Total donations to the five leadership campaigns exceeded £1million. Party activists will be dismayed that such large sums were spent on the leadership campaign when the party itself remains impoverished.
The donations exceeding £1,500 for each candidate reported to the Electoral Commission up to 11 October were as follows:
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However, since individual donations under £1,500 were not required to be reported to the electoral commission, the total will have been significantly above £1million.
The largest donor was Lord David Sainsbury who donated £153,421 to David Miliband. He has also donated a total of £137,500 so far this year to right-wing Labour pressure group, Progress, which is closely associated with David Miliband and his supporters. Other large donors were popular novellist, Ken Follett, who gave £100,000 to Ed Balls’s campaign and Unite the Union which donated £100,000 to Ed Miliband’s campaign.
