Conservative Party 'sacks the cleaners' at its London HQ to save money

Conservative Party ‘sacks the cleaners at its London HQ to save money ahead of local elections’ amid fall in donations – as ex-donor Rocco Forte says he will not give any more money to Tories over a lack of ‘good growth’

The Conservative Party has reportedly laid off cleaners and security staff at its London headquarters as it seeks to shore up its finances ahead of the local elections.

Staff at 4 Matthew Parker Street in Westminster, some of whom have been there for years on modest salaries, are said to have had their service terminated under a cost-cutting drive.

The Tories suffered a major slump in donations last year, with the worst decline taking place when Liz Truss was in charge for 49 days.

It is now some way behind Labour, amid signs money is switching to the opposition ahead of a potential general election win in 2024. However, the party is expecting to do better in the first quarter of this year when figures are released next month.

The Times today cited a source as saying that they wondered whether donors could be put off by the move, or be spurred into putting in cash to ‘shore up’ the party.

‘It’s sad because, obviously, we all want to win the next election, but it’s not a great look’, they told the paper.

It came as Rocco Forte, the hotelier and Boris Johnson era donor, said he would no longer give the party money, with a brutal attack on its handling of the economy and praise for the Reform Party.

Staff at 4 Matthew Parker Street in Westminster, some of whom have been there for years on modest salaries, have had their service terminated under a cost-cutting drive.

The Tories suffered a major slump in donations last year, with the worst decline taking place when Liz Truss was in charge for 49 days.

It came as Rocco Forte, the hotelier and Boris Johnson era donor, said he would no longer give the party money, with a brutal attack on its handling of the economy.

The Brexit campaigner said: ‘What’s the point of having a Conservative government which is following policies which have been followed for the last 15 years and haven’t delivered good growth?

‘We have a sort of social democratic government in parliament. We don’t have a Conservative government and there’s no one who really believes in driving the economy and changing the system to do that.

‘Reform UK is sort of a protest party which will take votes from the Conservative Party and if it’s allowed to grow to the level the Brexit party did, it could force the Conservatives into a different direction.’ 

Yesterday Tory chairman Greg Gands insisted the Government has a record ‘to be proud of on growth,’ 

‘We are still working very hard in delivering all of (Rishi Sunak’s) five priorities – halving inflation, growing the economy, reducing debt, stopping the boats and reducing hospital waits,’ he told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme.

When it was put to him that the UK’s economy showed no growth in February, Mr Hands said: ‘Well, in February it was not one of the better results but January grew by 0.3 per cent. And we’ve had the best growth in the G7 in 2021 and 2022.

‘Overall, under this Conservative Government we’ve got a record to be proud of on growth.’

Asked whether zero growth was something to be proud of, Mr Hands conceded that ‘we would like to see much stronger growth’.

Pressed on Mr Sunak’s pledge on inflation, which has since gone up since he made it, Mr Hands said ‘nobody has said that it’s going to be easy to tame inflation’ as he blamed higher energy prices driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Conservative Party declined to comment on staffing matters.

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