The £3m bash Dave doesn’t want you to know about . . .
At PRIME Minister’s Questions last week, David Cameron repeatedly refused to say whether he would close a tax loophole which benefits super-rich hedge fund tycoons.
Labour leader Red Ed Miliband, accusing the tories of taking £47 million from hedge funds, said: ‘Everyone pays stamp duty on stock market transactions except hedge funds, who are allowed to avoid it, costing hundreds of millions of pounds. Why are you refusing to act on this?’
Is the reason for the Prime Minister’s refusal to respond the secretive guest list for tonight’s Conservative Black And White Election Fundraising Dinner?
With 1,100 guests paying between £500 to £1,500 a ticket for the bash at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel, it promises to be the most lucrative dinner in modern party political history.
Hedge-fund kings, City tycoons and captains of industry will mingle with David and Samantha Cameron, Cabinet ministers, senior MPs and peers.
Last week, it was revealed that eight City figures alone have donated a combined £12.2 million so far in this Parliament to the Conservatives — indeed, the number of major backers has doubled since Cameron became PM.
With an election less than 100 days away, party chiefs want to keep the money rolling in. they are hoping to raise up to £3 million from tonight’s soiree to enrich their war chest for the General Election.
With that in mind, the ongoing Labour row with big business is exquisitely timed — serving to remind wealthy capitalists what a disaster a Miliband government would be for them and their companies.
One top table will be taken by multi-millionaire Andrew Law, chief executive of Caxton Associates, which uses its £4.5 billion hedge fund — based in the tax haven U.S. state of Delaware — to bet on international currency movements.
A devotee of Manchester City FC, he is the proud owner of the only known Lowry painting of his team playing a match — against Sheffield United.
the importance of hedge funds to tonight’s dinner is underlined by the fact that Law’s wife Zoe Purvis, a celebrity makeup artist, chaired the dinner’s organising committee. Another key figure on the organising committee is Andree Shore, whose husband Howard runs investment banking firm Shore Capital. the company moved its HQ to the tax haven of Guernsey in 2010. Mr Shore has given £500,000 to tory funds.
the most generous donor of Cameron’s premiership is Michael Farmer — known in the City as ‘Mr Copper’ after he made £ 100 million in the international metal markets. He was given a peerage by Cameron last year just weeks after he’d donated £330,000 to party funds. ( He has donated £3.9 million since the election.) He, too, will have a table at the dinner, which is the most important event in the Conservative social calendar. the more that guests pay for a table tonight, the more senior the politician who will join them for dinner. ‘If you pay £15,000 you get a high-ranking Cabinet minister, £10,000 a middle-ranking minister, and £5,000 will give you a backbencher or junior minister,’ says one source at tory HQ.
Sir Michael Hintze, the billionaire hedge fund manager who’s contributed more than £20 million to good causes, and last year gave the tories £1.5 million — their biggest donation since 2009 — can expect a high-ranking minister on his table.
Indeed, so enamoured is the party of him he has enjoyed an intimate supper with the Camerons in their Downing Street flat.
the biggest celebrity name is the Apprentice’s Karren Brady, made a peer by Cameron despite her longstanding professional links to two pornographers.
Other guests include the JCB industrialist Anthony Bamford, who lives in a vast mansion in the PM’s Oxfordshire constituency.
With his wife, Carole, he has paid £15,000 to host a table tonight, as has Michael Spencer, whose ICAP City brokerage has been fined £55 million by regulators over the Libor interest-rate rigging scandal. Spencer, worth £800 million, has given several million pounds to the tories.
Another table has been booked by Lord Leigh of Hurley whose peerage came, coincidentally of course, after he helped negotiate the sale in 2009 of upmarket stationers Smythson.
Leigh’s company, Cavendish Corporate Finance, sold Smythson for £18 million in a deal which netted Samantha Cameron, a consultant for the firm, a reputed £30,000. Mrs Cameron was embarrassed last week by the revelation that Smythson’s parent company is now based in a tax haven.
Even before Labour went on the offensive over hedge funds (not that the Labour government did anything to close down the tax loophole in question during 13 years in power) tory HQ had ordered a news blackout over tonight’s dinner.
It’s not even mentioned on the tory Party website. there will be no official photographer inside or outside the hotel, or name cards on the table settings in order to protect the identities of guests.
At least there will be no embarrassments from Russian oligarchs this year — they have not been invited. At last summer’s Black And White fundraising gala, a storm of controversy resulted when Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of Vladimir Chernukhin, who was Russia’s deputy finance minister under President Putin in 2000, paid £160,000 to play tennis with Cameron and Boris Johnson. After an outcry in the media, it seems the match was cancelled and the money withdrawn: the Electoral Commission, which monitors all political donations, has no trace of any money from the Russian couple since the dinner. Intriguingly, the guest list is twice the size of last summer’s fundraiser, and Lord Feldman, the joint chairman of the tory Party — who’ll speak after the PM — will urge guests to dig deep into their designer handbags and wallets.
One source says: ‘We could have a second General Election within months, which is why the guest list is so big. We are already building a second war chest.’
In a concession to the age of austerity there will be no champagne, but with a table for ten costing a record £15,000, there’s little sign of adherence to George Osborne’s infamous mantra: ‘We’re all in this together.’