By Liz S

I see that democracy is still up for sale.

When it has been reported that:

“Scottish Labour has reported receiving significant donations in the run-up to the May 2026 Holyrood election, with over £550,000 recorded in the final quarter of 2025 alone”

“Billionaire businessmen Sandy and James Easdale are among the biggest donors, with a £150,000 cash donation recorded in December 2025 via their property firm, Dalglen, linked to them.

“Donations from trade unions continue to support the party, including £5,300 from GMB, £6,000 from UNISON, £6500 from Unite, £4000 from USDAW , £700 from TSA, £700 from Community Union and £700 from Aslef , as reported in Q4 2025 (Oct-Dec 2025)”

“Puneet and Poonam Gupta, British-Asian entrepreneurs, who are described as former Tory donors, are among the top funders to Scottish Labour in the latest Electoral Commission disclosures, as a company based in Kilmacolm, founded by the Guptas, made a £200,000 donation in December 2025, followed by a non-cash donation of £33,950 for administration services”.

Dale Vince , the green energy tycoon continued his support with a £100,000 donation in November 2025.

Gordon Dalyell:, an Edinburgh-based lawyer and son of the late MP Tam Dalyell, donated £8,000.

“Reports show £553,635.62 in donations were accepted by the party to boost their campaign ahead of the May 2026 vote”.

Compare , and so then also contrast , to what the SNP mostly rely upon for their political campaign donations.

That , as political campaign donations, are mostly sourced from their own members, as they the SNP ,as a political party, are reported to have relatively low levels of major private donations, based upon Electoral Commission data reported for the final quarter of 2025 (Q4 2025), with the majority of their income coming from public funds and small-donor contributions. 

I am sick of millionaires and Billionaires thinking that they can buy an election for a party of their choice , as in the one that they choose to donate to.

Why ?

I mean Dale Vince lives in England , so why is he contributing to the Labour party in Scotland ?

A conundrum, and surely cannot have sweet Fanny Adams to do with Labour’s lame duck policy , GB Energy ?

Though I believe that he, Vince, does have business interests in Scotland.

However his , Vince’s, money contributions aka political donations could potentially have led to us in Scotland being lumbered with Labour as our next Scottish government , which he, as a wealthy English resident, would not have had to either endure nor suffer from with what would be predicted as being very bad governance for us in Scotland.

Kind of sick of all of this money being thrown at Labour by all of these wealthy people , all to try to steal an election away from us the voters with their donations funding a succession of expensive propaganda social media adverts from Anas Sarwar, that keeps, as political adverts, (annoyingly) popping up on YouTube and elsewhere………

I do hope that all of this ends up being money badly spent ( as in it all of it being wasted donations) , in that Labour in Scotland will , one hopes, end up being unsuccessful, and then so will Sarwar be as well, post the elections in May 2026.

Thus proving that in Scotland neither our votes , nor we as citizens, can be bought, unlike Labour .

Liz S

Footnotes – Dale Vince is supporting Labour despite his opposition to the small nuclear reactors favoured by them:

Dale Vince, the owner of Stroud-based green energy group Ecotricity, has roundly condemned the technology for “defying the economic laws of gravity”. Speaking on his weekly Zerocarbonista podcast, Mr Vince said: “When you come to small nukes, the government and the nuclear industry have consistently said that we will get lower bills, but they don’t put a number on it. They are ecomonists without numbers! Energy minister Ed Miliband: keen to move ahead on SMR plans. Big nuclear is the most expensive electricity we have ever made, it’s off the charts compared to renewable energy and one of the fundamental laws of physics is that the economies of scale come by making something bigger, not by making something smaller – it always costs money to miniaturise. So here they are, saying we can miniatarise nuclear reactors that famously went decades late and billions over budget… and they’ll be cheap. I don’t believe that for a second and what we are of course doing is proliferating the risk.”  https://www.cndsalisbury.org.uk/news_items/6497-dale-vince-ecotricity-on-smaller-reactors

So, why?

In the National in July 2023:

Mr Vince said he had not influenced Sir Keir Starmer’s plans to end North Sea oil and gas exploration and he added that this was the right-wing press “joining the dots” to suggest it was a result of his donations. https://www.thenational.scot/news/national/23627753.green-industrialist-dale-vince-denies-donations-labour-paid-influence/