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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Politics
Mikey Smith

Failed Tory leadership hopefuls raked in £135,000 in donations for doomed campaigns

Failed Tory leadership candidates raked in at least £135,000 in donations for their doomed bids to replace Boris Johnson

Donors to their unsuccessful campaigns included hedge funders, Tory bigwigs and a firm run by a prominent climate sceptic.

Neither Liz Truss nor Penny Mordaunt have so far declared any donations, while Rishi Sunak declared just over £3,195 in donated office costs.

MPs have 28 days to declare donations under Commons rules - which means donations made after 11 July may not be published for another two weeks.

But MPs who dropped out earlier in the race have started to declare who funded their campaigns.

Newly released figures reveal Tom Tugendhat, who was knocked out in the third round, raised £123,000 to spend on his campaign - just £27,000 less than the spending limit of £150,000.

Failed leadership hopeful Suella Braverman (Zuma Press/PA Images)

Suella Braverman accepted a £10,000 donation from First Corporate Consultants, which is owned by leading climate sceptic Terence Mordaunt.

Mr Mordaunt is understood to be a distant relative of leadership rival Penny Mordaunt, to whom he has previously donated as an MP.

He is a trustee and former chair of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a climate-sceptic lobbying group which now operates as Net Zero Watch.

During her campaign, Ms Braverman called for the suspension of the “all-consuming desire to achieve net zero by 2050”.

She said: “If we keep it up, especially before businesses and families can adjust, our economy will end up with net zero growth. We don’t want to end up like the Germans, going cap in hand to Putin for heating and power.”

Failed leadership hopeful Kemi Badenoch (PA)

Kemi Badenoch, who placed third in the contest, declared just £12,500 in donations - from hedge fund Longrow Capital and a private individual named Joanne Black.

Mr Tugendhat’s biggest donors were long-term Tory donor Ian Mukherjee and Public Focus Ltd, a firm set up just two weeks before Mr Tugendhat launched his campaign for the leadership.

The firm was set up on 27 June by Sir Christian Sweeting, a property developer and amateur magician who the Tories selected, but failed to win, the Torbay seat in the 2001 general election.

He also received £25,000 from Beacon Rock Ltd, a firm owned by former Conservative Party treasurer Sir Michael Davis.

Ms Braverman also declared a £2,000 discount on "digital services" provided by Ethan Wilkinson, a former Tory council candidate from Milton Keynes.

The donations were published in the Commons Register of Interests, which is updated fortnightly - and which also revealed eye-popping cash donations to two top Tories who did not run in the leadership contest.

Brandon Lewis, the former Northern Ireland Secretary and Party Chairman, who many expected to throw his hat in the ring, raised £35,000 from a string of long-time Tory donors in just two months.

The donors included Lubov Chernukhin, the Russian-born banker and wife of a former Putin deputy finance minister, who handed him £15,000.

He also received cash from Tory peer Lord Ranger and Countywide Developments, run by mega donor Sir Anthony Gallagher.

Bestway Wholesale, owned by Tory peer Lord Choudrey, handed Mr Lewis a donation of £5,000.

And the firm also donated former party chair Oliver Dowden the use of one of their fleet of cars on the day of the Tiverton and Wakefield by-election. He resigned the following day, after the Tories’ embarrassing double-defeat.

Meanwhile, Tory rising star Bim Afolami, who was also rumoured to be considering a tilt at replacing Boris Johnson, was given £70,000 in early July, by a private individual named Oliver Maughan.

Mr Afolami said the cash would be used “to support my office work.”

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