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More than half a dozen major former Conservative donors paid five-figure sums to attend a lavish fundraiser for Reform UK that raised more than £1mn on Tuesday evening.
Past Tory supporters Bassim Haidar and Mohamed Amersi confirmed their presence, and that they had each paid £25,000 for a VIP ticket to the event in order to sit at the top table with party leader Nigel Farage.
Haidar said there were at least eight significant former Conservative donors including himself at the event, while Amersi estimated there were many more “disgruntled Tory donors” at the gathering of about 100 people.
Haidar, a Nigerian-born Lebanese entrepreneur who has given £675,000 to the Conservatives in the past two years, told the FT the event was “a valuable opportunity to learn more about the party’s mission, and I believe they have a good one to ‘make the UK great again’.”
He said it was “worth considering them as a strong alternative” to the Tories, whose crackdown on non-doms prompted vocal criticism from Haidar last year.
Fellow tycoon Amersi, a UK citizen born in Kenya, said the party “certainly appeared far more electable than I would ever have imagined, and Farage was inspirational.” He added: “The energy was electric.”
He said Nigel Farage’s links to Donald Trump were an “added bonus” and praised property magnate Nick Candy, the former Tory donor who became Reform’s treasurer last month.
Amersi, who has given more than £500,000 to the Tories since 2018, said he remained a Conservative member and would be attending a cocktail party it was hosting on Wednesday night in London, as he wished to keep abreast of developments.
But he said the Tories were “losing momentum” and accused party leader Kemi Badenoch of having “no policies, no outreach, no connectivity”, adding that she “doesn’t know what ground she is occupying”.
Asked about past Tory donors attending the Reform dinner this week, Badenoch’s spokesperson said on Wednesday: “There are lots of donors out there and we’re looking for new donors all the time, bringing donors back to the party, so we are very confident about our fundraising.”
They added that the Tory leader is getting the party back on a sure financial footing ready to fight the local elections in May.
Myles Barclay, a young member of the Barclay banking family, and Andrew Reid, the British horse race trainer and former treasurer of the UK Independence party, also attended the dinner, according to two people who attended the event. Neither responded to a request for comment.
Other partygoers paid £10,000 for a seat at the dinner at Oswald’s, an exclusive private members’ club in Mayfair owned by Robin Birley.
Birley himself paid for the food at the event, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Guests were served Dom Pérignon 2012 and Nyetimber English sparkling wine, alongside a menu including lobster and avocado, sea bass, and tarte Tropezienne.
Forms requesting additional donations of between £1,000 to £10,000 were left on the tables.
Farage addressed the crowd, declaring “there is no ‘wokery’ in this room”, according to one partygoer.
He set out the party’s plans to make major gains in the Welsh Senedd elections next year. Reform is set to benefit from changes to the electoral system for the Senedd that will make the result more proportional.
Reform came second in 13 of 32 Welsh constituencies at the general election last year, and secured 17 per cent of votes, though it did not win a single seat.
Oliver Lewis, the party’s Welsh spokesperson, said this month that he believed Reform could form the new Senedd government in 2026.
The dinner is the latest signal of Reform’s momentum, after it overtook the Tories in the polls. The latest average shows Farage’s party is one point ahead of the Conservatives and just three points behind Labour.