Matthew Oakeshott

Matthew Oakeshott, Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, is a non-affiliated peer in the House of Lords, originally joining on the 1 May 2000 as a Liberal Democrats peer.

Oakeshott is a third cousin of the Sunday Times journalist Isabel Oakeshott.

Leaving the party

Oakeshott left the Liberal Democrats in 2014 after he privately commissioned polls in the Lib Dems main seats in the UK to find out whether party leader Nick Clegg stepping down would affect voting. After leaving the party, Oakeshott said the Lib Dems are heading towards disaster with Clegg leading them and have lost their 'roots, values and principles'.

Donations

In January 2015 it was revealed, in the last few months Oakeshott had donated £600,000 to thirty Labour and fifteen left of centre Liberal Democrat election candidates in an attempt to create an Ed Miliband-led progressive government. The seven sitting Lib Dem MPs to receive a money are Norman Baker, Lorely Burt, Tessa Munt, John Pugh, Martin Horwood, Adrian Sanders and Jenny Willott. Of the thirty Labour candidates, twenty-nine are attacking Tory marginals with small majorities and the other, Melanie Onn is fighting to hold her seat against Ukip. The Labour candidates include those in Carlisle, Hastings and Rye, Hove, and Brighton Kempton in the south; Gloucester and Kingswood in the west; and Great Yarmouth and Peterborough in the east. Another £10,000 has been given to the campaign to re-elect Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, MP for Brighton.

Oakeshott described his donations as, "doing his bit to save our country from a Tory government cringing at Ukip".

External Resources

• George Parker, Liberal Democrats fear Conservative election grip, FT.com, 30 November 2011.