of letting “hyper liberalism ride roughshod over the silent majority”, he warned that the Government was letting the family be “disintegrated and destroyed at the nation’s future peril” and accused ministers of a “dereliction of duty”.

Lord Farmer, head of Red Kite, one of the biggest industrial metals hedge funds in the world, also accused the City of lacking integrity. “I’ve worked in the City and I’ve seen ‘my word is my bond’ slowly disappear. No one is asking, ‘Is this deal morally right?’”

He also appeared to back Jacob Reesmogg as a future prime minister, saying: “With Jacob, you’ve got someone who isn’t ashamed to be who he is. We need people with courage, with boldness and with principles and who can be trusted. He says it like it is.”

Lord Farmer spoke exclusively to The Telegraph after delivering a hardhitting speech at last week’s Conservative Party conference in Birmingham in which he called for the Government to appoint a “minister for families”.

He believes the Tories have been “bucking their responsibilities”, adding that the “Conservatives should be the party of the family”.