[5] In March 2012 it was alleged by The Sunday Times that he had offered access to the Prime Minister David Cameron and the Chancellor George Osborne, in exchange for cash donations of between £100,000 and £250,000.

[16] As the family needed money, he left Shoreditch Comprehensive aged 15 with no qualifications and gained a job as a telex operator for Western Union in the City of London, earning about £7 a week.

[21][22] His good fortune came during the 1991 Gulf War, when Arab banks asked him to act as an intermediary to obtain foreign exchange from Western institutions.

The Sunday Times' reporters Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake exposed how Cruddas, in exchange for sizable donations, offered exclusive dinners with prime minister David Cameron and the chancellor George Osborne.

The reporters had secretly filmed Cruddas boasting that for a donation of £250,000 he will arrange "premier league" access to the government leaders, such as an invitation to dinners at Cameron's apartment in Downing Street, where the donor would "pick up a lot of information", pose "practically any question" or advance their interests if "unhappy about something".

[6][28] The undercover journalists were introduced to Cruddas by Sarah Southern, a lobbyist who is David Cameron's former aide, and secured themselves a two-hour private meeting.

[29][30] The reporters posed as overseas financiers and claimed that their clients intended to buy distressed government assets and wanted to make political connections.

[31][32][8] Cruddas publicly apologized, feigning that his claims were mere "bluster" and insisting he lacked the authority to sway policy or guarantee outcomes for financial backers.

[9][10][11][35] However, in March 2015, all three judges of an appeal court ruled that the central allegation of the Sunday Times's story – that Cruddas had corruptly offered to potential donors access to leading members of the government – was supported by the evidence.

Despite Cruddas's central role in the pro-Brexit campaign, the document raised concerns about the financial and operational impacts of the UK leaving the EU.

[42] He went on to found and preside over the Conservative Democratic Organisation, a pro-Johnson faction established in December 2022,[43][44] purporting to seek greater representation of the party's membership in its governance.

[45] In August 2022, Cruddas threatened to cut off funding to the Tories unless they changed their constitution and reduced the power of the 1922 Committee of backbench MPs.

An analysis by The Guardian revealed that out of his most recent 100 retweets on Twitter, 48 were in favor of Reform UK and Farage, while 12 criticized the Conservative Party and its government.

[12][48] In a public letter to Paul Bew, the commission's chair, Johnson sought to justify his decision by referencing Cruddas's so-called "outstanding contributions" to charity and his "long track of committed political service."

Yet, as The Guardian pointed out, Cruddas had poured more than £3.5 million into Conservative Party funds since 2010, including a £500,000 donation delivered a mere three days after he took his seat in the upper chamber in February 2020.

[53] By 2023, The New Statesman named Cruddas the 38th most powerful right-wing British political figure for his financial ability to shape the Conservative Party's future.

[5][15] A long-standing legal loophole, originating back in the steamship era, allowed the ultra-wealthy British business elite — including Cruddas — to maintain non-resident status while effectively continuing their professional activities in Britain.

[16] In 2016, Cruddas and his wife Fiona paid £42 million in cash for Balfour House, a seven-storey Victorian mansion in London's Mayfair district near Park Lane, formerly owned by the Iranian-born art dealer Nasser Khalili.