£12m Labour donor's company sign the Tory NI pledge letter

I was highly amused to read this post from Left Foot Forward.

Apparently, some of the people who signed the letter pointing out that Labour's planned NI rise might not be a good idea (not surprising, seeing as it will cost at least 140,000 jobs!) have donated to the Tories.

If you include their companies, this comes to the total of £2.5 million pounds.

However, one of the signatories was Justin King. He's the CEO of a small grocer called Sainsburys. One of his major shareholders is a chap called David Sainsbury, that's Lord David Sainsbury of Turville to you and I. Him and his family control about 15% of the company. Effectively, he's Justin King's boss!

Over the years he's been a great donor to Labour. If you trawl through the Electoral Commission's list of labour donors, you'll find he appears a few times.

In total, he's donated a phenomenal £12,582,808 to the Labour Party since 2002. Over £4 million of this was in 2008 and 2009. That's about 12% of Labour donations over those two years, much more than Lord Ashcroft has donated to the Tory party. Compared to this, the £2.5m donated to the Tories is just small change.

Why didn't Left Foot Forward mention this when they were castigating the Tory donors?

Even Labour's biggest donors know that this NI rise is bloody stupid.