Richard Desmond gives £1m to Ukip

The UK Independence party has received a sizeable financial boost, after Richard Desmond, the cigar-smoking pornographer turned newspaper owner, gave an additional £1m to its election campaign.

Mr Desmond said that he was fed up with "the floppy-haired Eton club" and with "champagne socialists", references to the Conservative and Labour parties respectively, which he has wooed in recent years. He also gave £300,000 to Ukip in December.

The additional donation will be a relief for Nigel Farage's party, which has struggled to match the fundraising achievements of its rivals.

Ukip raised £35,000 in the first week of the campaign, of which £10,000 came from its own treasurer, according to data from the electoral commission. By comparison the Conservatives raised £500,000 while Labour brought in £1.9m. The Lib Dems lagged behind with just £20,000 however.

"We are up against the big battalions; this helps significantly," said Ukip's leader Nigel Farage, who visited Mr Desmond's offices on Thursday.

Mr Desmond backed Labour under Tony Blair and has also entertained David Cameron, most recently at a charity gala in north London.

He announced his donation in an interview with the Daily Express, the tabloid that he bought in 2000 and is currently trying to sell. He said he wanted Ukip to be "a thorn in the side of the Tories and Labour".

"When I read the Ukip manifesto, I found it very sensible," he added.

The National Union of Journalists said that the donation was "sick-making", pointing out that Express staff had not received a pay rise for seven years.

People close to the multimillionaire say that his support for Ukip is motivated partly by a desire to become a member of the House of Lords.

Ukip has been widely mocked by other mainstream media organisations, and is unlikely to receive the backing of Rupert Murdoch's newspapers, the Times and the Sun.

Another rightwing newspaper, the Daily Mail, said in an editorial on Wednesday that it "most emphatically does not support Ukip", but urged "conservatively inclined voters to support Ukip" in three constituencies where only it or the Labour party has a realistic chance of winning.

Meanwhile Ken Clarke, the former Conservative chancellor, has deplored "personal attacks" in politics in an apparent reference to the party's claim that Ed Miliband was a "back-stabber".

Mr Clarke declined to comment on the comments by Michael Fallon, defence secretary, last week but he said: "I disapprove of personal attacks on your opponents. I've never done that - I think it costs you votes."

Mr Clarke, interviewed in the New Statesman, also said that the Conservatives had failed to win an election outright for 23 years because it had become "too rightwing", saying he hoped Mr Cameron would "seek to redress in coming times".

The former chancellor also admitted that the Tories still had work to do on the economy. "We still have not created a rebalanced, modern, competitive economy, which can start producing sustainable rises in living standards," he said.

Mr Cameron will on Friday launch his party's jobs manifesto aimed at securing full employment.

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