A billionaire donor who backed Boris Johnson at the last election said he will be voting for Labour next month because the Tories’ record has left him in “despair”.
John Caudwell, who founded Phones4U, gave half a million pounds to the Conservatives in 2019 to avoid what he called “the disaster that would have been Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street”.
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However, he said the “failures” of the three prime ministers in government since then, alongside Labour’s “transformation” under leader Sir Keir Starmer had led him to switch allegiance for the first time in his life.
Mr Caudwell said: “For many years now I have been rather despairing about the performance of the party that I have supported for the last 51 years: the Tories.
“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.”
Mr Caudwell said over the last two years especially, he has 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.”
He said he was “delighted” to see economic growth at the “front and centre” of Labour’s manifesto, and “that projected growth is clearly tied into making…
