A long-standing billionaire donor to the Conservative Party was yesterday confirmed to have ceased his backing for David Cameron’s party after the Tories championed the same-sex marriage bill in July last year.
Hedge fund owner Sir Michael Hintze is said to be “fed up with David Cameron and George Osborne and doesn’t see why he should prop up the party any longer” a Tory insider told the Daily Mail.
The source continued: “He is deeply upset with the party’s promotion of gay marriage; it grates with his Catholicism. And as a tax-cutting free marketeer, he’d hoped to see a more radical economic agenda.”
The Mail also reports: “His donations to the Tories total £1.4 million over the past decade, in addition to the £2.5million loans.”
Hintze follows a growing list of former Conservative Party supporters who have either stopped giving money to the Tories, or switched to the UK Independence Party (UKIP). Others include early defector Stuart Wheeler, Paul Sykes, and Dixons tycoon Lord Stanley Kalms.
The financial hit will be a major blow to Conservatives who argue that the party should be moving further to the progressive left, and who try to downplay the damage caused by the same-sex marriage bill which passed last year.
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