A posh Tory club has lined the party’s pockets with hundreds of thousands of pounds after taking almost £850,000 in Covid bailout cash.
Diners at the Carlton Club, just around the corner from the Ritz, have raised a whopping £250,000 for Conservative MPs and their local associations.
Recipients of the money from the private members’ club and its political committee include Tory Deputy Chairman Lee Anderson, who was given £15,000 in January. The venue in fancy St James’s, London, is Britain’s oldest Conservative club and was the original home of the party.
According to its accounts, it received over £843,000 in grants from the Government in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic. This was made up of £799,000 from the coronavirus job retention scheme and a national lockdown grant of £44,000.
Its 2021 financial report states that “with the help of the furlough scheme, national lockdown grant and six-month business rates relief…the club achieved an operating surplus of £226,000”. Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, the Carlton Club and its connected groups such as its political committee have donated a total of £247,300 to the Conservatives.
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said:
