A Tory donor has paid £55,000 to spend a day with Theresa May, in an auction at the party’s annual Black and White fundraising ball.
The event allows wealthy Conservative donors to spend time with cabinet ministers – as long as they stump up about £10,000 a table.
As well as the prime minister, senior ministers who attended the ball on Wednesday night at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington included the foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, and the home secretary, Amber Rudd.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, who recently topped a ConservativeHome poll on who should be the next party leader, was also there.
Stanley Johnson, the foreign secretary’s father and a former MEP, said a bidder had paid about £55,000 in the silent auction for the privilege of spending a working day with May.
Other auction lots included a dinner at a restaurant hosted by Stanley Johnson and the Made in Chelsea star Georgia Toffolo – who appeared together on the ITV reality show I’m a Celebrity – which went for £15,000.
Johnson described the evening as a “wonderful event” and said he thought the prime minister’s speech about the benefits of Brexit was “very good”.
He said: “It came at the end of a long day with cabinet colleagues and there we all were in the huge hall of the Natural History Museum, underneath the blue whale as it were … I think she [May] really hit the right note.”
May accused Jeremy Corbyn and Labour of “exploiting populist politics” in her speech.
Another auction lot was a chance to “walk in the footsteps of Churchill” by having dinner with the defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, in the Churchill war rooms, which reportedly went for £30,000.
A bidder is understood to have paid £12,500 for a home-cooked dinner with the environment secretary, Michael Gove, and his wife, Sarah Vine, at their west London home.
Dinner in Edinburgh with Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, attracted bids of more than £15,000, while lunch with Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, proved somewhat less alluring, with bids around the £2,000 mark.
Guests dined on a starter of cured sea trout followed by slow-cooked blade of beef with kale and mushrooms. The evening’s entertainment was provided by the community-run Chickenshed theatre group.
Departing guests were reportedly greeted by a flashmob of taxi drivers honking horns in protest at May’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month in which she said Uber had got things wrong but should not be shut down.
