Recorded donations to the Conservative Party have fallen to their lowest level since 2012.

Party financial accounts for the year 2025 published by the Electoral Commission show that the Conservatives recorded £15 million in donations during Kemi Badenoch’s first full year as leader of the party, down from £28.1 million in 2024.

Donations have not been this low since 2012, when the party received £14.6 million from donors. Under UK election law, a donation is defined as “money, goods or services given to a party without charge or on non-commercial terms, with a value of over £500”.

Following its 2024 general election defeat, Badenoch’s party has consistently trailed Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in the polls. This raises the prospect that it could be displaced as one of Britain’s two dominant parties at the next election — a position it has held since the mid-19th century.

In 2025, Reform saw a large increase in donations that far exceeded the Conservative’s intake, recording £22.9 million in donations, up from £5.9 million the year before.

The Conservatives have struggled to stem the tide of wealthy donors fleeing the party for Reform. Christopher Harborne, the British-Thai cryptocurrency billionaire who has donated more than £1.7 million to the Tories, has now given around £15 million to Reform since the beginning of 2025. IT billionaire Bassim Haidar, who had previously donated more than £700,000 to the Conservatives from 2023, last year paid £25,000 to attend a dinner with Farage and has since donated around £500,000 to Reform.

Throughout the 2010s, the Tories outstripped all other parties in large donations. Donor contributions to the party were at their highest in 2019, when it pulled in around £55 million as Boris Johnson became leader and the party won its biggest majority since Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 election victory. Party incomes are almost always higher in election years.

The Conservatives’ largest single donor in 2025 was Jeremy San, a British video-game entrepreneur who donated £3 million to the party across the year. Businessman and Conservative Treasurer Graham Edwards also donated around £470,000 in 2025, while Anthony Bamford’s JCB donated more than £700,000 to the party, alongside a £200,000 donation made to Reform. In the first quarter of 2026, the Conservatives accepted £6 million in donations, slightly up from the same time in 2025 when they took in £5.5 million.

Conservative Party Chairman Kevin Hollinrake told UnHerd: “Just one year after the worst general election defeat in our history, we have outraised both the Labour Party and Reform (if you strip out Reform’s reliance on a single crypto-billionaire donor). We are proud to have attracted this level of support while investing in our future, including securing a new £14 million permanent headquarters.”