Leading NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul is set to be a key player in influencing who will win the next general elections in the UK, a leading daily said on Saturday.

“Today Lord Paul is named in the Sunday Times rich list as the 36th wealthiest man in Britain, has spent more than a decade in the House of Lords, is a close friend of Brown and his wife, and is set to be a key player in influencing who will win the next election,” The Times stated.

Last month, at a private party held at London Zoo to honour Ambika, Lord Paul’s daughter who died of leukaemia at the age of four, he told Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah that he was dedicating a new bridge in the zoo’s African bird park to the memory of their late daughter, Jennifer.

“Then, last week, the 76-year-old peer suddenly declared that he would pay ?as much as I can afford? to enable the cash-strapped Labour Party to win the next election, fuelling talk of a snap autumn poll.”

Observing that Lord Paul’s dedication to Brown is total, the newspaper said, “his most recent homage is to pay for 6,000 secondary schools in Britain to receive a copy of the Prime Minister’s book Courage.”

Typically, Lord Paul’s advice to Brown is all about modesty. First, don’t make an unseemly dash to the ballot box, the daily said.

“There’s no need to. He has been elected Prime Minister to do a job of the Prime Minister, and let him get on with it,” Lord Paul said.

And secondly: don’t spend too much money on campaigning.

Lord Paul, who is British Ambassador for Overseas Business, when asked about how much he will give when the election does come, responded: “I haven’t got a clue”.

However, he is firm on one thing that it should not be the extravagant USD20 million plus affair that we have come to expect from the new Labour.

“I think we are spending far too much on elections. In my view Gordon Brown will make sure the party does not spend as much as has been spent before on the election,” Lord Paul was quoted as saying.

And he thinks that the Labour Party should do more grassroots fund-raising. “I don’t think anybody in the Labour Party will want one, two, three, four, five persons only to fund the campaign. I don’t think even Gordon would want it. He is not that kind of a person.”

In the same vein, Lord Paul, who is the Cof the Caparo group, favours a cap on political donations. But at what level?

“I don’t know these things – I would put it at even USD5,000. I would rather have parties go from door to door and take money. Then they’ll need to do some work.”

Not that his own donations have been capped. Lord Paul funded Brown’s leadership campaign to the tune of USD25,000. Should he lead by example?

“We are, at the moment, talking about ‘Should there be a cap?'” Lord Paul told the newspaper.

Lord Paul, who was made a peer in 1996, is also the Chairman of the 2012 Olympic Delivery Committee.