Donor, Mills, Pressures Labour Party to Call for EU Referendum

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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One of the Labour Party’s biggest donors, John Mills, has openly announced that it might lose its donor in the upcoming general election if it does not promise to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU. According to Mr. Mills, Labour leader Ed Miliband’s decision to not hold a vote might cost the party a significant amount of support in what is likely to be a close election in May.

Mr Mills has been a consistent advocate of Britain leaving the union. He was addressing a conference organized by eurosceptics and discussed that it would be the best for the UK to stage an exit. Mill stated that “I have heard rumours that there is a majority of people in the shadow cabinet who are in favour of having a referendum.” He added that “I’m sure one of the reasons for this is concern about whether refusing to have a referendum is going to lose Labour votes in what is going to be a very tight election. I think it certainly will and this is . . . one of the major reasons why, from a tactical and strategic point of view, it is in the Labour party’s interests to have a referendum some time between 2015 and 2020.”

The founder of the JML consumer products company, Mr Mills, is credited to have provided the Labour Party more than £1.7m since 2005, majority of which is in the form of shares in 2013. The businessman has long opposed Britain’s membership of the union, and was the election agent for the campaign against Britain joining the European Economic Community in 1975.