Billionaire Peter Coates has stopped giving money to Britain’s opposition Labour Party, seeing little prospect of election victory under left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn.
One of a handful of ‘money men’ credited with using their cash to help propel Labour under Tony Blair to power in 1997 and keep it there, he has instead made direct personal donations to fund the work of a local Labour parliamentarian, whose centrist views are more aligned to his own.
This is part of a pattern which has seen Labour’s private donors channel funds away from the party apparatus and towards other groups in an attempt to revitalise the ‘centre-left’.
The Labour Party is in turmoil. Already shaken by a crushing defeat in parliamentary elections last year, a decades-long division between its left and right wings has deepened since leftist Corbyn took over.
Labour’s problems are mirrored across Europe, where centre-left parties have lost support to anti-establishment movements that have emerged since the 2008 economic crisis, and to conservative and centrist groups that have better captured the business vote.
“I’d like to see a modern Labour Party that produces good policies that will be good for the country and get electoral support,” said Coates, who owns online betting company bet365 with his daughter and son and was ranked 24 in The Sunday Times rich list this year with $5bn.
To be sure, Labour is less reliant on individual donors than the governing Conservative party, and its traditional financial backers the unions remain supportive.
But signs of declining donations point to a deeper malaise among backers. In Britain’s EU referendum in June, many traditional Labour supporters voted to leave the bloc, against the party’s official stance. Pro-EU Coates and others now fear Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May will negotiate Britain’s divorce unchallenged by a weak opposition.
Corbyn factor
Corbyn, a veteran left-wing campaigner, is expected to fend off a challenge to his leadership by lawmaker Owen Smith, with opinion polls saying he should win by a wider margin than when he was first elected by party members.
While he has brought many new members into the party, his expected victory will do little to convince almost three quarters of his parliamentary colleagues who say they have no confidence in him and doubt he is the man to lead Labour to victory at the next election in 2020.
Recent opinion polls have given the Conservatives a 14% lead over Labour with 41% of the vote.
Businessman John Mills, who gave the party £1.65m in shares in his company in 2013, the dividends of which Labour still enjoys, fears that Labour “is finished” unless it reconnects with ordinary workers. To this end he has created a new group, called Labour Future, aimed at reviving British manufacturing to create new and better paid jobs.
Nicola Murphy, a former adviser under the last Labour government, helped set up Labour Tomorrow in April – a platform to raise and distribute funds to centre-left groups to help prepare for a Labour government.
With former Labour minister David Blunkett and Brenda Dean, a Labour baroness, on the board, the group is careful not to say that it has been set up in opposition to Corbyn. But, along with other groups, it clearly wants to reposition Labour over the long-term.
The future?
It’s a sentiment shared by Coates, whose mild-manner wavers when asked whether Corbyn has asked business for its input on policy.
“I’ve seen him take no interest or reach out to the business community in any way shape or form that doesn’t appear to be his constituency,” he said.
Coates’ last donation of 40,000 pounds was to a centre-left lawmaker in Stoke – a donation he says to help him develop policy and “to be forward thinking”.