Suzy Jagger, Politics and Business Correspondent
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Stuart Wheeler, one of Britain’s biggest political donors, is to give around £100,000 to the UK Independence Party to help it to unseat John Bercow, the Commons’ Speaker, in the general election.
Mr Wheeler has also placed a 4-1 bet on Nigel Farage, the former leader of UKIP and MEP, who is attempting to wrestle the Buckingham seat from Mr Bercow when voters go to the ballot box later this year.
The spread-betting millionaire said that so long as there is no stock market crash between now and the start of the general election expected on May 6 he will make a donation to UKIP of a “similar” sum to the £100,000 he gave to the party in March last year.
Mr Wheeler declined to be drawn on the size of his bet, but said that it was “nothing substantial”. He added, however, that Mr Farage has also bet on himself, but that because he took the wager later than Mr Wheeler, the odds had narrrowed to 3-1. Mr Farage told The Times yesterday that he had bet £250 with Ladbrokes but that he suspected Mr Wheeler’s own wager was “somewhat more substantial”.
Mr Wheeler believes that UKIP will probably only win one Westminister seat, that of Buckingham which is currently held by the Tory MP turned Speaker. “I don’t think the Conservatives would mind too much if Mr Bercow lost his seat.”
Mr Wheeler’s comments were made before the publication of his book entitled A Crisis of Trust: How Trust Broke Down in Britain in which he berates the greed of MPs demonstrated by their excessive expense claims and the weakness of politicians and their failure to stand up to party leaders.
He describes MPs as showing “the untrammelled willingness of so many MPs to milk the system” and as seeing political life as “an extension of life in civil service with added television appearances”. He argues that MPs with no ministerial role should boost their income by taking jobs outside Parliament. Speaking to The Times, Mr Wheeler said he was disgusted by the amount of money MPs have paid themselves: “I do not think that they are underpaid in the first place. Their salaries in real terms are higher than they have ever been and their expenses dwarf their salaries.”
He added: “An MP who becomes a minister has to do far more than an ordinary MP, but people manage to combine the two. That tells us something — if you’re not a minister you have time to do a second job [outside Parliament] and that’s what they should be doing.”
While Mr Wheeler was a member of the Conservative Party until he was expelled for donating money to UKIP in protest over the Tory stance on Europe, he argues that there is little to choose between Labour and the Opposition on their respective policies on MPs’ expenses. “Cameron has played a better game over expenses, there is no doubt that, but that is the only difference. Cameron appeared to take a hardline stance, but not against those in his immediate circle. He has not removed the whip from a single person.”
Mr Wheeler is a substantial political donor, after floating his business IG Index, the spread-betting firm, on the stock market, providing the businessman an estimated net worth of around £90 million. In 2001, he donated £5 million to the Tory party. When Mr Wheeler insisted that he did not expect anything in return for the donation, William Hague, the then leader of the Conservative Party, described the businessman as “Father Christmas”.
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