Now Labour has its own deficit problem

Political parties might be bidding to run the nation’s finances, but they also have to manage their own – running a national political operation is a multi-million pound enterprise. Sadly for Labour and Rachel Reeves, Labour’s own finances aren’t in the best of states this year.

Labour was the only major political party to miss the Electoral Commission’s deadline for filing their annual accounts for 2024, meaning the party is likely to be fined, and will face inevitable quips about the dog eating their homework.

The party has at least managed to compile its accounts, even if late, and they’re published on its own website. Sadly, they’re not exactly a glittering story for the party either. The accounts soberly note that Labour planned to run “a planned deficit of £1.7m” for 2024, “carefully balanced to be funded from reserves and with a target to achieve above budgeted income generation” – allowing higher spending, understandably, because it was an election year.

Unfortunately, losing just £1.7 million proved to be overambitious: the party lost twice as much as it planned to, running a deficit of £3.8 million on a £90 million budget. It’s hardly a great start to the run-up to budget season for Rachel Reeves, especially when only 9% of voters think she’s doing a good job as chancellor.

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Still, Labour at least outperformed the Conservatives on the fundraising front – the Tories raised just £50 million in 2024, and spent nearly £2 million more than they raised. The Lib Dems raised £12.6 million and spent £11.5 of it, while Reform raised almost £11 million and spent £9.3 million.

The oddest entry into the accounts, though, was surely Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party, which spent more than £800,000 doing… almost nothing that anyone could see, almost all of it raised from a single donor, the businessman Jeremy Hosking. Who said welfare was dead?