Huge fall in summer donations to SNP coffers after £2m post-election boost

THE SNP’s summer donations this year fell by hundreds of thousands of pounds compared with the financial backing for the party during the same period in 2011, newly released figures have revealed.

Nearly £200,000 was donated to the party during the third quarter of 2012, the Electoral Commission figures showed.

However, it received £1,988,657 last year, when Scotland’s Euromillions lottery winners, Colin and Christine Weir, from Largs in North Ayrshire, gave £500,000 each and the late poet Edwin Morgan left £917,739 in a bequest to the Nationalists.

Mr Morgan also left £195,879 this year in the second part of his legacy to the SNP.

However, the party’s total donations during the third quarter of 2012 stood at just £198,505 – a massive fall on the almost £2 million donated during summer 2011 in the aftermath of the party’s landslide election victory.

The Labour Party at UK level had the highest donation figure during the three-month period, with more than £3 million donated to Ed Miliband’s party.

Labour’s donations included almost £800,000 from the Unite union and more than £600,000 from the shopworkers’ union, Usdaw.

The Tories at UK level received more than £2.6m between the start of
 July and the end of September 2012. Michael Farmer, a City financier, donated more than half a million pounds to the Conservative Party.

There was also more than half a million pounds donated to the UK Liberal Democrats.

The commission figures showed that the SNP had dropped from third richest party in the UK to the fifth, with the Lib Dems and the Co-operative Party overtaking the Nationalists this summer.