Readers, rejoice! For ConservativeHome can this morning reveal an exclusive series of figures from the Conservative Party’s official accounts, set to be published in full later today.
The numbers showcase that in Kemi Badenoch’s first full year as leader, the year ending in December 2025, the party raised £14.97 million in donations against a total income of more than £30 million. This comes in contrast to the year ending December 2024, where donations came to £28.137 million, against a total income of £50.174 million. The fall in donations is one of 46.8 per cent.
It’s a disappointing drop, yes, and I have no doubt that this number will be seized upon by critics. We can expect to hear in the coming days that the traditional Tory donor base has walked away. That the money has followed the polls and flocked over to Reform, and that a future Conservative government is no longer a possibility – a fictitious idea, if you like. The figure deserves better than such a reading, however, because the year it covers is the first full year after a general election, and the blunt reality is that post-election years always look like this.
Let us look at 2019 as an example. In the year ending December 2019, the Party amassed £55.706 million in donations (out of a total income of £67.995 million).
By the end of 2020 that had fallen to £17.228 million, a drop of roughly 69 per cent (out of a total income of £24.039 million). Some of that reflects a year in which fundraising endeavours were unable to take place as a result of COVID, yes, but the pattern remains the same nonetheless. Donations will pour in when a party needs to be battle ready in the months leading up to, and during, a general election and dissipate afterwards. That’s politics.
The second point to note here is that the Party concluded 2025 having paid a profit – unlike the year prior. Whilst exact expenditure figures have not yet been disclosed, a senior source in CCHQ tells me that the “Party made a profit year end 2025, we made a loss in 2024.” Indeed, the loss in 2024 amounted to roughly £1.072 million. Yet again, this is hardly indicative of a party in decline. Just a year ago, people were floating the idea that the Conservatives were on the brink of death, and that the close to 200-year-old Party was finally reaching its life’s end. Oh how wrong they were.
The state of the Party’s finances also gives it the ability to commit money to long term projects. The Party’s new headquarters, for instance, carries a price tag just north of £14 million – yet further proof that the financial situation is much more complex than the headline figures show.
But we should not be over the moon about these numbers, for this is not a triumph. A party in opposition which is raising less than half what it raised in government is a party with significant work to do, and the direction of travel over the next two years is what will matter. But the political position it is defending is stronger than the accounts suggest.
The Party is still performing well in the polls – within 5 per cent of Labour, and roughly 2 per cent of Reform. Kemi Badenoch still maintains a net positive favourability rating, alongside both Burnham and Ed Davey, and the Party is projected to increase its number of seats based on current voting intentions. For a party that was lingering on the precipice of electoral oblivion just a short while ago, those figures are worthwhile.
Indeed, what these figures show is a party that left government for the first time in fourteen years and now has the finances of a party in opposition. That’s it. The cycle is doing what the cycle does, and reading it as though the Party’s donors are taking flight en masse is a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation at hand
This is, by all accounts, a party which is rebuilding itself from the worst election defeat in its history, and it is doing so one step at a time – and these figures prove it.