A furious row has broken out over the fact that the Conservative Party has registered a donation of £12,500 from West Ham United with the Electoral Commission. The club paid the sum for a table of ten at the party’s Black & White Ball fundraiser which took place at the Hurlingham Club in South West London earlier in the year. Karren Brady hosted the club’s sponsor Betway at the event.
The club’s defence is that it is a private company and it can do what it likes. Local Labour MPs Mike Gapes and Jim Fitzpatrick are naturally less than gruntled. However, they fail to mention the Directors’ Box season tickets which were made available to more than one Labour Minister during their time in government. I suspect the value of those would far exceed £12,500.
In the wider scheme of things it’s a trifling sum, but from a PR point of view it certainly counts as an own goal. To my mind if any high profile company is going to make a political donation (and you could question whether this is a donation in the normal sense of the word, seeing as it was for event tickets) it is probably best to split it between several parties, given that its customers will be voters of all persuasions.