Conservative Party Donor Threatens to Stop Funding If UK Leaves EU Single Market

Andrew Cook, one of the major Conservative Party donors, warned UK Prime Minister Theresa May on Saturday that he would stop funding the party if the country leaves the EU single market after Brexit.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Cook, who has donated over 1.2 pounds ($1.5 million) to the Conservative Party, added that if the United Kingdom would choose immigration control over the single market membership in the event of the so-called hard Brexit, it would face a disaster.

"It is very difficult to make a political donation to a party when, although I support it ideologically, I do not believe that my interests and my ideology are ad idem with the principal Brexiteers," Cook said as quoted by The Times newspaper.

“There appears to be a willingness to consider the sacrifice of withdrawal from the single market, which I believe will be a catastrophe,” he said.

On June 23, 2016, Britons voted by a narrow margin to leave the European Union.

The United Kingdom is expected to begin the formal talks on the withdrawal from the bloc by the end of March after London invokes the exit clause of the EU treaty. The negotiating process is scheduled to last two years. The UK government is reportedly eyeing at least two post-Brexit options, dubbed soft and hard Brexit, which seek to balance immigration controls with market access.