Top Tory donor calls for a People's Vote

Anti-Brexit campaigners take part in the People's Vote March in London. (Yui Mok/PA) - Credit: PA Wire/PA Images

A top Conservative donor has said that the public should be given a final say on Brexit, saying ‘perhaps we made a mistake, and a big one’.

Founder of taxi company Addison Lee John Griffin, is one of the Tories’ top 20 donors, made the comments during an interview on BBC’s World at One.

He said: “It’s looking more and more like we’re going to have to have another referendum. Now I really felt that I would never ever say that because democracy is alive and well and should be kept so. But unfortunately we now have to consider, perhaps we made a mistake and a big one, and it’s going to affect our country for some time. So I think we have to reconsider our position.”

Griffin, who has given more than £4 million to the party since 2013, said he had voted Remain but had been initially accepting of the result of the referendum.

“I think at the time there was a new dawn and the grass is always greener and all this stuff,” he continued. “Everybody thought ‘let’s go for it’. But the truth is now as we look back, perhaps that wasn’t such a wise decision, us on behalf of the country. We now need to look at that and think, you know what, maybe we should tread backwards and have a look at what we really have been subjected to.”

Griffin was asked about Boris Johnson after the Sunday Times reported that four top Tory donors has threatened to withdraw their support if Johnson became leader.

Describing Johnson as a “first-class person”, he said he was “concerned” about Johnson’s private life and how he has conducted himself with his family, particularly after the police were called to his home during a domestic row.

Asked if he would be withholding donations over the issue, he said he wasn’t “bribing the government” but that he would be keeping a “watching brief”.